Twice a week, I help teach a math and literacy class at El Farito. Our goal for the class is to augment what students are learning in school and help them to succeed and advance, and we do this in two ways: by providing our own lessons and exercises, and by helping them with the homework that they are assigned in school. I usually work with middle schoolers, but a few weeks ago had the chance to work with Maria, an 8 year old girl who is in 1st grade.
Maria can barely read or write - she can sound out words syllable by syllable most of the time, and is able to write most of the letters of the alphabet without help. Maria's homework on that Monday was to write a short story. We started out by brainstorming a topic for her story, and concluded that it would be about a tiger. I asked her questions as we went along - what's the tiger's name? Where does he live? What does he do in the story? It took prompting, but Maria came up with her story and we set about writing it.
Too often, I see parents or older siblings just doing assignments like this for kids. They assume that the child isn't capable of doing the work, and so they do it for them. This is harmful for two reasons, the obvious of which is that the kid never actually learns what she or he is supposed to from the assignment. The other reason, which I would argue is the more harmful of the two, is that the child is told that they aren't smart enough to do the assignment, to learn the material, and to do well in school. When a child is told this enough by their family, either directly or indirectly, they inevitable believe it as well.
It took Maria and I about 45 minutes to write her one-paragraph short story, and we had to sound it out syllable by syllable. Occasionally, I would have to write down a letter on a different piece of paper to show her how to write it. I had to continually remind her to put spaces between words. But when all was said and done, SHE had written a story - SHE had done her homework. No one else had done it for her, and no one had doubted that she could do it herself. As I gave her a high five and told her how good of a job she did, the pride on her face was amazing to see.
Development work can be hard. There are a lot of times where you don't see tangible results and it is easy to get disheartened. One key to my happiness this year has been to focus on the little victories and on the small moments. The funny thing is that when I do that, the "little" victories don't seem as little anymore. All Maria and I did was write five sentences about a tiger, but two weeks later I can still see her proud smile when we finished, and it embodies all the reasons why I wanted to spend this year with Manna: the ability to form relationships with community members and the ability to do my little part to help them in whatever ways I can.
I have seven more weeks in Nicaragua before my year is over and I head back to Houston. When I look back on the year, what sticks in my head are the little moments like this. I have no illusions that I have changed the world through my work this past year, and that was never my goal. But I can look at the year and at the little moments and be proud of the impact that I have had, in small ways, on individual people. At one point, I had a bucket list for the remainder of the year, of places I wanted to visit and things I wanted to do before leaving Nicaragua. I've thrown it out the window, and I really only have one goal for the next seven weeks: recognize and cherish the small moments I'm given to impact the people I work with and to let them impact me. If I can do that, I will truly have no regrets when I pack my bags and say goodbye in mid-June.
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