Lets Be Ready

Hi all!
I hope you are fine…

"It's a pleasure for me to write you again and share our Joy of being one more year alive, to improve, laugh, enjoy, learn and above all teach"

I want to tell you that last month we had our first training of the year, which was called "Professional Growth IX" where we learned and shared new ideas, and activities with the whole "Let's be Ready" team.

This year we had the visit of our beloved and respected founder Fred Zambroski and his wife Nancy, whom we missed a lot during the past year. They were with us during the training, they gave us words of encouragement and showed us how proud they are for the teamwork we do to improve both the education of our children, and that of us to improve ourselves. It was good to see them again and enjoy their company.

There were also the Elba Sponsors who teaches in Patzicía, they are Janice and William; They visited Elba 2 times last year. They are very happy and satisfied with their work and creativity, they liked the activities they did. To all of us who are part of the Let's be Ready teachers group, we were very surprised by the visit of these Sponsors and we were delighted that they arrived because a sponsor had not showed up for a long time, much less attended the training; They made us see that we are on the right track with the education of our children and even Janice gave us new ideas to work with the children. We certainly enjoyed this surprise ...

José Tun, the person in charge of the Nutrition program made a very good presentation of the Atol program "CHISPUDITOS", showed us new ideas to prepare the atol and how to implement it in the communities; We also saw a simple video with important Nutrition information about what parents should take into account when feeding their children, so that they have normal performance and development.

Regarding everything else, we learned a lot from each other and set ourselves new goals to achieve each one as teachers and with our children for this year. It was an instructive and constructive week, as you will see in the following images ...

It is always a pleasure to write to you and inform you of what we love doing and we hope to tell you more in our next report.

Take care, see you soon.

Hi everybody, how are you?

First of all I want to apologize for not having more information about us, I have no excuses, but I hope you like to know how we finish the 2018 school year.

The Truth is that we are very grateful to God and to all the people who are part of the program, because without the effort, the effort, the dedication, the empathy and the Love that we have for our children; it would not have been possible to finish one more year. And of course, of course, we are also very grateful for all the donations and the support provided by our beloved sponsors.

All teachers agreed that it was a year of new learning and teaching, because experiences always teach us what to do and what not to do. During the month of October, we worked hard to review all the topics seen in the year with our children, we finished preparing the children who pass this year 2019 to first and culminate with the closing of the year. Later in our reports you will be able to know more about the boys who pass to first grade ...

We are very satisfied with the work done, because the results were very good, our goals and objectives proposed during the year 2018; Some of us were very helpful and others were not, but this serves as a lesson for this new year.

We also appreciate the fundamental help given by parents, by those who made an effort to help their children and by keeping in mind that if they were not interested in their children's education, we would not improve the country .

In our next report I will write you about what we are already doing to start with much desire, energy and enthusiasm this year 2019 ...

On Wednesday, September 12th, I was able to visit the Pequeños Pero Listos school in Santo Domingo Xenacoj, Guatemala, with the program’s director, Sara Bacajol. We arrived in time for the students’ gathering to learn about the day in the Mayan calender, 2 B’atz. Their teacher, Miss Gloria, excitedly explained the meaning of the different candles, colors, and grains being used in the special ceremony. She expressed how the gathering is meant to represent a start of a new time, and also to remember their past, whether direct grandparents or long-away ancestry. General background states that B’atz in Mayan astrology is meant to represent life, and is based on the Mayan god of creation, B’atz. The children’s energetic excitement and willingness to learn was clear, as they all answered each question in unison as Miss Gloria continued her presentation and encouraged their participation.

Afterwards, the children put on a show of some beautiful dances in their own traditional outfits from home. Their skirts and vests were bright and colorful, as their shoes tapped away and their hair bounced with detailed ribbons woven through.  We watched and cheered as they danced in pairs and group circles to upbeat marimba music, giggling and smiling for our photos. Everyone took turns and cheered on their classmates, happily helping their teacher with the music and applauses after each skit. We were even able to hear some solo singers and clever riddles for the class as a mini talent show ensued.

Next we were able to enjoy an amazing home-cooked dish prepared by some of the mothers. “Pulique de pollo,” a Mayan meal, is a delicious meat and vegetable stew served with fresh tortillas and tamales. The students all pulled their chairs up to the awaiting tables and happily listened as the mothers explained what the pulique was made of and why it takes skill and patience to cook. It was worth the wait; we all thanked the mothers for the wonderful meal and the students for sharing their unique day with us. After our warm meal and hot drinks, we had to say goodbye to the children. I was so thankful to be invited to their special day in school, and I hope to bring you more stories of these visits in the near future.

(Written by Arisa Gereda)

Hello everyone, we are very happy to greet you and tell you about our experiences, activities and the development we have every month with our children, it is a great pleasure.

We are very satisfied and happy for the work we have done so far; the children have had very good progress and achievements with the methods learned at the beginning of the year. That is why we will share what we learned in our last training at the end of July, which some teachers are already putting into practice.

We learned different activities and exercises that we can do with our children, stimulating gross motor skills; making them always from the easy to the difficult so that the results are more effective. Betzabé Tun is one of our star teachers and who was in charge of teaching us this topic, it was fun to do them because she is very enthusiastic and active in her work.

Lucy Diaz also made a very good presentation about "THE STAR BOOKS" she made us reminders of the activities that we must do with these books, she also showed us new ideas of how to read and how to make reading more interesting; for example: to tell a story it is not always necessary to use a book, we can use images of some characters or objects to make a new story, to this activity we can add a gabacha to paste the images. In this way children awaken their imagination more.

In Guatemala we use a Curriculum called Base National Curriculum, which serves as a guide to plan our classes and know what we have to teach. So we thought it important to read and analyze some parts of this book that we often do not pay attention to or take for granted that we are doing it. We had a very interesting debate about Significant Learning, the correct classroom setting and how the affective climate should be in the classroom; which we believe will help us a lot to practice it.

Something that I think helped us a lot to get closer or in other words, to strengthen our relationship as colleagues and friends, was that we did a very emotional activity called "life experience"; where we hear how some teachers have had a very difficult life but despite the obstacles they have never said they can not. Some have gone through economic, health, and work problems; but in spite of that they do not surrender because the goal is to make the change not only in children but also in the world. This part was very beautiful because we knew our friends better, which made us all see ourselves as a family; with whom we can count at any time that we need.

These have been some of the most outstanding activities that we carried out in the Professional Growth 8 workshop.

I hope you like them and I can not wait to tell you what we are doing for the other month...

Hello everyone!
As always it is a pleasure and a privilege to inform them of what we are doing and we want to reach with our Let's be Ready guys. I also want to apologize for not having written before, but these last two months we have had many activities and trainings, with students and teachers ...

• First I want to tell you that our Director SARA TUN, organized a workshop in the San Antonio Village in Xenacoj, in the school of that community; for ladies of the basic level; with the aim of discovering themselves on who I am? What are the changes that all women have when developing, because it is necessary to have precautions and certain cares with our body; and how they can deal with all those changes. All the ladies participated and the parents were grateful for having talked about these issues, since in that very rural community in which many families still find it difficult to talk about these issues with their daughters.

• As a second point, I want to tell you that we had the pleasant visit of our dear sponsors, WILLIAM AND JANICE, they visited the Elba school in Patzicía; They were very excited for the visit they made and satisfied with the work our teacher is doing in that community. They were sharing with the children and reading stories, and that was precisely the surprise they made. They made a donation of very funny and interesting books to the children of the school, for their library corner.

• Finally, all the teachers of Let's be Ready had a workshop on June 21 in Xenacoj; which was given by a person named Claudia Acevedo who is part of an organization called "ACTORAS DE CAMBIO". This organization defends both the rights of women and of people who have had the bad experience of going through some type of abuse, whether of freedom or sexual abuse. The workshop was about how in some parts of our country there are still very bad people who abuse the freedom of people, we saw some experiences of people who went through sexual abuse and how they managed to overcome that bad experience and what we can do now if we do not want this to remain part of our children's future. It was very interesting and made us raise awareness to be more interested in the welfare of our children and be more observant in case someone is going through a situation like this ...

That's all for now, our second "professional growth" training is approaching, that's what we'll talk about next month. It was a pleasure to share this information ...

Until next time.