Rural Kids Day Camp # 1

The blog is back which means we are back in Puyo. We arrived Wednesday afternoon after a five hour bus ride from Quito. The previous day we left Des Moines at 6:15 and went to New York. Things were on schedule until we were ready to push away in Miami. Somebody had checked in their luggage, but failed to board themselves. TSA takes a dim view of that on international flights these days and so it took them nearly an hour to unload baggage until they found the three bags. We arrived in Quito about 8:00 PM. We had no trouble at customs with the nearly $500 worth of electronic equipment for the school.
Leaving Iowa knowing that my Dad is in his last days was not easy. His kidney failure will continue to poison the system until the poison takes him. It might be weeks or even a month or more. We were glad to have made the trip when conversation was still possible. He is in the nursing home Hospice room being well cared for.
Our first day back (today) was a shocker. We had no school and instead our staff was at the church camp running a camp for rural Puyo children. It seems that the provincial government helps out our school and we in turn need to help out the provincial school system. We do that by running a day camp of a bit over 200 student each day for two days.
The day consisted of an assembly with songs, stories, and a play. Group games outside took us up to lunch. After lunch they went swimming in the camp spring-fed pool. We rode the bus to deliver a large group of students to their “RURAL” homes. The blog tomorrow will include a description of “rural” here in the rainforest area. My goodness!!

Medical Report & The List of Luxuries

We have received additional comments and some emails regarding the condition of my father. We will update that situation.

Today he was moved from Mercy Hospital in Iowa City, IA to a nursing home in his home town of Kalona, IA. We were very fortunate to have obtained a Hospice Room which is nearly new. This is a large private room which is very comfortable. It can easily accommodate a number of visitors.

The health situation is not very encouraging. His kidneys have all but shut down and the body toxins continue to build. His heart will not tolerate kidney dialysis. Food no longer has an edible taste. He has no pain and is resting comfortably. The Dr. will not predict length of life but has said it may be as short as a week or as long as six weeks. Now we have some difficult decisions to make regarding the timing of a return to Ecuador.

After only two months in Ecuador, already the comforts of life of the US have made an impression. It is called reverse acculturation. Here is a short list:
1. You can get a drink from the water tap
2. A tooth brush can be rinsed in tap water.
3. A shower is hot and there is sustained water pressure.
4. Traffic flows in lanes.
5. Electronics goods are readily available and for a cheap price.
6. Beef that can be cut with a fork is available most anywhere.
7. Where is the rain????????????
8. Where is the rice?????????????

We Are Traveling

This blog will not be published regularly over the next two weeks. After checking on the health of my Dad, we have decided to return to the US for a two week period. The blog is posted from Quito this evening. Friday, we will fly from Quito at 6:00 A.M. to Miami to St. Louis and then arrive in Des Moines at 7:45. We are currently scheduled to return to Quito on November 6.

Traveling from Puyo to Quito by bus in a "different" experience. The trip takes five hours on an express bus. The bus was ultra-modern and very clean. The first two hours require negotiating some very rugged mountain country. The views are exceptional (except those straight down off the shoulder of the road without railings.) The one section near the town of Banos is still rough, dusty and challenging. The volcanic deposits still cause a dust that covers everything. The highway is buried quite deeply in places from the volcanic flow.

The entire five hour trip costs $5 per person. One of the best travel bargins we have seen! Oh yes, the 25 minute taxi ride from the bus terminal to the guest house through down town Quito was another $5.

Understanding the Grading System

Spent the day with Excel and working with teacher grades. First day I haven't been in the classroom. The classroom is much easier.
Student grading is based on a 20 system here. All scores on all assignments and test are converted to this system. Mathematically, this is not a problem for the most part. However, converting to the 20 system BEFORE calculating grades causes all kinds of injustice. If you violate some basic rules of math, you should expect this. Teachers were totally unaware as to what was happening.
For example if you have three assignment of differing lengths and values and convert them to the 20 system and then average them, really bad things happen. Assignments of 30 points, 50 points, and 5 points could result in students getting less total correct answers getting higher scores on the 20 system then a student with more total correct answers.
Friday, school is over at 10:00 and we are going in to a major "how to grade" workshop. Because I don't have the Spanish, I need to generate several examples of what NOT to do and have my co-teacher understand it thoroughly so he can explain it in detail to the entire staff. I just can't stand seeing students get the short end of the grading stick because adults don't understand the math behind their grading.
More later!!!!!!!!!!

Those Darned Test Results

I will get off the topic of testing and setting standards one of these days. However, it is heavy on the mind at the moment and so here goes.

The first major unit exam results are now in. The picture isn't pretty. We assume that the English curriculum is based on the text. We don't have time to build curriculum from scratch and we don't have people trained in writing curriculum. So I wrote the first unit exams based on the material. We tried to be very straight forward about what was going to be on the exams. We had at least two major review sessions in each class lasting the entire class period. I took notes on each session (which is more than many students did) and I wrote the exams straight from the review material.

The results show about a third of all students failing. We did have a number of students do very well on the exams. We have additional analysis to do. We suspect a heavy percentage of students new to the school in the failing group. We also know that grades have been padded in the past to get students into the passing range and we have a certain percentage of students who are counting on this. (Ain't gonna happen!)

I will do a total analysis of the test results using Excel. I will have the results graphed and a picture available for all to see by meeting time this coming Friday afternoon.

OK! I feel better!

Testing Students & Evaluating Teachers

We are at that time of the year when the first major exam scores are coming in for English. The picture is about what I thought it would be.
First, because of allowing any student to enter the school if the family has the money is really a bad policy. The higher in the grades you go, the worse the situation. In Grade Seven for example, we have three classes in a group of about 18. Three students walked right through the unit exam. About six students were in the middle. The rest were rock bottom. Even in a group so small, this kind of range is difficult to deal with. The bottom line is that nobody is happy.

We have started to teach testing rules. By having a ten minute session the day before the test about how to behave during an exam and by being a real "bear" about it during the exam, we saw some progress. Part of this is teaching teachers not to respond to student question during the exam. I told several students today the test was for them, not the teacher. Our goal is to have a unit exam with total silence in the room, no walking around, no talking out loud, and no bugging the teacher for clues. It will take some time

We have run some sample teacher evaluation forms taken from the internet. One was in Spanish. Remember we are starting with the question of "what is teacher evaluation". Now they can see the components. There are so many assumed things that we have to be very careful. For example, we have nobody trained as a teacher evaluator. Teachers have no idea what is expected of them. We will have to teach teachers HOW to perform. This will be an on-going topic for some time.

The Simple Life

Sometimes you need to send along the simple things of life. The pictures above demonstrate this.

We have several homes in our neighborhood where children need to be inventive in their play. They just don't seem to have much. Now if you don't have an expensive swing set including a slide, you just might be able to build one. These two little guys found two boards and a cut in a bank of dirt. Pronto! You have a slide!

A little closer to our life is the picture of the wardrobe, desk, and what not shelving. This is all one unit and the sum total of furniture in the bedroom except for the bed. We do not have an extensive set of clothing because all the hanging clothes are in the wardrobe.

Now how is this for the simple life??!!