Literacy for Dominican-Haitian Youth in the Batey

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.

Hello to all of our Global Giving friends! Here at Yspaniola, we offer literacy classes to students aged four to 17. In addition to our classes, we run a variety of voluntary programs that provide students with extra time to practice their reading and writing skills. One of these is our beloved Reading Hour. This year we expanded Reading Hour to offer two sessions each week that are divided by grade level. On Wednesdays, we open our library to second and third graders, and on Thursdays, we welcome fourth, fifth, and sixth graders.

Reading Hour is led by two of our Princeton in Latin America (PiLA) Fellows and supervised by our local teacher and library coordinator, Mayra. Our PiLA Fellows develop Reading Hour curriculum to reinforce concepts taught in our classes. Each session includes interactive activities such as games, songs, videos, drawing, and writing. After planned activities, students have time to read independently or with the guidance of fellows. We strive to create a positive and welcoming space where youth feel comfortable improving their reading skills and learning about new topics.

Through Reading Hour, we expand on the teachers’ lesson plans while exposing our students to important themes and lessons about the world. We often create lessons based on holidays or important events. Last fall students familiarized themselves with Mexican culture when they read about Frida Kahlo, watched a video about Día de Los Muertos, and colored their own sugar skulls. In February, students made valentines to show their appreciation for their friends and families. We encourage students to take pride in their heritage, so we made valentines in both Spanish and Creole. Most recently, we celebrated International Women’s Day. With the support of a visiting group from Georgetown, our students wrote letters to the important women in their lives.

Because we have adapted and expanded our Reading Hour this year, we are following a Monitoring and Evaluation Plan to measure the effects of the program. We hope that by implementing concrete practices for tracking participants’ progress, we can ensure that it is as effective as possible. From October 2018 to April 2019, we will monitor assistance rates, number of sessions offered, and reading skill improvement. During May 2019 we will evaluate students’ interest in reading and their increases in reading level (based on our Reading A-Z system). Follow us on Instagram and Facebook to stay updated on our progress and see what our students are up to in Reading Hour!