Climbing up to school:It is 1 PM and the teacher has just walked past your home. Your job now is to get the children ready for school, even though this is the hottest time of the day. Fortunately for you, the children want to study and it is no trouble getting them to change clothes and grab their backpacks.
One classroom with a view:
The children arrive in groups, with most of them coming up the steep, rocky road pictured above. They range in age from six to sixteen. Almost all of them are of Haitian descent. Before class they speak Creole and the teacher has to call their attention back to Spanish. But what a classroom! It has no walls and plenty of fresh air comes in under the zinc roof. The view is a fantastic panorama of the entire valley of the Nizao river watershed.
A challenge to the teachers:
Instead of having the teachers (in the majority) settle into giving classes at 2 PM to the children and then at 4 PM to the adults, we want teachers to serve the children with four hours of classes, between 8 AM and 12 PM. The kids are hearty and used to rough treatment, but short-changing their education with only two hours in the hottest time of the day (so that the professor can immediately switch into the adult education class and collect another check) is a situation that requires reform.
History of mission creep:
When the parochial schools began, the teachers first hired were high school students or recent graduates with little background but a willingness to be in the mountains with the children. Some lived in the mountains; others would leave their homes on Monday and not return until Friday. They'd teach in the morning and then plant beans or tend other crops in the afternoon. With time, they opted for the ocean front towns and continued their education in Barahona. Thus began a process of distancing themselves from the families in the countryside. As the sponsor program lost children (who either moved away or became in-eligible for the program) the parish schools became more reliant upon fewer sponsored children and thus the salaries of the teachers froze... together with their stamina and motivation.
Tough choices:
The children in this picture have wonderful intellects and a zest for learning. They deserve a good chance at developing their minds. To this end the program will go in one of two directions: either back to less educated teachers, motivated to put in four hours of teaching per day, or push the present teachers (who have grown accustomed to giving the children only about 6 hours of classes per week) out of their comfort zone.
Incentives:
At present the mature teachers have scant reason to advocate change in the system. They know that the primary responsibility for education in their country rests with the government, but they do not press their political leaders for change. When we present to them the stark need for changes that aim to benefit the children, will they adapt or leave the program to less educated people who will either live in the rural communities or climb the mountains or ride up on motorcycles in the morning, rather than during the noonday heat? Within the next month, we will have a showdown. One thing is for sure, we can not augment the salaries of the teachers without controls which show us that they are giving the children four hours a day.
