Cristina and I were lucky enough to have "Field Based Training" come visit us for an entire week.

....Ok so we begged since the moment we arrived at site to have the trainees lol but we got our wish and had 9 trainees come to Olintepeque to see just what it's like when theory and training meet real life in Guatemala. It was an exhausting (and I do mean exhausting) week full of workshops, trainings and meetings with parents, schools already certified in our program and schools still working to acheive certification.

The workshop started out with the teachers doing a short skit about things their students do that drive them crazy. As you can see here, this student is standing on their desk throwing papers at his classmates. Although it was a dramatization, it was certainly not an exaggeration.

We designed this workshop, entitled "Classroom Management", to teach teachers how to manage their students and activities so as to maximize the 4 hours the students spend in school (from 8-12:30 -minus the half hour lost when students arrive at 8:30 - with about 45 minutes to an hour for snack and recess ).

The teachers did a great job on their skits and it was a great way to start the day with something fun and show why the workshop was necessary.


As "practice what you preach or model what you teach", we treated the teachers like they were our students in our classroom. One way to track good behavior was by putting candy or marbles (the little boys LOVE marbles) in a jar for every person who participated or had a great comment or did an activity well and according to the rules (for example without talking). We also removed candies or marblees from teachers who arrived late from snack, who were chatting or if a cell phone rang.

As another way to illustrate how one can develop a discipline system (as in the vast majority of classrooms the teach will say empty threats that they have no intention of carryin out)-we used a volunteer from Cantel's soccer "yellow card, red card" system. If someone was talking to their neighbor, or answered a cell phone, or left to answer a cell phone, or was reading a magazine (it's hard for us to imagine that someone would wip out a newspaper and start reading during a workshop but it happens regularly!)---they would get a yellow card. Another offense warrented another yellow card and finally a red card, after which disciplinary action was taken (for teachers in the form of not receiving their diploma).

Here's a picture of my work partner, Cristina, and I in front of a few posters the trainees made to help them facilite their part of the workshop.

Due to a series of events that lead to the taller we had planned for our 260 teachers falling apart just days before the training events, we gave the presentation to the teachers of "magesterio". Magesterio is the school that aspiring teachers must attend to get their liscense/certification to teach. It was great because we were teaching teachers of teachers! They could either use the classroom management directly in their classes or present the info they recived to their students. They staff of this particular magesterio were extremely participatory and well behaved! We enjoyed working with them and will continue to do so in the future.

After the final session, the teachers broke into groups and played Jeopardy for a prize. They were extremely "pilas" or they knew their stuff!! They didnt' talk when we were presenting and took some notes and made plenty of comments! (sometimes with less "pilas" teachers it's hard to get them to comment or say that they disagree or that they have other ideas that compliment the ideas presented.)

Here's a picture of the diplomas that they received for participating in the workshop.Diplomas are of the utmost importance here. One makes their resume by compiling diplomas to show what they have done in their career.

Finally, to celebrate being doing with a stressful workshop that took waaaaaay too much planning : 0), we went out for Indian food. It was AMAZING!!