First experiences

La escuela

On Friday, I visited the school that I will be working in for the next month.  I wasn’t really surprised at how poor the the conditions were. What did surprise me was that the teachers blamed the parents for not being involved enough in their children’s education and the parents blame the teachers for not working hard enough.

One of my biggest concerns with trying to help improve the Paraguayan teaching methods is that the problems seem bigger than me. For example, the Paraguayan Ministry of Education (MECA) gave all the teachers a basic skills test last year. Only 17% of all teachers passed it. Obviously, MECA can’t fire 83% of the teachers, so 83% of teachers can’t preform basic skills. Another problem is that many Paraguayans don’t have access to books because they are really expensive so much of the reading done by Paraguayans is purely for functional purposes. In fact, my family thinks I am super intelligent because I read books page by page. 

I have to have the attitude that I will make a small difference in one town. I am ready to start helping teachers one at a time, but its all going to depend on how motivated the teachers are to create cheap resources for their students and how open they are to new teaching methodologies.