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I've set the alarm in my Honduran cell phone to ring me awake at 4:18 am, so that I have time to do my yoga routine and morning ablutions by 5:45 am. Then I can walk over to Mike and Val's room to share a cup of coffee and some conversation in English before breakfast is served at 6:10 am. Today, Val is feeling under the weather and so Mike and I are on our own. We pray for Val's recovery to good health, before eating our breakfast of beans, scrambled eggs and ham, plantains and tortillas. I brought my small bottle of hot sauce to share with Mike and a couple of the children sitting next to us. After breakfast, I'm back in my room to brush my teeth, shave (without a mirror) and floss. I make my bed and then go back outside to attend the morning meeting that Lazaro has with the boys each morning before their trade classes. 
These 5-10 minute orations consist of a prayer (led by one of the boys) and a series of announcements and admonitions. The one on Monday, for example, included an introduction of each of us. It's the Institute's version of Home Room.
Afterwards, I'm off to my second attempt to attend the course in the Electricity trade about simple electrical circuits. This time Habear tells me that today will be spent on student projects, no class. So I have the morning free. I go back to my room to finish writing my speech.
When I return outside, Mike and Lazaro approach me to help set up the three new computers the school has purchased for the school. We go to the computer lab which has a half-dozen older PC's, assemble three new PC stands, unbox the new PC's, set them up and test each to make sure they're working. Unfortunately, there is no internet access for these PC's, unless the school were to buy cell modem for each. But there is a working printer attached to one of the older PC's, so I go back to my room, dump my speech to a flash drive and print a copy for Lazaro and Mike to review for feedback. When we finish our work with the PC's, we lock up the room and return the only key to the school secretary. I wonder when the students will be instructed in their use and allowed to use them. On the subject of internet access, our efforts to enable access using the cell modem Mike and Valerie bought have borne no fruit. There are basically three possible components of the system: the modem itself, the modem driver for Windows and the Windows application to initiate a connection. We're pretty sure the modem driver is installed correctly and the modem seems to work: its light turns red and green appropriately. So I am suspicious of the Windows connection app. The box with the modem does not contain media with the program, so we can't uninstall it and reinstall to see if that helps. Mike tells me that it was installed at the Claro shop right on their PC without providing them with a copy. They did make of copy of the driver on their flash drive, however. But we uninstalled the driver and reinstalled without making any headway. Very frustrating: I don't understand why the store or the box didn't include full install media with documentation. No one at the school can help us either. So Mike or Val will have to return to the Claro shop in the mall and get their technicians to help it working properly. Meanwhile, Lazaro has read the speech and approves. He especially likes my reference to angels. The details of my trip on Thursday have been established: I will wait for the bus with the staff and teachers from St. Mary's school at the side of the main road about 2 kilometers from the Institute at about 6:30 am. Once on the bus, we ride north to Ceiba and arrive in the early afternoon for the conference. We'll stay overnight and return on Friday. I plan to take my laptop and dirty clothes to make use of the hotel services. Meantime, I observed the mathematics classes taught in the afternoons. While a few of the students are "getting" it, many are lost. Some have stopped writing down the lesson and examples written on the board and have just given up.
The young instructor, Sergio, tries hard to present the material clearly. He is a university graduate with a degree in civil engineering. After Tuesday's classes, I met with him briefly to make 4 suggestions:
Sergio seemed to receive my suggestions with grace and enthusiasm. Today, I see that Sergio has implemented all four of these suggestions. Praise the Lord! Participation by the students in class is improved. In the meantime, I am using the study hall after dinner to work with students one on one to help overcome some of their deficits in understanding. As usual for me, I use graphical methods to illustrate the algebra they are struggling to learn. After today's mathematics class on solving algebraic equations of the first order, I suggest that Sergio present the methods in the context of maintaining the equilibrium of the balanza perfecta. This is the intuitive content of the algebraic algorithms. He gets it. Alleluia!
I got up a little earlier on Thursday morning to allow time for packing a bag for my trip to Ceiba. Right after breakfast, Lazaro arrives to drive me to the pick up point. We chat as we wait for a while; Lazaro's English is very good. Then the bus arrives and I climb in with my bag and laptop case to the seat reserved for me next to Pat. I look back to see that the bus is packed with 20 or more teachers dressed in blue shirts with the insignia of St. Mary's Episcopal School displayed prominently on the front. I wave, "Buenos Dias" and a chorus responds in welcome. We arrange a spot in the aisle for my bag and case, I settle into my seat and we're off. The bus route travels the main north-south highway from Tegucigalpa to the northern city of San Pedro Sula until we reach a turnoff for Tela and Ceiba about 100 kilometers from San Pedro. The government has been trying to widen and improve this highway for many years (with US Aid money), I am told, and one day soon the construction will be complete. As it stands today, the road is a two-lane highway with construction of a second two-lane roadbed underway near Tegucigalpa. We climb further into the mountains, run into a construction delay as a road crew works nearby, finally reaching a long plateau surrounded by mountains. After about 3 hours, we reach a small city named Seguatepeque and we stop for brunch. Thankful, I stretch my legs and limbs. Little did I realize that this would be the only stop until we reach our destination 6 hours later! By the time we reach the resort in Ceiba, everyone in the bus is groaning from confinement in the bus and the teachers behind me are cracking jokes (en Espaniol) about how the solution to detention is to make the students travel to Ceiba in the bus, etc. I can barely understand the jokes, but I have no trouble discerning the sentiment!
Blessedly, Pat has been graciously engaging me in conversation, when we are not dozing away as much of the travel time as we can. She is the superintendent of the school, who worked as a corporate lawyer for a bank in the States before coming to teach in Honduras in about 2004 and step by step finding her way to her present position. I think that she mentioned that she's been a St. Mary's for 5 years now, one year at a time. She reports that the current superintendent of all 5 schools is very interested in standardizing the math curriculum for grades 7-11 especially. (All of the schools except St. Mary's do not offer a 12th grade.) The math teachers are expected to discuss this at the conference and formulate a proposal. Clearly, Pat and the superintendent, Andrea, would like to receive my advice. I promise to help, but I indicate that the proposal would best result from the teachers themselves. I also indicate that my speech on Mathematics Education is very high-level and not intended to directly address curriculum questions. We arrive at the Palma Real resort at about 4 pm and we are rushed off to our rooms and then back to the convention because our late arrival has thrown the schedule an hour off. We are treated to what I imagine is an African Dance troupe doing a set of traditional dances (later I find out that the troupe is actually composed of students and staff of Holy Trinity School, the school serving as host of the conference). The superintendent of the five schools then gives a slide show in English (all 5 schools are bilingual educational facilities) on her intention to start the drafting of a Strategic Plan for the system, and then we break into subject matter groups; I go off with the science and math teachers.
There are ten of us and we choose to go outside next to the beach for our discussion… a welcome location after the bus ride!
As the teachers talk about curriculum and their students and school I feel called to mostly listen. I'm not sure that there is time for my prepared remarks given the schedule. The teachers are mostly all quite young, twenty-somethings, I'd guess. Many voice disappointment with the efforts of their students, the expectations of the parents, the limitations of the school budgets and lack of support from their principals: common teacher complaints everywhere. After about an hour, night begins to fall and the mosquitoes begin to bite, so we search inside for a place to continue. We find a couple rattan sofas to pull across from each other, when Andrea appears and announces to the group that I have come prepared to make some remarks about Math Education and that now would be an appropriate time for the group to listen to them. I thank her and begin, skipping quickly through my prepared introduction to my main thesis, mathematical ideas as angels. I added at the end that their various concerns about students, parents and administration were common to all teachers, but that, if they could keep the focus of their classes on the immortals, it would lift the eyes and hearts of their students to a different plane and remind them of why they had come to class at all. The timing seemed especially propitious. The teachers left behind their complaints and quickly reached agreement (with a little input from me) on a unified curriculum for both math and sciences and we all felt fulfilled in the group results. In the following summary, the math and science teachers' summaries were just exactly what the superintendents had hoped to receive. Later, several of the teachers thanked me and a couple of the leaders said that my remarks had been "just what we needed". Praise God! We finished the evening with dinner and a party at the open bar. The buffet offered chicken and rice, fresh fruit, and bread rolls. The latter were especially welcome as I had not eaten any bread since arriving in Honduras: tortillas are served instead at every meal. I had a drink and a nice nighttime stroll on the beach: the stars were magnificent. I reflected on how well my little offering was accepted and I soon walked to the room in the villa where I could sleep on a queen size bed. God is good! I awoke around 6 am on Friday morning as the sun peered through my east facing window. I was sharing the rooms at the villa with 4 or 5 other men from the conference (most of whom had partied late into the night) so I didn't want to wake up the others. After doing only the standing yoga exercises in my routine, I put on my bathing suit and walked to the beach for a dip in the Caribbean. It was fairly warm and soothing. After bobbing up and down for a while and relaxing in the modest waves, I went back to the villa for a warm shower before breakfast. It was an unpleasant surprise, then, when it turned out there was no hot water for my shower. Something must have been wrong with the hot water heater. I felt I had to shower in order to wash off the salt and sand, so reminding myself again that most people on earth would be happy to get any clean water for a shower, I rushed through a cold one. After I putting on a clean set of clothes I found a couple of the men were also up and ready to go to the main building for breakfast. We took off together with our bags, leaving the only key to the villa on the kitchenette table for the remaining occupants. We checked our bags at the lobby counter, ate a good breakfast of French toast and fresh fruit and got acquainted. We had about two hours of free time before the convention resumed with a worship service, lunch and a send off. So after another stroll on the beach, I found Amilcar and Jimmy and we chatted for a while. Jimmy had been born in New Orleans, moved with his family to Honduras when 3 years old and was now a Honduran citizen who had lived almost his whole life in Honduras. He plays guitar and sings at local clubs. He struck me as a colorful personality. Amilcar, on the other hand, met Jimmy working at a factory many years ago. Then he worked for 9 years as a Mess Assistant at Royal Caribbean where he learned and perfected his English. In addition to teaching, Amilcar has a real estate business on the side, which he runs after school. So I asked him a lot of questions about property along the Caribbean coast. They both report that the area around Tela and the islands off the coast offer the best combination of clear water and safety. Amilcar even offered to put me up in one of his houses for a few days if I wanted to come down and visit some properties with him. I thanked him, but I said that I did not think I would have the opportunity to return to the north coast on this stay. Sitting across the aisle from me was Fr. Gerardo who officiates at St. Mary's Church and who celebrated the Eucharist at the worship service this morning. Since his English is about as good as my Spanish, we weren't able to converse very deeply. However, I was wearing my El Hogar shirt with the insignia of my home church, Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd. He remarked on the label, "Anglican, no Episcopal?" I replied, "Si, Anglican, no Episcopal." He gave me a thumbs up. He looked again at the insignia carefully and nodded as he noted that the shield was different from the Episcopal shield. "Bp. Duncan," he said, "I know Bp. Duncan". With Leslie's help, I replied that I knew of Bp. Duncan, but that I did not know him personally. "My bishop is Bp. Brian Marsh." I wrote down Bp. Marsh's name and the address of the diocesan website, www.acanedio.org, on a small piece of paper and told him that my wife had made both the insignia on my shirt and the diocesan website. "How many churches are in your diocese?" "About 20." "How many are Spanish speaking?" he asked. I said I wasn't sure, maybe one in Brooklyn, NY. We ended our conversation there, but I know from an earlier conversation that Fr. Gerardo's eldest daughter is a senior studying in Michigan this year and I had the definite impression that we will speak again on this topic. At 10 pm the bus stopped in front of the Instituto Technico and I bid farewell to my companions. Santana, the night watchman, opened the gate and I trudged into my room with my bag and laptop case. After brushing my teeth, I thanked the Lord and quickly slid into bed. I awoke on Saturday morning in time for breakfast, but still somewhat tired and tried by my trip to Ceiba. I decided to let Saturday be a sort of "make-up" day. Mike and Val had a story of their own. Val's condition had worsened and she had gone with Raul to see a doctor. After a short exam, the doctor agreed with her that she was probably suffering from her allergies, so he gave her a shot and some antibiotic medicine and prescribed rest. That was two days ago. Today, Val was feeling much better and she was up and about. Meanwhile, Mike had gone back to the Claro store to see whether the technicians there could get the modem working. They couldn't. So Mike had asked them for a replacement modem. The store personnel told him they couldn't do that; he had to take the modem to a repair facility and get it fixed. Mike decided he couldn't suffer any more delays, so he asked to buy a new modem, brought it home and got it going immediately. Subsequently, they've been catching up on their e-mail. They offered me a turn on their computer and modem when they were done, and I gratefully accepted. That night I decided to offer to buy the defective modem from them, if they would arrange to get it fixed. The next day, we struck the deal. As I write these notes, I'm still waiting to receive the refurbished modem. Needlessly to say, this quality of customer support would never be acceptable in the States. We do manage to get some things right.
I cleaned my room and washed my underclothes in the hand washer that all the children and staff here use. I hung a short clothesline in my room to air dry them. I arranged with one of the cleaning ladies here to wash my heavier items for a fee. Then I took a nap and lay low for most of the day.
One of the observations I made in the mathematics classes (courses II and III) last week is that almost all the students struggle with operations involving signed numbers. So I doubt that they have ever been presented with those operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) as represented on the number line. Yes, they've learned the rules that the product of two negative numbers is a positive number and the product of a negative and positive number is negative; however, I doubt that they've seen multiplication of a negative number as a reflection across 0 on the number line, a geometrical approach which helps explain intuitively why these rules are true. So I'm preparing sketches of a series of posters illustrating these rules graphically on the number line. Then I'm going to ask the artists in the classes to draw the posters. I'll give the poster to Sergio and encourage him to use them in class and hang them on the walls of their classes. After returning from Ceiba, my life at ISTM has fallen into the following routine: Breakfast at 6 am, setting up the computer lab 7 am -11 am, lunch at 11:30 am, classes 12:40 pm – 4:50 pm, dinner 5:20 pm, study hall 6 pm – 7 pm. This is a pretty full day and I'm usually pretty tired by the end of it, with little energy left to write. I rarely actually teach during their afternoon classes; the regular teachers do that and I am loath to undermine their authority in any way. Sometimes, I raise a question or provide an explanation or alternate method of solution. My real teaching opportunity is during study hall in the evenings where I get to work with students one-on-one or in a small group at the board. I've worked with Yordi on fractions; Luis and Nestor on exponents, Carlos with addition, multiplication and division of polynomials; Jeferson with solving equations, etc. I also supplement Mike and Val's English teaching. One of the observations I made in the mathematics classes (courses II and III) in the first two weeks is that almost all the students struggle with operations involving signed numbers. So I doubt that they have ever been presented with those operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) as represented on the number line. Yes, they've learned the rules that the product of two negative numbers is a positive number and the product of a negative and positive number is negative; however, I doubt that they've been shown that multiplication of a negative number can be modeled as a reflection across 0 on the number line, a geometrical approach which helps explain intuitively why these rules are true. So I prepared sketches of a series of posters illustrating these rules graphically on the number line. Then I asked student volunteers to draw the posters. I gave the posters to Sergio and encouraged him to use them in class and hang them on the walls of their classes. Similarly, over the course of the following weeks, I prepared posters on the area of parallelograms, triangles and circles, on solving linear equations, on solving quadratic equations and parabolas, and on finding the focus of a parabola. As I audit their science and mathematics courses, I think of new posters to illustrate the topics presented. Not all of my posters have been used in class; they await what Sergio believes is an opportune moment. Our meals nearly always include one of the four Honduran "food groups": beans, rice, eggs and bananas, along with either corn or flour tortillas. The staff does a good job of lovingly preparing these meals and balancing the menu with vegetables, fruit and small portions of meat. In addition, Wednesday's lunch is a treat, because it is the meal when ITSM hosts volunteer teams to El Hogar visiting the school: we usually have fried chicken or fish. In the mornings Mike and I spent time assembling some new PC's and workstations, documenting ITSM's hardware and software inventory, creating separate User and Administrator profiles and re-arranging the computer lab.
This morning I awoke in a melancholy mood. It's Wednesday of my last week of my stay at ITSM. I'm feeling anxious to return home, to see my family, pets and friends in New England, but I'm also feeling a bit blue about leaving the boys and staff in Honduras, knowing that I've accomplished only a small fraction of what I'd like to be able to do. I'm reminded of an interaction earlier in my stay that I had with a volunteer at El Hogar who was visiting ITSM on Wednesday. His name was Mike and he had come several times during earlier years as part of work teams that had built some of the buildings. His teams had assisted in laying the foundations for ITSM's chapel and its dormitory. I congratulated him on those accomplishments as he looked with some pride at the completed buildings. But he turned to me and lamented that he hadn't done more. He pointed out that it had been five years since he had last come to volunteer and he had never stayed longer than a week at a time. "I really admire what you, Mike and Val are doing by volunteering for an extended period of time." "Well, we're retired and we have more discretionary time at this point in our lives," I replied. A little later, as we were strolling to lunch, Mike, the visitor, protested once again that he was sorry that he wasn't doing more. I turned to him and said, "Do you think that Jesus told the boy who had just two loaves and five fishes that he wished that the boy had brought more food to feed the five thousand? No, he gave thanks and God multiplied the boy's offering; so we must pray that God will do the same with our own poor offerings." He looked at me and I thought a look of peace descended on his features. Now it is my turn to be searching for that same peace. In the afternoon math class for Course III, Sergio brought in the balanza poster. He taped it to the board, reviewed it and had the boys make a copy in their notebooks. He then presented an example after another illustrating the concept. Jeffry worked with the other boys in the class and participated actively. Of course, I was very pleased and felt like that boy must have felt at the wonderful work that the Lord had done with his offering. For me, it was a nearly perfect class; the boys all paid attention and participated; Sergio was animated and forceful in his presentation; Stevens (who had drawn the balance scale for the poster) was confirmed in his drawing and the hope I had in designing and presenting the poster was fulfilled. It really doesn't get any better than this. Praise the Lord! "Tomorrow I leave to return to my home in the US. Before I leave, I want to tell you all how much I have enjoyed my stay among you and how much our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed me through knowing you. I leave hoping that I was able to help you learn some mathematics and English. But more importantly, I leave with many memories of fun and loving moments we have shared together. Every morning I have prayed for you. You boys are gifted in Senor Lazaro, your teachers and staff and also in my new friends, Mike and Valerie. Please listen to your teachers and try to learn from them as much as you can. I will continue to pray for you all when I am away. Our Lord Jesus has promised to keep us safe in the embrace of His Love. I leave entrusting you into His Care, El Buen Pastor. Adios, mi amigos. Que vaja bien!" |
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My companions were Amilcar Cabar, pictured here, and Jimmy Cooper. Both men were teachers at Holy Trinity school in Tela: Amilcar teaches culture and history; Jimmy, music. They were both very kind to me and took me under their wing. After breakfast I tried to use the hotel's internet and laundry service, but found out that there was no wireless signal and only one wired computer in the lobby for guests (and it was always in use when I went by), and there was no laundry service for guests either. Remembering my cold shower earlier, I cannot recommend this resort. 
After a spirited worship service and quick lunch, the teachers of St. Mary and I climbed back into the bus for our ride home. Pat wasn't coming back with us, but one of the teachers who spoke very good English, Leslie, sat down in the seat next to me and served as my guardian angel on the long trip home. I was truly blessed by the care given to me by my Honduran companions.