Our third day of tour was another busy day, even though it had only one school visit and a longer drive back to Antigua (complete with rush hour traffic). After a (ridiculously hearty) typical Guatemalan style breakfast with eggs, beans, sausage, cheese, and plantains, we drove through back roads (and I do mean back roads) to a primary school outside of Tecpan, in Panabajal.

A beautifully decorated school ready to welcome us!

The school children were waiting for us at the gait, even though we were quite early. We were greeted with a rousing cheer of Bienvenido! and then the primary students took us by the hand to take us down the steps to the patio area. There was, of course, a beautiful blanket of pine needles, and a beautifully designed floral altar with incense burning on it. Throughout the morning, little prepatorio students – the kindergartners – would come over to throw more incense on the fire and blow it back into life. Because why shouldn’t the littlest kids in the school be the ones tending the fire?

Please take care of the fire, kindergarteners!

We had a pretty typical CORP (that’s Culture of Reading Program, remember) inauguration activities –  some singing in Spanish and English to get the kids involved; speeches from the principal, a representative of CoEd, and the regional supervisor from the Ministry of Education; songs played on the marimba; gifts and sports equipment given to the school; and a presentation of a small gift to us from the school, a beautifully cloth bound notebook with the name of the school embroidered on it.

The kids are excited for some songs and games.

The supervisor from the Ministry of Education caught my attention with his speech. He was talking about how important reading is and how there is a greater culture of reading in the United States than in Guatemala. He was encouraging the students to grow their love of reading to be just like Americans, who may read even five or six books a year! The idea that reading five or six books a year is something laudatory or even satisfactory was almost laughable to me, but it highlighted again the current culture of reading in Guatemala, where approximately 1 in 100 Guatemalan adults reads for pleasure. (I don’t have a reference for this – it was a stat that our CoEd staff gave us.) Further evidence of the current culture toward reading: the literacy rate among adult Guatemalans is 79%, and when you look at Indigenous women, the literacy rate drops as low as 30%.

(Side Note: I wondered how many books the average Canadian or American reads in a year. I realize that I’m hardly average when it comes to reading, and I read a lot of books for my work as a teacher. My research shocked me when I found a Pew Research Center study that said that in 2013 the median number of books read by an American adult was 5. The mean number of books is 12, which at least works out to a book a month.)

This grade 2 class had 38 students packed into it!!!

After our opening activities, we once again divided into groups and observed a lesson in a grade 2 classroom. This lesson was very similar in structure to the one from our first day of tour. As we were listening to the story (and looking at the pictures as the students got to see them), bombas, or fireworks, were regularly being set off in the street in celebration of our visit. This inevitably set off a car alarm on a car that was just outside the classroom windows. On the other side of the classroom, in the patio, the marimbas were regularly being played. The classroom door being shut made a small difference, as there were broken windows on both sides of the classroom. This made me wonder if the Guatemalan students we saw are better in general at tuning out distractions, or if they are losing educational time regularly because of the number of distractions around them. Of course, it was hardly a typical day for the class, what with 10 or so foreigners hanging around in their classroom.

After the story, each student and visitor got a balloon on which the teacher wrote a word. I asked all of the kids around me what their words were, very impressed when they could read them out loud for me. We then threw our balloons in the air and tried to keep all of them off the floor, working together and shuffling balloons around in the fray. Once we heard the maracas, we each grabbed a balloon and stood in a circle around the outside of the room. The teacher called on people to read their word, show the class, and then have the class read/say the word together. I was super happy to be able to have sufficient Spanish to participate well in the activities.

After our balloon game, we partnered up and got sentence strips from the teacher, with sentences being based on vocabulary words or ideas from the book. We read the sentences aloud with our partners, and the teacher called on some partners to read their sentences out loud to the class. Then we cut our sentence strips apart into separate words. I was paired up with another CoEd tour member, but students were all too happy to lend us their scissors to be able to participate. After cutting up our words, we had to try to put the sentence back in order. The teacher talked about how students begin to understand grammatical word order (like subject-verb-object), and how some words can go in different places in a sentence and still make sense.

I love that turtle shells are a typical percussion instrument!

As we headed out of the classroom to have a quick snack, a little girl approached me to show me her colouring book. It was beautifully coloured, and I loudly exclaimed over each page. When I tried to give it back, she told me that it was a gift for me. Oh, my heart!

Once we’d had some break time, we were on to our next task: painting the shelves we’d brought in order for the classrooms to have a place to store their books. I donned a garbage bag as paint protection, and Rosa and Anna and I started painting. Very quickly, some first graders came over to paint with us. They were excited, but they weren’t exactly careful. I didn’t get any paint on my clothes, but they managed to get my shoes, my jeans, and my sweatshirt. We were also regularly going over their brushstrokes to make sure they all went the same direction along the length of a shelf to end up with a good final product. Their enthusiasm kind of made up for it, though!

Anna and some student volunteers before we began painting.

As we finished up, we began to have some convivencia, or “living together” – some free time to hang out with kids. Again, I was so happy for my Spanish. The kids didn’t really care if I made mistakes, and I felt free to try to say whatever to them. I spent a lot of time asking names, taking selfies, and just giggling with a little group of girls.

Some kids easily hammed it up for the camera, while others took a little persuading to talk into a photo.

I noticed some CoEd staffers washing out paint brushes and scrubbing the floor, so I went over to ask what I could do. Alex took me up the stairs to the sink area by the entrance of the school where some other CoEd staff were thoroughly scrubbing out each paint brush and paint bowl. I worked with these ladies, and they asked me if I knew Spanish. They were so complimentary about my language levels when I told them I’d studied on my own and then taken some classes before going on tour. They were trying to teach me Guatemalan slang, but when you’re not given the English equivalent, only a Spanish explanation, it’s pretty hard to figure out what a slang word actually means! As we finished and I turned around to go back down the stairs to join the kids and the rest of the tour group, I realized that a security guard had come with me and stayed up in the entrance area the whole time that I’d been washing out paint brushes. I’m not sure if he thought I’d make a run for it, or if he thought I’d make a better target being so close to the street. Those guys sure took their job seriously!

By the time I got back to the patio, the gym teacher was leading whole school songs (with actions), and then a dance party/aerobics class. It was pretty epic! We left after hugs and tears and kids running along the fence to wave us off as we got back into the buses.

High fives to the whole class on the way out!

A few last goodbyes from the other side of the fence!

We had a late lunch and then headed back to Antigua. Of course, we had the opportunity to experience Chimaltenango rush hour traffic, complete with a total stop along the road due to a bad car accident a few vehicles in front of us. Thankfully we still had an opportunity to tour the new CoEd office buildings in San Lucas Sacatepequez, and then back “home” to our hotel in Antigua and a great dinner together.

Some serious traffic!

Look over there to be right… what did I find in the CoEd offices?!?!