The San Lucas Toliman mission school in Guatemala is a special project for us. San Lucas is a town of about 17,000 people on the southern shore of Lake Atitlan. Over eighty percent indigenous, the hard working people of the community suffer the process of poverty. After hearing the expressed felt need of the teachers of the mission school, let me tell you how we got involved.
In 2004 my daughter, Elizabeth, asked me if I would accompany her on a peace studies college volunteer trip. The class helped build a community building in a tiny village up the mountain from San Lucas Toliman. Since I was not very strong for building, I was into the school down the road and lent a hand. Two years later my husband, Jack, returned with me on another school trip. After Jack fell in love with the people too, we started returning two or three times a year.
Over the years we have volunteered anywhere we were needed. We have done grunt work for dentists and physicians in the villages, hauled dirt for playgrounds, painted school walls, helped pick coffee, and lots of other jobs. However, the mission school has drawn my attention over and over.
Guatemala has the second worst educational track record of Latin America. Haiti is the only country that is worse. When I visited the schools, there were no books, no teaching posters, maps, or anything from which to teach. The teachers taught from very old teacher manuals by writing information on the board while the children copied into notebooks. A donated copy machine helped the teachers supplement their lessons. The children would get thirty minutes a week in the small school library but could never check out a book for fear of theft.
So early on, Jack and I began hauling books in Spanish in our luggage in order to set up tiny classroom libraries in the mission school. Each trip we would take less of our own stuff so that we could fit in more books for the classrooms.
In time my involvement in the school leaned more toward early childhood as the teachers expressed interest in teaching four-year-olds for the first time. As the school began converting a storage building into a large Montessori classroom, another volunteer Montessori teacher from North Dakota and I began training the indigenous teachers. We raised funds for the Montessori equipment and hauled them down to Guatemala in our luggage.
The classroom opened in January of 2010 with a huge dedication ceremony. The school is progressing very well. I continue to return two or three times a year to help out and offer more training on more advanced Montessori materials.
