Camp 3.0 Día 7:Doña Chucha

So... I usually don't like to share too many details of the day to day activities of the camp because I actually want people to read the blog but I've got lots to say so bear with me here. Yesterday ( cause it's actually Wednesday -- another reason I have lots to say) was quite a day. It's really been my favorite camp day in the past, the day that Anin (Maria Victoria Carreño) comes to teach the campers about poetry. She wrote this poem on the board:

                Ayer las estrellas se acostaron sin cenar

                Y el sol tenia un nudo en la garganta

And then she explained how she wrote it the day of the earthquake in Haiti as a way to express her emotions as she thought about the children of Haiti, going to sleep hungry that evening and the whole world unable to do anything to help. She explained imagery and then had the kids write poems about the same theme using their own imagery. Such a well-structured and powerful lesson. Even my group, usually , shall we say, rather energetic, was captivated.

Later in the afternoon we all went over to La Escuela Doña Chucha, a local school and did some real life service learning. We had shipped down (remember all those boxes?) tons of school supplies that Tanya had got at Savers and yard sales and from donations. So we had the leaders organize all those supplies, as well as the books we sent down, for the kindergarten class at the school. At the same time, the leaders built a garden for the school. That's right ... A real live garden. I think the pictures would really tell the story here:

Campamento 3.0 día 6

This first day of week two was certainly full of excitement. The theme of the day was water (as we moved from personal health to the health of the community) and Kelly led the campers through an experiment testing water samples from the river, the faucet, and from a bottle for E. coli and other bacteria. The kids really got into it -- probably the first time they'd done any type of experiment at all I would imagine.

But the real experiment came from the Easter egg hunt. I'm not exactly sure what this activity has to do with our camp ( I overheard tanya telling her campers that we brought the teen leaders with us to learn about Dominican culture and this was a chance for them to learn something about US culture - even though almost all of the teen leaders are Jewish) but we've done this activity both times that we've run the camp and the kids love it. In any event, from my room I saw Tanya's group heading out first to look for the plastic eggs that the teen leaders had filled with chocolate and hidden I earlier in the day. A few minutes later one of her teen leaders called me into Tanya's room. I followed her in and she told me that an ant was stuck in the eye of one of her campers. What?! Maybe I didn't here her right. But then I looked down at the desk at which the girl was sitting and it was swarming with ants attacking a melted piece of chocolate. Ay at ay.. Qué revolú! Have you ever tried to get an ant out of a child's eye? I certainly haven't and really had no idea how to go about it. So, I took stock of the situation and decided that my best course of action was to focus my attention on the ants that were now spreading to other desks and other pieces of melted chocolate and to call my wife in to provide medical assistance for the girl ( she did want to be a nurse once upon a time) Fifteen minutes later tanya was successful at removing the offending ant and the girl was fine.

But then we checked all of the eggs as the students returned with them and most of them were filled with ants and melted chocolate. I guess an Easter egg hunt in the middle of summer in a tropical climate was not such a good idea after all. Ah well. We called all the kids in and gave them other chocolates that we had saved for just such circumstances and they were happy. Another fun and exciting day at Campamento las margaritas.

The water testing experiment:

Charlie's drawing lesson:

Making bird houses in el taller de arte:

Campamento LM: Día 5

Hard to believe that the first week of camp is in the books. Really it couldn't have gone any better. When we started this camp five years ago it was our goal to expand at some point so that we could help more kids because it was hard for me to believe that a 2 week camp every other year with twenty students would make any difference whatsoever. And now every day I look at all the campers and teen leaders milling about and wonder ... How the $&@?!&$ did this happen? When it comes down to it I  think it began when Sophie and Lydia (the Paris primos) expressed interest in coming down with us. That was all the impetus my wonderfully energetic and creative wife needed to imagine what the program could become. At the same time Samuel and Nelly pushed us to become an official non-profit organization and took care of all the paperwork to make that happen. So with the means to gather funds we were able to put into place Tanya's vision. And here we are...

I have to fess up to the fact hat one reason we began the camp was a very selfish one. We wanted to find a way for our own kids to become connected with Dominican kids. Although our kids participated in the camp that we created they didn't really interact with the other campers... until this year. I've been amazed at how much the gringos and Dominicanos have been hanging out together. I've already spoken of the leadership of the Dominican teen leaders but today the gringos stepped up especially in the taller de arte. All the teens led the campers in various art activities but it was especially moving (to me anyways) to watch Evan (our Evan) explain in Spanish how to do origami. Did I mention that it was in Spanish? 

Alright, that's all I got. We're heading up into the mountains for a weekend camping trip and then three more teenagers are coming down on Sunday. We'll see what next week brings.

CM 3.0: Day 4...La lección de las Abejas

So have I really been Dominicanized? Today was a true test. The plan for the day was to learn about bees from Tio Thomas (Tanya's uncle, who had brought one of his bee colonies down from Cambita for the camp). We started the day with a KWL (know-want to know-learned) to prepare the campers for the bee lesson. As we were finishing that up tanya informed me that Thomas would be late so we had Charlie, Jacob and Evan teach each class how to draw a bee. But... Half way through that we were told that Tio Thomas had arrived. Back to the original plan it was (as yoda might say) so we all marched over to doña Yolanda's - our home base - where Thomas was waiting with his bees. At this point we only had 20 minutes left for the activity. Thomas began by seeing what the campers knew about bees and what questions they might have. Apparently our prep activity was pretty successful because the campers jumped right in with all sorts of question and ideas. Then Thomas showed the campers the bees but they only could see them in groups of 10, so 20 minutes became 40 minutes which meant that we didn't have time for Los talleres today. 

'Twas quite a hectic and ever changing day and it sounds like a mess right? But in the midst of all this the students learned a lot about bees and got to see up close and personal a real and functioning bee colony. As well, we talked about how bee colonies relate to the ideas of community and cooperation-- the two themes that we had previously discussed. So, at the end of the day it all worked out. And throughout it all I was my newly created calm cool Dominican self. For real mom.

Camp 3.0: Day 3

So, if I were asked to state the goal of el campamento (which I have been on many occasions) I would say that it is to empower the children of San Cristobal to be agents of change. Based on what I saw from the Dominican teen leaders today I would say that we have most definitely made some progress towards this goal (I actually think that we've had quite an effect in this area, but my overall humility prevents me from saying so). For example...

At recess Ashley (Dominican teen leader extraordinaire) led about half the campers in a sack race. I realize that that doesn't sound like such a big deal but tanya and I have tried and completely failed to organize recess for five years. I vividly recall our first recess years ago in which we tried to get a soccer game going. It lasted about three minutes before one team "perhaps" scored a goal and the game devolved into a giant argument. For the most part "recreo" hasn't really ever been much better than that. But this year has been different and today was stupendous. It looked like this:

And like this:

Then, after recess the teen leaders divided into groups to run three workshops: Art, music theatre, and dance. They were all really good. I spent a lot of time watching the dancers work through a choreography that the leaders put together last night. Loraine (previously mentioned as yini - her first name) is shown below leading the group. This wiped Loraine out so much so that she basically fell asleep later that day at the beach (more on that trip soon)

Taller de arte:

Taller de musica y teatro:

So... There you have it. These teen leaders, many of whom attended the camp in past versions, have blossomed into the leaders we hoped they would become and are taking over the camp. 

Another of the goals of the camp was for the gringo and Dominican leaders to make real connections. T form their own community as it were. Miraculously, considering the communication challenges, this seems to be happening as well. We all spent the afternoon at the beach. Hmmm... I took about a hundred pictures with my "real" camera. Let me work on getting the pictures here............Okay took a bit of work but here you go:

Well, you can probably guess the work around that I used. Pretty creative huh? Suffice it to say that a good time was had by all

Campamento 3.0: Day 2

Gary, I hope you're reading this. The theme for today was "community". As I do often in my math classes, I decided to divide the class into groups of 3 to talk about their community, it's leaders, the responsibilities of the members of the community, how to improve the community etc. So I had the students count off by sixes and I then pointed out where each group would meet and told the students to move to those areas...no one moved. Silence. And then the students just started talking to their neighbors about the community. So I asked a student what was his number and he had no idea. I asked another student and she had no idea.  

It was then that it dawned on me that they had never worked in groups like I wanted them to. Or at least they hadn't been divided into groups like that. You know I've been doing this long enough you would think that I could've anticipated this development -- especially after claiming yesterday that I have been dominicanized -- but I guess not. These little differences in the educational experiences of gringos and Dominicanos keep on popping up when I least expect them to. The teachers just don't put kids in groups here to learn. It's as simple as that. On the other hand maybe I just don't speak Spanish all that well.

In any event, I'm not easily deterred from my plans so we counted off again and I worked harder to explain what I wanted the kids to do and it all worked out. We even did some pair shares and some wait time work; pretty advanced stuff but manageable once I learned that I needed to be precise and explicit in explaining what I wanted to happen. Again, after teaching for 22 years you would think that I would already know this.

Here's what one group wrote about community:

Students working on their journals:

Doña Yolanda talking with the campers about community organizing:

Campamento 3.0: Day One

Day one is in the books and was a great success. We arrived more or less at 9:00 (well some of us did.   Our teen helpers were hanging out upstairs unbeknownst to us as we thought that they had already headed over to the school.) and there they were ... A lhorde of campers waiting for us -- which was a relief because we're never quite sure if they will show up. The problem was that there was only one room ready for us so we had to squeeze into that one room while the others were being.cleaned. Here they all are:

No worries. Yini -- one of the teen leaders, and a future teacher if I ever saw one -- took over, taking roll and organizing the distribution of the camp t-shirts with Carmen . By then the rooms were ready so we divided up the kids and got to work:

For me the hi light of the day was recreo(recreation). One group of younger boys got together and played baseball using their palm as a bat and a pair of rolled up socks as the ball. But I truly realized we had done something good when I saw that Camila, Eric, and Jacob had joined the giant game of banderita that was being organized:

I feel like in the past I have shared my gringo observations of a Dominican camp but today my observations are more directed at myself. Basically, after 17 years married to una Dominicana I think I have at long last become Domicanized. In the past I would've become a tad flustered when our plans didn't go off as expected. But today, it was like water off a duck's back (I was going to use the expression "cool as a cucumber so I could contrast that with the oppressive heat but decided that that expression didn't fit as well) I just laid back and waited for things to work out as they always tend to do ... eventually. We'll see if my cool, calm, collected new self (don't laugh tanya) lasts the two weeks. I'll keep you posted.

Hemos llegado!

I'm always amazed by plane travel. As I was skyping with tanya last night from my air conditioned house in Brookline the DR seemed so far away. And now we are here with an occasional breeze to cool us down and Brookline is a distant memory. Or something like that. Today's travels went very smoothly by the way. The only incident occurred at security in Boston. I went through first without incident, grabbed my bag and then looked around to make sure the kids were all set. But I noticed a TSA agent going through their bags. I wasn't sure exactly what was going on until one after another giant bottles of sunblock, bug spray, shampoo, and toothpaste was pulled out and then sacrificed to the travel gods.  Oops!  After that smooth sailing. I put the kids in charge of getting us to our various departure gates and filling out their own immigration forms and they did great (once we figured out the difference between port of embarkation and port of disembarkation of course)

And here we are... Tanya and I just planned out the details for tomorrow's opening day of camp. What I mean to say is that we reviewed the plan that we wrote out months ago. (Ahem). Here's the plan:

  This is pretty much how I plan out all my lessons

T minus Two...

T minus two days until Campamento 3.0.  Got my alarms (yes, I have two alarms set; one on my clock and one on my phone. You got a problem with that?) set for 4:00 am. Flight leaves at 7:00.  OK. I admit it I have compulsive tendencies but the one time I was laid back about getting to the airport early --- for my trip to Park City this winter --- we got stuck in traffic on Storrow Drive and I nearly missed my plane. I know what you were thinking ... that I was going to say that I actually missed my plane right? Nope. The travel gods were with me and there was no one in line at security.  Still, it was very tense.

In any event, let's go back to talking about the camp shall we?  Looks like we've got 75 campers (oh my gosh, what are we going to do with them all?) and eleven Dominican teen leaders to go with the 10 gringo teen leaders that I mentioned in the last post. Not that I've had anything to do with the planning this week but a little birdie (that would be my wife) told me that the camp schedule, meal plan and cultural enrichment activities are all set.  So, we're ready for lift off.  I don't think this much planning went into the first moon landing.  See you in the DR!!!

Getting ready

T minus 12 days until campamento las margaritas3.0. Tanya bought all these snacks for the camp and is under the impression that they are going to fit in that red suitcase. But I have travelled to many places with my lovely bride and her packing prowess never ceases to amaze me so I have no doubt that she will be successful in this particular challenge.

In any event... In about a week and a half we will be running a camp for 60 Dominican kids led by tanya, myself, luli, 10 American teen volunteers and 10 Dominican teen volunteers. Sshouldn't be a problem.