Critical Consciousness
Dear Diary,
Today was a more stressful day than usual. It started off relatively well. The service-learning volunteers arrived just as the children started to settle in to begin their daily morning activity, which was writing their numbers from 1-150. It is nice to have the volunteers here to help monitor the children’s progress. With a classroom of 15+ kids and just me, it can be extremely difficult to check all of their work and assist them all in such a short period of time.
It has been a little bit challenging to talk to my volunteer, since she is still learning Spanish and may not understand a few of the terms I use. However, she is eager to learn and asks questions to make sure she understands what I have said, and I appreciate her enthusiasm and determination to communicate in a foreign language and land. I am not the only person who appreciates our volunteers. The children do as well. Within our volunteers, the children have found playmates, friends, and mentors.
So the volunteers assisted me in ensuring the children were writing their numbers correctly. And after the morning activity, the children and I took a small break for breakfast. Afterwards, we were to learn English from the girls. They taught us the basics: the alphabet, the colors, and common English greetings/phrases. It always astounds me when the children pick up the words so easily; their thirst for knowledge is apparent, and they soak it in eagerly.
Recess time soon arrived. It is important to note that the children will always have arguments, and it is common for these disagreements to morph into full-fledged fights. However, today’s big fight was between brother and sister R and V. The two were punching, kicking, biting, and hitting each other with their shoes. The volunteers and I had to physically restrain the siblings so they would not hurt each other. After a while, they calmed down enough to return to playing with the rest. However, R ran back to me from around the corner, sobbing. And I was shocked. He had a trail of blood streaming down his face, while the other children were petrified. I ordered a student to grab toilet paper to stop the bleeding.
And the volunteers stayed behind with his sister while I took him to the doctor. After asking the children, I determined that a particular student had thrown a particularly sharp rock at R, which had struck him in the head and caused the injury. I instructed the kid to return after lunch with a family member, or else he would risk expulsion from the center. We do not accept such untolerable and harmful behavior here, and I need to set an example for the other children. And now, I must prepare to talk to the other kid and his family. Dear God, I hope this will not be a painful talk.
~Deyaniris