Literacy for Dominican-Haitian Youth in the Batey

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the Dominican government declared that the 2020-2021 school year would be fully virtual. Although the government promised internet and tablets for all homes with children enrolled in the public school system, they have so far been unable to fulfill this commitment. In many communities, including Batey Libertad, students must rely on radios or televisions where available, or simply working from home in an exercise book. 

Students in Batey Libertad already faced great challenges to learning. The local public school is greatly lacking in both staff and learning resources, leading to many students struggling to master basic reading and writing skills. The distanced-learning plan imposed in response to COVID-19 has put the responsibility for students’ learning on their parents, asking parents to create home environments suitable for learning and to explain the tasks laid out in workbooks. This system disproportionately disadvantages the majority of students in Batey Libertad, whose parents mostly did not graduate from school, and who cannot provide their children with the books, resources, and study spaces they need to learn. Now more than ever, Yspaniola’s supplementary, literacy-focused classes are vital.

Funds from our GlobalGiving donors have been used over the past months to keep our talented local staff on payroll and work with them to design novel, proactive teaching plans that ensure that learning can continue. We have restructured our programming to provide daily, small-group literacy lessons for our youngest learners and learn-at-home competitions to keep older students academically engaged.  

Our small-group, in-person literacy program provides classes for groups of three-to-six students four times a week. Students wear masks, wash and sanitize their hands regularly, and undergo temperature checks before each class. The classes of students ages six through twelve  have been highly successful, with students regularly gaining familiarity with letters, words, and sentences. 61 students have enjoyed in-person classes since they began in late September.

The other students usually in our classes have been provided with biweekly, learn-from-home competition packets. Each student is provided with an envelope containing a series of challenges relevant to their age and reading level, and the best work each week is rewarded with prizes and certificates. Return rates of the competition packs surpass 80% weekly and reflect consistent learning for our students.

Yspaniola has not let literacy learning halt during the COVID pandemic. As always, we continue to address barriers to our students learning and assure their safety during the process. We are so grateful to all the donors who have funded these initiatives aimed at ensuring that students attain and retain literacy.

When the COVID-19 crisis began, and public schools across the Dominican Republic closed, Yspaniola too had to close the doors to our Preschool and Learning Center, for what has turned out to be the remainder of the school year. We are devastated that our students have missed out on vital schooling during these months, however, the health of our students and their families had to take priority.

As an Yspaniola supporter, you probably know that Yspaniola runs a Summer Camp for all our students each June, along with Experiential and Service-Learning Trips and Summer Internships. These offer participants from the United States and elsewhere to come and experience life in Batey Libertad and learn about the challenges that face this vibrant community of Dominicans, Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent. Our trips, summer camp and internships also provide Yspaniola with vital funds which cover the core costs and overheads of running our programs all year round.

Due to the drastic drop in income from these activities due to COVID-19, it has been thanks to the generosity of our donors, including those of you who give through the GlobalGiving platform, that we have been able to cover the basic costs of maintaining Yspaniola’s infrastructure and keep as many Yspaniola employees (teachers, learning assistants and support staff) on payroll as possible throughout this crisis.

The closure of the public school and Yspaniola’s Learning Center to prevent the spread of the illness had adverse effects for many families locally, because children were no longer receiving free meals at school or healthy snacks in Yspaniola’s food program. Alleviating hunger for children and families during this crisis became a vital immediate need.

At Yspaniola, we recognized this urgent need and decided to embrace the opportunity to extend our work deeper into the community. Our Operations Director, Julio Louis, who is from the batey, began delivering food support to families in the form of tickets that can be exchanged for goods in the batey's local “colmados” (family-run businesses where most residents buy their daily food supplies).

So far, we have supported 113 families with an average of two children per household, including 19 single parent families. Forty-three of these families have four or more children.

Below, local Mom Lumene (pictured) explains how this support has been helpful for her family. Lumene has four children, and they usually all study in Yspaniola's center.

What has your experience of the pandemic been so far?

"When the coronavirus started, I heard it on television. I thought it was something that happened very far from here and would not reach the country. I was not worried. But when my daughters were no longer going to class, they told me that the teachers said that they will continue the classes online because they wanted to protect the entire school. I started to worry. I understood better when the center also closed and Julio gave me an information leaflet with images of how to protect ourselves from the disease."

How has the economic situation affected you?

"My husband works in agriculture collecting pigeon peas. I shell the peas before they are sold. What has affected us most financially is having the children here at home all day. Before, I could go out to help my husband and we earned more while the children were at school and then went to [Yspaniola's] center. Also, the children also ate at school and then got a snack at the center. That was a great help that we don't have right now. Yspaniola's tickets enabled us to make a food purchase for the family that lasted a few days and gave us time to save. I hope that everything goes well so that my children can return to study, especially in the center where I see that they are learning more."

At Yspaniola, we are so thankful to all of our GlobalGiving donors for your continued support during these difficult times. Your support has helped ensure that we will be able to invite students back to learn and grow with us after the summer vacation, as soon as it becomes safe to do so. And, we hope that you may consider coming to visit us, once it is safe to do so again! :)

“Buenos días!”: Setting Students up for Success

The clock strikes 9:00am on Monday, and children rush in to our Kinder class for four-year-olds, smiles spread wide across their faces. Our littlest learners start the day off with a snack, because a full stomach means a brain ready to learn! There is a chorus of “buenos días” (good morning), followed by joyful singing of the welcome song. Afterwards, the children review the date, the days of the week and months of the year, where they live, the weather and count how many children are present today.

Since our Kinder class began in September 2018, children are beginning their first year in public school with increased knowledge, better behavior and improved classroom etiquette. Our recent evaluations show that our students have improved on average 9 points between October 2019 and February 2020. One student began the year with a score of 3.5 out of 30, and now has a score of 19, increasing by 15.5 points!

Our teachers are constantly adapt their classes to the needs of the students.Throughout the morning, the they pay attention to what the students are struggling with, so they can focus more on these areas.   

After a morning full of learning, playing, coloring, and other activities, our kinder students enjoy a recess where they learn to play, share, and improve their motor skills. They also learn to clean up after themselves by putting everything back in their boxes when they are finished. 

When asked what her favorite part of Kinder is, one student responded that she loves to learn the colors. Another responded that he loves to learn about animals.

Early childhood education is proven to aid development in both the short and long term. Short-term benefits include basic cognitive and language skills, increased social competence, and emotional development. Early childhood education is also correlated with “better educational, occupational, and social outcomes for disadvantaged children over the long term.” Our Kinder class provides a foundation for learning that prepares students for public school and beyond. 

We are so thankful to all of our GlobalGiving donors for making it possible to run the Yspaniola Preschool Program - thank you!

Yspaniola utilizes the internationally-recognized Reading A-Z system to track our students’ progress. Once students reach the highest reading level, Z, they are eligible for class 6, a voluntary after-school course that runs twice a week. During class 6, participants discuss the books they are reading and complete work on higher-level literacy topics. They also have the opportunity to serve as mentors to younger children who are struggling with their reading. Two of our class 6 mentors, Paulino and Idelove, have been assisting Yspaniola’s Learning Center for years. Below, they reflect on how this has impacted their lives. Paulino, 17, was born and raised in Batey Libertad with his two brothers and four sisters. “In school, all of my friends knew how to read at least a little in Spanish but not me. The teacher would make us present in class but I couldn’t do it because I couldn’t read or write,” he said. At age seven, Paulino began attending Yspaniola’s Learning Center. Through years of dedicated attendance, he has gained important academic knowledge that will pave the way for a professional career unattainable for many batey youth. “The biggest obstacles in this community [are] that there are lots of young people who have graduated high school and cannot enter a good profession because of a lack of funds or legal identity documents. They try to find work in stores, auto repair shops, or agricultural plants to earn money, get some ID documentation and pay for their studies to become professionals.” “With these skills, I have more options for what I do for work. Learning to read and write in Spanish has changed my life,” he said. Paulino hopes to become a Spanish or social science teacher in the future.

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Idelove, 16, was born in Ouanaminthe, Haiti and moved to Batey Libertad as a young child. Idelove only spoke Creole until the age of 5, when her stepfather taught her Spanish. She began attending Yspaniola’s Learning Center in 2009 and rapidly progressed academically. She skipped Yspaniola’s class 4 because she was so advanced and reached the highest reading level quickly. She now tutors a younger peer through our mentoring initiative. “I like being a mentor because I like teaching another person everything that I have learned.” Idelove has many goals for her life, including moving outside the batey, graduating from university, learning many languages, and getting to know more people. “I want to surround myself with people who bring out the best in me and challenge me to be the ideal version of myself.”

At the end of June, Yspaniola ran its annual two-week summer camp in Batey Libertad. For local students, camp provides an exciting opportunity to continue learning through dynamic and creative activities. It also allows youth from Batey Libertad to collaborate with international volunteers to design lessons based on their skills and engage in cultural exchange. This year, we focused on four separate themes: art, technology, music and dance, and theater. Students were divided by age and rotated through the different sessions. At the end of camp, each group had extended time with an assigned activity, and they prepared a performance or presentation for the last day.

During theatre, students were exposed to short plays as they watched teachers perform and participated in readers’ theatre. They expressed their creativity as they played charades and painted the backdrop for an imaginary play. The fourth and fifth grade groups designed Facebook pages for a character or famous person. During another session, a classroom assistant led a group reading session in which students were encouraged to think critically and analyze the plot and characters.

Our oldest students (age 13-17) spent the most time in theatre. For their final presentation, they wrote and performed a play. Students started by brainstorming potential themes and decided that they wanted their play to have a moral lesson. They chose to focus on bullying, a theme that is relevant for their age group and allowed them to reflect on their relationships with their peers. In order to accurately depict bullying, they drew from their own experiences and watched an anti-bullying video.

As we continued working on the play, students began to take on different roles. A few students thought up ideas for characters and collectively decided who could best depict them. Some students preferred to write. They crafted clever lines and followed a plotline to ensure that their story would be coherent and entertaining for the audience. One student with strong leadership skills served as the director. She organized actors’ movements and gestures, offered critique, and kept everyone on task. The rest of the students practiced their acting skills and transformed themselves into nerds, popular kids, and teachers. 

Through this project, our oldest students were able to continue practicing their reading and writing skills during summer vacation. They were also encouraged to apply what they’ve learned about story-telling in our programs to a personal project designed to fit their own interests. By selecting an important theme, group members served as role models for younger students; teaching them how to treat their peers through a fun and thought-provoking skit.