Weekly Internship Post 6

Internship Post for week of 15-18 April

FEVI/ Muñequitos de Lumbisí

Another day at FEVI, on Wednesday I was sent on a mission to buy a sheet of paper with fish pictures to cut out and pass out to the children so they can learn the concept of the water cycle and the fish in the sea.

Although its been almost 5 months since I have come to Ecuador, I still have some issues with miscommunications. This time Profe Jaime told me to¨va arriba para comprar papeles lamines,¨ meaning ¨go up to buy laminated(?) paper," and handed me 15 cents. So I literally went upstairs to the FEVI classroom and asked the profe there if I can buy laminated paper there, which I thought was kind of weird paying another teacher for materials, but since that's what Profe Jaime told me to do, that's what I asked for. She looked at me as if I was asking her something really strange and asked me to repeat the question. I asked her again and she gave me that same face. Not knowing what to do, I just told her that I would go ask Profe Jaime again. So I went downstairs and what I see is Profe Jaime waiting for me at the gate with the keys. --Then I realized that he wanted me to go out of the FEVI foundation building and go up the hill to buy laminated paper at the store (it made sense when I thought over it a bit). I felt a bit embarassed -not that I should- and just pretended like nothing happened and just asked him for the directions and went up to go find the store.

But of course, as Daniel mentioned before, people in Ecuador don't really know how to give directions. I followed towards the direction where Profe told me to go and found nothing. So I went around tienditas to ask the señoras whether they knew where Papeleria Cuñes was. And, as expected, every single one of them did not fail to tell me completely different things. Eventually I found it and bought the fish pictures paper and went back to FEVI.

We did an activity where we cut out around a fish-bowl (drawn on a paper), glued a clear-blue paper behind the cut-out-fish-bowl and pasted on a fish in this water in the fish-bowl. While they did this activity, Profe Jenny taught them a knew song about two fish in the sea, one small, swimming down to the bottom and finding a shark waiting to eat him. The song itself was very simple and easy to memorize, but I still find myself amazed seeing the kids being able to memorize the lyrics and hand-gestures and melody so quickly. And at the same time, I find it still difficult to memorize the lyrics even though the song only consists of simple words that I definitely know.

Then I realized that I also learned alot of songs in elementary school about different things, and to this day I still remember many of them. I still remember the melodies and lyrics to the name-the-US-states-song as well as the US-preamble song (not something I would memorize if it weren't for the song for sure).

Something about music (the sound, melody and words that go along with it) really sticks to your mind. Even if its not a song, it helps to study for tests (like vocab) if you actually pronounce it out and keep repeating it. So there's clearly a connection with your brain and speaking things out loud with memorization.
Which leads me to think of the difficulties of learning things and memorizing them when you're deaf. I'm sure there are different ways to learn things and put them into the long-term memory as it is mentioned in Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. But I also wonder what the affects of being deaf are in your learning. What other ways are there to really learn something thoroughly? How do you teach something you're so used to having in life?

CENVIDA
I got to CENVIDA on Thursday without Rosita there again. Coming here always makes me realize the difference between this school and FEVI. The amount of resources is clearly different but what really surprises me is how disorganized and laid-back (unprofessional?) the staff are. There are as many (or as little) profesores as FEVI, and sooo much less kids. It is clearly harder to deal with children that cannot hear, but I sometimes wonder how the profes at FEVI would deal with the kids at CEVIDA, and vice versa.

As before, I imagined Rosita will arrive late and she would just take over later on. However, it ended up that she did not show up at all the whole time I was there. Thank goodness they have karate on Tuesdays and Thursdays since I don't think I could've held their attention for four hours. Speaking of attention, it may help to try out the activity-play-activity-play strategy that Profe Jaime uses but I also wonder whether that is good for the kids at CENVIDA at the same time. The issue here is that there is such a  huge age difference within the classroom. It could also definitely be a positive aspect but when it comes to teaching, I feel like it sometimes takes away from the amount of things that each individual could be learning when they are placed in a setting so many different levels of knowledge and capacities.

At around 9:30am, I started losing their attention (only after about an hour and a half) to the point where they just would not listen to me what ever I said. This is when I raised my voice to the first time to Yamileth. She seemed to understand that I was unhappy and sat down but after a few minutes started to get out of control once again. I guess that's how kids are, but I really find it amazing that the profe for the middle-age group always has her students under control. She definitely intimidates me but it's also a skill that she is able to handle her students well. Rather, Rosita astounds me from the way she is able to stay calm and happy but also handle the students very well at the same time (especially Yamileth).

The complimenting technique definitely works (mostly) for the FEVI ositos kids, but definitely not as well with the CENVIDA. I wonder whether it has to do with them being able to hear the pitch of my voice.