7 Weeks Completed

As of Friday, March 23, we have completed 7 weeks of teaching at AFE.  I have learned as much as I am teaching.  It’s the craziest experience teaching two subjects that I know so much about in Spanish!   I am learning new Spanish vocabulary every day, but most importantly as the weeks go by, I am also learning about my students.

Douglas & Maoly~10th grade

I have high expectations for my students and I know they have the capacity to learn and do well on the homework, quizzes, and tests that I give them, but they are not like children in the United States which is all I was accustomed before coming here.  The fact is that these students are different…they come from different backgrounds, family histories, different culture and they aren’t even the norm here in Honduras!  The high school students this year (7-11 grades) are within the lowest percentile of poverty here in Honduras and the world, and yet they are among the top percentile of individuals here in Honduras who continue on past 6^th grade.  

smoke from burning at the dump

The students here at AFE face many other obstacles related to their poverty.  Their homes are within walking distance from the garbage dump.  The proximity of their homes to the garbage dump forces the students and their families to breathe toxic fumes due to the burning of trash.  Because of this issue, most of the students have respiratory problems.  For example, one of my students comes to class with frequent headaches, and another is almost always sick with a cough.  One day, the smoke was so thick that we were forced to use masks while teaching because breathing without a filter was unbearable.

Aside from many obstacles, our students are progressing and doing as well as we could have hoped.  They will be taking their 2^nd prueba, or exam, for this trimester in 2 weeks and then we will begin the final 4 weeks to complete this first trimester.  Please keep the students at AFE in your prayers during these next weeks!