C2017: Día 1

Today went pretty much how I expected it to go: A bit of confusion but ultimately it all worked out. As it always seems to do. We arrived at about 8:45 to get the rooms set up and there were a few campers milling about. A good sign as I always have this nagging fear that no one will show up. And slowly but surely more and more campers began to wander in. Still by about 9:15 we had about half the campers we were expecting. Getting a little nervous as I shouldn't have because in the next 15 minutes a whole crowd showed up so buy 9:30 we had 90 campers with us. Still missing about 25 campers but I figure we will probably see them tomorrow as word gets out that we've started.

Most of the morning was spent talking with the campers about the history of the camp and the new schedule this year and getting to know the campers better. Then in the last hour or so we did a practice run through of the rotating talleres/workshop schedule. And it actually worked. It was slightly problematic that not all of the teachers understood the plan well enough to communicate it to the campers(that one's on me. I just don't quite have the Spanish vocabulary and syntax to explain the plan with enough precision.)  On a side note sometimes my students just stare at me when I'm trying to explain something in Spanish and I have no idea if they actually get what I'm trying to say. But they're smiling a lot so it must be all good.

In any event once we cleared up the confusion the campers were able to figure out where they were supposed to go and we were off and running. Remind me to post a picture of Eric banging on his drum to signify the time to move to a new taller. (Eric saw the drum at La Sirena yesterday and wanted to get it which we did because we couldn't find a bell or a whistle or any other signaling device)

While we were doing all this Samuel and Oscar were hard at work getting the playground project going. I haven't heard all of the details yet about their morning adventures but here's what I do know:

1. For the first hour of the camp the teen leaders helped Oscar clean up the playground and get rid of anything that was broken beyond repair.

2. All the mini palm trees were pruned and now look great.

3. At noon as the camp ended a pickup truck arrived with lots of wood and other supplies and a dump truck arrived with a giant load of small stones. 

Looks like we're off and running with that project as well.  And now we're off to the beach for a bit of relaxation after a hard days work.

C:2017 - Día 0

Lots of preparations today. Turns out 114 campers signed up this year!!! OM freakin G. What are we going to do with all these kids? Not to worry. We added a couple of classrooms and recruited Evan and Nicole to be the teachers. Evan doesn't know this yet but I'm sure he won't freak out at all. And this year the focus will be in the talleres so the teacher will be more like a cruise director, greeting the students, sending them off to their talleres, and then finishing the day with them as they complete their journal entries. (Much like Julie McCoy for you Love Boat fans out there.) 

So today we went to La Sirena for some last minute supplies, organized all the supplies we brought with us or left here last year, formed the six classrooms, assigned the teen leaders to their talleres, etc. things like that. On a personal note I discovered why I had the track all to myself when I went running at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. 

I'll let you know how the first day goes tomorrow ...

Llegamos

About an hour late but we've arrived at Santo Domingo international airport. Frandy, who's like 8 feet tall now, took the kids upstairs to "tomar un jugo" while Tanya and I wait for Luli to arrive. Then we're off to Madre Vieja.  Remind me to tell you the story sometime of how Evan left his carry on in his bedroom and our plan for getting it here by tomorrow.

Getting Ready to Go

OK. I know you have all been eagerly awaiting the results of the poll to choose the name of this year's campamento. Wait no more because the overwhelming choice was ... C2017. Well, that is the choice I wanted anyways and since no one else voted I'm going with it...

C2017 starts in four days and we're all heading down the day after tomorrow. Here's a pic of my state of readiness:

Not too bad. Just a trip to CVS and the bank and I'm ready to go. Not sure I can say the same for the kids. Anyways, we have some changes planned out for the camp this year. We really wanted to get the teen leaders more involved and to get the students more invested in the talleres(workshops). So I had this idea that we should change the structure from classroom based to taller based. We could do this by having a short "home room" at the beginning of the day and then have three periods of talleres instead of just one. Kelli, Tanya, and I worked out a schedule in which we would divide the campers into six groups that would rotate between art, science, and board games/deportes with the teen leaders in charge. Here is what the schedule looks like:

It all makes sense in my super organized, gringo teacher mind. I'm just worried that it doesn't mesh with the "take things how they come and improvise" Dominican pedagogy. I'll keep you posted.

Teen Leader Meeting: June, 2017

OK. Here goes. You ready? First entry for the 2017 Campamento season. First I have to think of a catchy name for this year's version of the camp. The first year, 2010, I don't really think we had a name, it being the first year. Then, the second year we we had Campamento 2.0 and then Campamento 3.0 and finally, last year, changing tacks, we went with Campamento 2016. And by "we" I mean "me" since no one else really cares.  But that's soon to change!!! In the spirit of making this a more communal blog I will give you, my loyal followers, the opportunity to name this year's Campamento. Here are the options:
              A.  Campamento 5.0
              B.  Campamento 2017
              C.  C2017
              D.  Spike
              E.  Other:  __________________
Go ahead and text me your choice by the end of the month (I'm pretty sure all of my followers know my number, which tells you a lot) and I'll wait until then to decide.

In any event, this past Sunday we had an orientation meeting with all the teen leaders. We have one new teen leader this year (Emily) and the rest are returnees. We'll only have seven this year because we thought the 11 we had last year was a bit too much. So, the veteran leaders shared their views of the Campamento experience so that Emily would have an idea about what she's getting herself into. She didn't run away in fright so we must be doing something right. Kelli came by and the kids tried out a bunch of science activities/experiments that we're thinking of using this summer and gave us their feedback. This year's theme is STEAM so we'll be doing lots of engineering, science, and art activities (Probably won't be doing a lot of math so maybe we should change the acronym to STEA or EATS.)

Then we got some feedback from the leaders about the overall structure of the camp. We've been thinking about doing a "reorg" to engage the campers more since they don't seem to do so well with down time. Recreo has been hit or miss: sometimes really engaging and sometimes not so much and snack time is just a distraction. We've been thinking about making el campamento more like a traditional summer day camp with distinct periods in which students would do science, art, PE/games, literacy, etc. So, Tanya, Kelli, and I spent about an hour trying to figure out this structure. As a classroom educator it was amazing to see the different ways that each of us approached this task but I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that at the end of that hour we had a somewhat complicated plan for how this would work. After all this work, my response was, "Although this level of organization is quite appealing to me (and my compulsiveness) there's no way that it fits in with how things work in the DR" (see previous posts for details) To which, Tanya responded, "Well, we'll start with this and then try something else when it doesn't work." Typical and as always practical Dominican response (see previous posts for details).

This is too long. So, that's all for now.

Last Day of Camp

Well, Camp 2016 is in the books. I things ill continúe with the photo jornal style that I started yesterday. Ok?

The day started off with some of the kids making French toast and scrambled eggs for breakfast for the whole bunch of us. 40 eggs and 50 pieces of French toast later and I think maybe they learned how much work it takes Doña Yolanda to feed all of us.

We ended the camp with a presentation to the parents. Here's Tanya welcoming all the parents and reminding the kids that they should help their parents at home.

Here's some of the campers showing what they learned  in the dance workshop.

 We also had the music workshop perform the song they learned.

 A group of boys came into Tanya's room about an hour before the presentation to tell Tanya that they wanted to do an artistic performance at the ceremony because it was a tradition that they do so. Wow! We have traditions now. Really though, a lot of things like this happened today showing how much our little camp means to these kids. Many campers were very sad that the camp was coming to an end.

We spent a lot of time at camp doing experiments and activities focused on wind power. Here we had a paper blowing competition between margarita 3 and margarita 4. The object was to blow the paper from one end of the desks to the other without it falling of the sides. Profe Lilly claims that her margarita 4 won and that she has the video evidence to prove it. We'll see about that (In case you couldn't tell my class was margarita 3). Videos can be faked after all.

Here's Ashley giving out the certificates to her students.

And here we are going home for the final time this year. Lots of emotions coming through right now. I'll have to sort them out as I reflect on this amazing two week experience. I'll get back to you as I go through that debriefing process. 

Oh and one more photo:

In the middle of sports today this dump truck drove through the basketball court and dumped a load of gravel onto the pavement. My initial concern that the camp was going to be too scripted this year and lose some of its spontaneous authenticity clearly was unfounded.

Camp2016: Days 8&9

Those of you who are religiously following this blog should have realized by now that I missed an entry yesterday. You'll soon see why and why I'm a bit tired. I'm thinking of a visual journal today if that's alright with y'all. Here goes:

Yesterday was field trip day at el campamento. Here we are waiting for the bus which was an hour and a half late. No one seemed to mind at all. The campers were too excited to get bent out of shape by this minor inconvenience. Just not the Dominican way. 

See how happy we are all waiting for the bus. Selfies, after all, can be very entertaining.

Here's Dylan with his three charges on the train that took us around the botanical gardens in Santo Domingo. Last year Luc mentioned how much he valued the experience of needing to keep track of the campers while on the field trip so we made sure we did that again. All the kids had a blast. Didn't really matter where we went because this is the only field trip they get to go on ever. Case in point: We gave them a permission slip the night before the field trip and every single camper brought it back to us  the next morning. We also told them that they had to bring their own lunch. One kid told Tanya that he woke up at 6:15 to make his  mangú de plántano himself because his mom had to work early that morning and she wouldn't have time to make it for him.

We took the train as well.

When we got to the one stop where we got off the train one of the caretakers told Felipe that there was a tree with lots of limoncillos. He found Felipe a ladder and up he went. They all thought the fruit was way too sour but I thought they were just right. No accounting for taste.

Here's Camila with her trio. This year we got off the train and told the driver/conductor that we would walk back. So we got much more time to explore (hence the limoncillos adventure). I used to wonder why they had these beautiful gardens that you could only see via train. Turns out all we had to do was ask to get off. There's some sort of life metaphor in there don't you think?

And here we are all 120 of us. Except for me, who's taking the picture. I think we've come a long way from our one classroom of 20 students six years ago.

Here's the gang in Santo Domingo. After the field trip we went into the colonial zone and spent the night. We wanted to create an afternoon filled with history, relaxation, and souvenir shopping. We did the last two but the kids weren't interested in doing any learning. I think next year we'll take all the teen leaders, Dominican and gringo, into the zona colonial on a separate day and do some history with them. In any event, we woke up this morning at 6:30 to make it back to camp on time today (at least on time Dominican style)

Here the leaders are giving out backpacks filled with school supplies to local children. We did this after the camp today. Always a challenge to donate such things while explaining where the funds for the donation came from and why Norteamericanos want to help Dominican children.

The delivery of the goods can get a tad hectic.

Clearly some kids are shy and others not so much.

Here we are distributing sporting equipment (gratefully donated by the Ribatt family) to a local school where Modesto Garces, a friend of the Montas family, works.

And here the Montas women are finally relaxing after dinner. It's been a long and super fun and interesting couple of days. After this afternoon of donations we took all the leaders into San Cristobal for some karaoke. Lots to report about that but no photos for now (curse the lack of memory on these devices). And I'm half asleep and thus off to bed.

  

Camp2016 Day 7

The sun returned today in full force - looks like my sun dance was more powerful than I thought. Which meant that it was laundry day. Otherwise a pretty uneventful day at camp I guess. A couple of things to note. 

* I started my class with a classic group problem solving activity. I took 6 jump ropes and tangled them all up. Then each student grabbed a handle of one of the jump ropes and the kids had to work together to untangle the ropes. They accomplished this task pretty quickly because I forgot to tell them that they couldn't let go of their rope. Oops. So I told them this all important rule and they tried again. This second time they also completed the task quickly because most of them just ignored the rule I had just told them. Then I tried one more time to convince them that this was all very easy if they cheated and only worth the effort if they followed the rule. Their third attempt went better. Most of the kids followed the rules and they were working together nicely until one girl gave up and just left the game, thus making it pretty easy for the rest of the class to finish. The students definitely need to work on their perseverance.

* During Los talleres I noticed that a few kids weren't participating in sports.  When I asked them why they said they were hot and tired from recreation. Fair point. So I brought out Blokus and played the game with them for half an hour. It took awhile for me to effectively explain the rules (which is really hard for me) but once they understood they loved it. It was such an oasis of 30 minutes - especially for a board game lover such as myself. 

The hilight of the day was definitely the afternoon activity that we did with the gringo and Dominican teen leaders. Right after lunch and laundry we all boarded a bus and went in to Santo Domingo to visit Tres Ojos - a series of underground lakes - and then to the malecón for ice cream. Not sure which the kids like better. The best part of the day for me was seeing how integrated all the teen leaders were. Thanks to Ashley and Rossi for that. They had observed that the teen leaders weren't integrating as well as they had last year and suggested that we take matters into our own hands. So they assigned seats on the bus so that Dominicans and gringos were sitting together. Then while they were eating ice cream they designed an ice breaker game for all the kids to play. We need to do this bonding activity much earlier next year and definitely put the Dominican leaders in charge. Both Ashley and Rossi and another Dominican teaching assistant named Thania are really stepping up and helping out so much this year. They really get what we are trying to accomplish. I am very hopeful that these girls will be able to take over the camp one of these days. Which is exactly what we want to happen. This whole project should become part of the community here with us just providing the funds. 

One final note, as I'm writing this the kids are putting school supplies in backpacks to give to local kids (the country requires every student to have a backpack and uniform to attend school but doesn't provide any funds for the people to buy those things). I mention this because it has been quite a scene watching 11 teenagers try to accomplish this task. So far lots of different ideas about how to accomplish this task and no fisticuffs as yet. All is good.

Here's me trying to convince Robinson and Sandy to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Camp2016 Day 6: Singing in the Rain

Well maybe not singng exactly but surely lots of rain. As we left for camp this morning it began to drizzle and by the time we got there it was already raining pretty hard. And it's still raining now, eight hours later. There were times this morning when it was coming down hard, I mean really hard. One of my students used the word "diluvio" or flood. I'd make some joke about seeing pairs of animals walking down the street heading to the river but that would be kinda lame.

In any event, the rain put a bit of a damper (Ja Ja Ja) on our plans but, as you know, we're pretty accustomed to making adjustments so we just went with the flow. In fact the whole day was very loosely planned from the get go because we had a speaker coming and I didn't really know what he was going to talk about. His name is Licensiado Modesto Garces and he is a Phys Ed teacher at a local school. Last night Tanya told me that he was getting his Doctorate in that field and was going to talk about something related to his studies; something about personal responsibility and community. So I figured I would talk to my students about community leaders, hear Modesto speak and then do something related to what he had to say. Worked out pretty well. He spoke about various competencies ("competencias" that I at first thought were "competitions" until I understood what he was talking about) that students needed to demonstrate such as science and technology, communication, critical and logical reasoning, problem solving and personal and spiritual growth. Sounds a lot like what we talk about at school back home with a slightly religious underpinning. (There's  always some sort of religious bent to everything educational here. Makes me value even more the separation of church and state that we have in the US.) It was a very progressive and well thought out presentation. 

Didn't really fit into the "community" theme that I had spoke of though so I brought my students back to the room and  tasked them with drawing a picture that was related somehow to one of the competencies. Seemed to go pretty well. We then had to have indoor recreation and cancelled los talleres because the students couldn't even move between classes without getting soaked and, by the way, the electricity was out which would have made the art taller especially challenging. But we managed to find some reindeer games for the kids to burn off their built up energy. Definitely praying for sun for tomorrow (I even did a little sun dance, much to the delight - or more 

Ikely embarrassment - of my children).

The other issue was that today was supposed to be laundry day but it's hard to get clothes to dry in the sun while it's pouring out. So, the kids will have to wear some dirty clothes until tomorrow (assuming my little sun dance does the trick). In the mean time we set up an art activity to do with them. When we were away this weekend (at our super secret hideaway) Tanya spotted an Higuero tree. The fruit of this tree is a large cantaloupe sized oval with a hard shell and a soft, pliable flesh. Tanya told me that her parents used to scoop out the flesh and use the gourds as bowls and storage containers. In fact, this practice dates back to the Tainos, the local indigenous people that were basically wiped out by the Spaniards, who used to decorate the gourds as well by creating a design on the exterior with a sharp stick. So, we bought a bunch of the Higuero fruits, brought them home with us, and had the kids make their own gourds.  Most of the kids got into it, though I think many of them were wishing that they could take a selfie with their gourd and post it on Facebook, for all their virtual friends to see.

Camp2016: Day 5

Sorry for the delay in reporting about day 5. It's just that as soon as camp ended on Friday we hustled back to the Montas compound, wolfed down la comida, boarded the bus and headed to the beach for the weekend. Five hours later we arrived at the house we had rented for the weekend. As soon as we arrived we got changed and headed to Playita, a small beach about a 15 minute walk from the house. Here is a picture of Evan and Frandy at the beach:

We had wonderful adventures all weekend as the kids got to see what a local beach community looks like in the DR. I can't really give more details of the town we were in because it is one of the few unspoiled and really undiscovered places in the DR and I don't want that ever to change. Every year we go there are new restaurants and other signs of modernization and I'm doing my best to slow down progress so that when Tanya and I retire here it will still be as pristine as it is today. You may think I'm joking, which would be a logical conclusion given the general tone of my blog entries, but I'm definitely almost being serious. We have it all worked out. Three months in Stowe for ski season and then nine months here. If only our kids didn't want to go to college we could probably make the move right now. Here's a peak of the beach just so that you get a sense of what I'm talking about: