Hello,
I'm helping a USA nonprofit charity that plans to build a
residential school in Guatemala. The school will shelter, feed, and
educate a thousand street children. Apparently there are 20,000
distressed children in that country who still don't have anyone to
turn to for help. Private schools are urgently needed.
The charity is looking for ideas about how to best start up the
school and teach the kids English. The children speak a mix of
Spanish and Maya dialects at present.
I thought there might be some readers in this forum who would be
interested in helping provide ideas and maybe influence the
direction this school will take - they're planning to expand from
Guatemala if the first school there is successful.
They'll also be needing lots of volunteers when the school opens -
this may be a good excuse for a sabbatical
Guatemala is a
beautiful country, the highlands are known as "The Land of Etenal
Spring."
I'm copying below the announcement introducing the charity's
bulletin board forum titled "SunSpring Schools."
Experienced educators are invited to participate in the forum.
*****************************
SunSpring Island Schools Guatemala is planning to build a
residential school and community in Guatemala for one thousand
abandoned or otherwise distressed children ages six through sixteen.
SunSpring commits to shelter, feed, care for, and educate each of
these children until their 18th birthday.
After the physical facilities are built (we call them "SunSpring
Islands"), we will start receiving one thousand children from
various government bodies, courts, and NGO's. During that time,
which may take several months, we want to intensively teach the
children conversational English so when their SunSpring School opens
they can be taught by volunteers from the USA and Canada. We may at
this time also be able to introduce them to computer and internet
skills and learning, perhaps as a motivation to learn English
quickly.
How can we best teach a thousand probably scared and sensitive
Guatemalan children how to speak English?
Before the school opens, our healthcare and education people will
assess each child and although we'll try to avoid labels and rigid
streaming in the school, we may be able to prepare programs and
curricula that are specialized to meet group needs. If we identify
groups early on in our intake we may still be able to physically
design the school and its furnishings to best accommodate what we'll
need.
Guatemala is a third world country and SunSpring is a private school
so we shouldn't need to be concerned much about government
regulations or unions demanding a certain number of teachers per
child etc. when we are doing our planning - let's reinvent the
school we always wanted! Alternative and experimental teaching
methods will be encouraged, volunteer teachers will always
predominate.
We're hoping that eventually some progressive USA and Canada
university faculties of education will send us volunteer students on
practicum's who may concurrently have research assignments from
their advisors. We want to do the very best we can for the children,
and prepare to do better in the future.
There may not be a lot of emphasis on liberal arts, but we may find
some budding poets and philosophers amongst our kids. The everyday
focus will be on preparing each child for employment and/or
entrepreneurship when they graduate. Liberal arts may have to wait
for the next generation - some of these kids are literally being
rescued from a daily search to find life-sustaining scraps of food
in a city garbage dump! Each night must be an eternity for those
little ones as they hide in dark shadows hoping nobody will notice
that they exist and take advantage of them.
These kids urgently need our help! As well as helping plan the
school, please personally subscribe to our email newsletter to keep
up-to-date with what we're doing, and to help grow our grassroots
and capacities to fulfill.
http://www.orphanislands.org It is my belief that there are hundreds of thousands of good people
in the USA and Canada who would help if they knew the extent of the
problem, and if they only knew what to do. I feel it my mission to
let these people know about the problem, and to show them on this
website how easy it now is to stretch out their hand and lift the
kids up forever.
Once they have English, there is such potential for these children
to interact with and mutually enrich the lives of children in
distant lands! Guatemala is in the same time zone as much of the USA
and Canada. Creative teachers doing a history or geography or
whatever module on Central America, working with willing
administrators, could set up a time when their students and students
from SunSpring Island Schools could interact with each other via
live internet video conferencing. Just imagine how far the street
kids of Guatemala would have come, and what rich lessons of
compassion and sharing they would have to teach the comparatively
sheltered middle class students of North America.
Can you catch this vision? Will you spread the word and help make it
happen?
Keep in mind in your deliberations and discussions that many of
these children will have come from repeated abusive situations, so
we may need to gain a relationship of trust over the first year of
two rather than suddenly thrusting them into a traditional academic
environment. Plan to be as gentle and kind with their bodies and
minds as you can while we prepare their brains to accept a formal
education and lifelong learning.
Please post in this bulletin board forum your questions, ideas,
comments, and suggestions regarding the above, and your responses to
those of others. And also pass along the message that we exist and
that we are planning a massive response to a massive problem. I know
this can snowball from the grassroots up if enough people get
involved - even school children in the USA and Canada can help.
Thousands of abandoned children in Latin America are waiting for us -
let's roll then shall we?
http://www.orphanislands.orgI thank you for your valuable participation in advance and look
forward to reading what you have to say about the startup and
operation of SunSpring Island Schools, starting in Guatemala.
Please copy and post or publish this announcement in other pertinent
places on and off the web - the children need all the help they can
get. It is my opinion that getting more and more people to this
website is the best way to get our message out and to build that
essential grassroots support needed to carry this to other countries
where children are also anxiously waiting.
Don't you agree that contact with the students in SunSpring Island
Schools could greatly enrich your own students of whatever age,
including student teachers?
Would you like to have a thousand children ages 6 to 16 available to
research and prove the best computer assisted learning and
educational internet video conferencing ideas with? Is funding
available to help set up such an opportunity for your school or
college?
You can help make this happen!
You are invited to read our website and contribute to our bulletin
board discussions and the planning and development of SunSpring
Island Schools Guatemala.
http://www.orphanislands.org AOL Link to SunSpring Island
Schools Guatemala ****************************
You can access the charity's website and the bulletin board forum
at:
http://www.orphanislands.org Thanks for reading this, I hope you will help.
Enjoy the day - and think about that sabbatical
(Please copy and post this entire message, including this line, on
other relevant forums and lists. This is a unique opportunity for
thousands of caring people to significantly and permanently enrich
the lives of children who are today living on city streets and
eating at garbage dumps.)
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