Hello everyone!
Today’s update will focus on the improvements we’ve made educationally, which include organizing more small tutoring sessions and having improved our teaching staff.
The biggest reason we’ve been able to make these changes is due to the help of our two volunteers, Annie and Jean-Pierre. Jean-Pierre has been volunteering with us since September 2012 and been at the foundation full time since mid-December, and Annie has been here about a month. They have been hugely helpful and vital in making these improvements. Both will stay until August of this year. With their presence at the JRF, we’ve created nine different tutoring sessions in which each of them focus on 2-3 kids at a time. David and I decided on the groups based on how much attention and encouragement a child needs to succeed in the classroom. Before these smaller sessions, David and I handled classes that had between 10-16 kids. With the both of us, it wasn’t a problem to teach them all, but the kids who were a bit slower, lazier, or less confident, weren’t able to receive the attention they needed. With these small groups, we are sure that the kids are now able to move at a quicker pace, be more challenged, and raise their confidence. A bi-product of this new schedule is that David and my classes have become smaller as well, and we, too, are able to give more attention and help to our students. Everyone is benefitting.
Some of the kids who are being greatly helped through the tutoring sessions are our biggest problem children. The children who don’t want to sit still, lose focus, bother other kids, and have major emotional/behavioral problems are now on a consistent schedule where they receive a 45 minute class totally focused on them. They have made marked progress that they couldn’t have made in a classroom with ten other students, and we believe this attention will also have an effect on their behavior outside of the classroom.
We have made other staff changes by hiring a new teacher, while dismissing another one, and the new arrangement is going very well. We let go of our teacher who was doing a poor job handling the kids ages 4-7 and replaced her with our other teacher, who is certified to work with small kids. After two weeks of being with the new teacher, a girl literally ran up to me after class and said, “Catherine, yo me porto bien con Belkys y estoy aprendiendo mucho, mucho leer!” Translated, this means, “I am behaving myself with Belkys and I’m learning to read a lot!” This girl had supposedly had behavioral issues with the other teacher, but now seems much happier and motivated in the classroom.
I’ll end the update with a cute story about our boys at the foundation. A few weeks ago they figured out how to take off their shirts and tie them around their head to look like a “neenja”, as they say. One morning while doing this, one of the boys, a 5-year old, said to me, “Take off your shirt and be a neenja with us!” I thought maybe he was kidding at first and knew that I couldn’t actually do that, but I realized he just wanted me to join the fun. I laughed and told him that I couldn’t because I am a grown woman, but that I was having fun watching them play ninjas. Attached you’ll see a picture of the group of boys with their ninja shirts.
As always, thank you all so much for your support.
