I’m sure you are all wondering what I have been doing these first 3 months of my two-year service. I had a lot of Dominicans ask me if I would be going home for summer vacation since I work in the school. However, these first 3 months in site as Peace Corps Volunteers are critical to our future work because they are used to create connections with people and integrate into the community. This is also our time to do a community and sector diagnostic to learn more about our sites and also present at a 3 month In-Service-Training (IST) with the rest of our EDU cohort.
We swore in as volunteers early May, so we entered site late into the school year. Since we were just starting out as “freshmen” volunteers, we could only observe at the school and could not implement any new projects. However, although I could only observe the classes, my days were much busier because I needed to put in the time to get to know the teachers I will be working beside for two years. I was able to observe the differences between the two countries and the different teaching styles. Although there are many kids in the school that can read, there are still a lot of deficiencies where kids struggle reading. The Ministry of Education has created a summer camp to work with the kids from 1st to 6th grade to help them achieve the necessary level of reading in order to move on to the next grade. I was able to help out in the camp this summer and plan on improving it for next summer, or even help enough this school year where they will not need the camp.
Once school was out, I had all the time in the world. I love summer, but wow, I had no idea I could have so much free time. Each day was different but also very similar. I took a lot of walks around my larger town of 15,000 to get to know the streets, houses, small businesses and people. When I wasn’t walking around town, I spent my days sitting on plastic chairs, drinking “cafecitos” or “guayaos” (slushies) or reading. I also met many members of my community and sat with them, talking for hours. I have met an innumerable amount of people already in my three months here; but it is so difficult to remember the names of each and every one of them. Some people have even made jokes that I now know more people in our town than they do.
I was fortunate enough to take some time out of my integration to enjoy the beauty of the Dominican Republic with either my family in site or my fellow PCV’s. Up to this point I have visited five different beaches and cannot wait to visit more. My breath is taken away each time I visit the beach with my friends.
In order to keep up with our education training, my site mate started a small reading club once a week during the summer that I eventually helped her lead. It became necessary eventually because the group increased to up to 13 kids for two hours. We did read aloud's with the kids and played a variety of games that pertain to the alphabet and reading that we will hopefully implement this school year. We picked a letter of the week each time to focus on the letter name and sound of that particular letter within our activities. One week I brought the letter board game I made for the kids that are in first or second grade to practice their recognition of the letters. My favorite moment while they played this game was one of the 6 year old girls, after the full two hours, finally remembered the sound of the "t", which was our letter of the week that time. When she knew the letter name and the sound finally, her happiness and smile was so contagious that I couldn't help but feel that same warm feeling inside. That was one of the many moments I have had in country, in my nearing six months in country, that has proven to me that through all the hardships and all the feels, I do belong here and I can make a difference. Even if it is a small one.
Now that summer is over, it is time to put these activities and our PC training to the test and start working alongside the teachers in my school, with the kids and eventually more with the parents and community. Before I start working on implementing new strategies to help with literacy, I will be taking the first month to evaluate over 100 kids of the 456 in my school to see where we have faltered to teach them to read. The summer was not always easy, but now we are ready to start doing the work we came here to do.