Summer in Panama is the beginning of December until the week after Carnival which is usually March time. Here we will begin the school year up again on March 2nd and I am excited to be here for a full school year, but it is also my last school year. I do have to admit I am a little nervous for this school year because it is so formative and I want to be successful and fruitful this last year. My biggest focus is co-teaching and assisting with better techniques with the little amount of hours my English teachers have. This coming school year my school will go from 5 hours of English each week down to 3. Meaning the students will only see me three times a week in each grade. I am a little bummed that we are being cut hours and cut teachers but we will take what we got and make the best of it.
Now I would like to recap what a summer is like in Panama and how busy it was for me. My summer first began with a small visit from Josh. He came to my site and met some of my community members and then we ran along and explored the island that I live not to far away from. It was a beautiful trip and I was so happy to see him after 10 months apart. We reconnected without any awkwardness and had such a good and easy travel week. Now we know traveling together is much easier than expected.
After my visit with Josh I began my busy summer. I opened up two summer classes for the kids Tuesday-Thursday and two adult English classes on Fridays and Sundays. For three hours in the morning I had the littles and in the afternoon I had the bigs. I spent five weeks teaching English to kids who wanted to learn more English but also who just wanted to spend some time out of their homes. A lot of the kids are bored at home or asked to do lots of work around the house or watch their siblings, so sometimes the three hours with me is more tempting than staying at home. I was overwhelmed at first with the turn out of how many students came. I had around 80 students in total for those five weeks and my biggest goal was making sure the students had fun but would actually leave with something in their brain. They impressed me with how fast they could catch on to the topics and how motivated they were to learn more. It did teach me how different each student is and how they need individual time with their teacher and they need check-ins. Sometimes you think a student has mastered a topic but in reality they are behind and really struggling with the basics or are having a bad day. I tried my best to split the kids up into small groups often so that they can have time to shine in what they feel confident in and to be able to hear their own thoughts with all the other students around them. My biggest hope from this class is that something stuck for them and that maybe they found interest in something. I do not want school to be something that they loathe, I want it to be something that they look forward to everyday.
To celebrate the students who worked so hard all summer, I gave them a summer camp! Wow is a summer camp a lot of work. You need to find the right people to be your facilitators , you need to secure a place to have the camp, you need to secure food, and you need to advertise and submit a plan to Peace Corps. The biggest lesson I have learned from this camp is that you can plan all that you want and something will still go wrong, so be flexible. Each day a facilitator didn't show up. I was short food one day. The kids had a rough day where their attention was spare. But, when I asked them if they had fun, they said yes. When I asked if they felt more confident in speaking and reading English, they said yes. When I watched them interact with their classmates they were speaking more kindly to each other. They became teams, they lifted each other up, they communicated, they begged to play the team building game again because they thought they could all survive on the island. It was amazing to see them pick up an English song and story and want to perfect it. They wanted to learn more of the song, they wanted to sing it 100 times, they wanted to run around the town and sing it for everyone. Yes, the camp was exhausting, but I would do it again just to see the smiles on their faces again.
To finish my busy busy summer, my dad and brother came to visit and see Panama. I traveled to Panama City to meet up with them and I have never been so happy to see two very white tall men. They were only here for 5 days but we ate good and relaxed well. I tried my best to show them Carnival, but we only survived one day. Carnival is one big drunk fest which is not really our thing. But we got soaked by the water tanks (culecos) and danced along to some reggaeton. The way they do the parades I couldn't figure out the schedule and they happened at night which was bad for us because the last bus in to town was at 4:30. So at night we relaxed on the porch and fed the towns fattest cat. I really enjoyed the time we had together and will miss them greatly.
Now that the summer has passed so quickly, I have completed my first year in Panama and now I have one year left. This is my year and I cannot wait to see how it goes, wish me luck!
