February was for me a month of relatively consistent work in
the schools with only a few interruptions to my schedule. Interruptions are actually quite common here
in Belize. It seems there are frequent
fairs, fund-raising events, parades, festivals, contests or teachers gone from
classes due to workshops or retreats.
But this past month I only really experienced two interruptions to my
regularly scheduled sessions with students and teachers. One was a spelling bee which I was asked to
help judge, and another was a Festival of the Arts for high schoolers which I
was asked to help decorate and run. The
spelling bee was held in several locations throughout the Stann Creek District,
to determine the winner who would then compete in April in order to be the representative
of the Stann Creek District overall in the national spelling bee held in Belize
City. The Festival of the Arts is also
an elimination contest to determine the best in the Stann Creek District who
will eventually complete in the national festival in June. What a privilege it as for me to be not only
an observer of the Belizean students’ talent, but also an active participant in
organizing these contests. Here are some
photos of a few high school performers.
High School students dancing the traditional Garifuna dance, Jankunu
Belizean rappers
Traditional Garifuna dance
The winning dance competitors
As I continue to work with small groups of students,
teaching them how to read, and as I attempt to give teachers ideas for working
with these underachieving students, we are all beginning to see some progress
in their development. As the teachers
notice their students’ progress in reading and their developing confidence,
they are encouraged to work with these small groups of students on a regular
basis. The traditional mode of
instruction in Belize has always been whole-class, regardless of whether or not
individual students are progressing, so the notion of working with small groups
(known as differentiating instruction in educational parlance) is a relatively
new concept. It is also very difficult
to implement in the schools, because there is little physical space inside the classroom
to group students according to ability level.
I have taken to pulling small groups of kids outside to work a half hour
at a time, or to working with teachers before or after school with these small
groups. We have seen the students
progress in their reading abilities just since November. That is very encouraging to teachers.
Teaching a small group of Standard I (second grade) students at Light of the Valley Primary School
Every Wednesday I also continue with the Family Literacy
workshops in the Spanish-speaking village of Bella Vista. Two of the mothers have learned to write
their own names for the first time and are beginning to learn to read in
Spanish. I love working with these
women, who dutifully complete their homework and show up each week eager to
become literate.
On Saturday, March 3rd I did some hiking with two friends, Eva
and Linda at the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary and Jaguar Preserve. This unique sanctuary in southern Belize
covers an area of about 150 square miles of tropical forest, and is the world's
only jaguar preserve. The jaguar is
largely a solitary, opportunistic, stalk-and-ambush predator at
the top of the food chain (an apex predator)
and it is a keystone species, playing an important role in
stabilizing ecosystems and regulating the populations of the animals
it hunts. Belize declared the
Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary a preserve in 1984, and the jaguars within
its boundaries have been protected ever since.
We did not encounter any jaguars, since they are
nocturnal. We did, however, glimpse a grey fox, a jaguarundi,
a guinea fowl and two snakes.
After a rather strenuous climb, we were rewarded
with two waterfalls and a pool of water in which to cool ourselves off. We were also treated to a view of the
Cockscomb Mountain Range, and Victoria Peak, the second highest mountain in
Belize, at 3,688 ft. I am so blessed to
be able to witness this tropical, Central American beauty.
along the trail
Victoria Peak
