First meeting of teacher Compadres group

We met as a group for the first time yesterday. The group is looking at a very different trip this year. We will be spending most of our time in San Jose Las Flores and we will be living with local families - this is a real departure from what we did on our first two trips.

After a very full day, there were some observations that were made that now will be incorporated into the school. Here are some ideas:

Group members expressed an interest in mining issues - we will certainly be discussing these issues with local community leaders and we will look for ways to bring this information back to the classroom.

There is an interest in issues surrounding violence, war trauma, anxiety and socialization. We will look for ways to discuss how some of these issues are dealt with in Salvadoran schools.

There is also an interest in learning more about popular education - we would love to find an opportunity to learn more about this with our Salvadoran partners.

We also would like to investigate how technology is being implemented in the schools and classrooms. We recognize that the schools we visit will not be equiped with many computers, but we know there has been a recent donation of computers to one of the schools - we would like to see how these are being used.

We also talked about process - how will we know what kind of workshops we want to do with our Salvadoran partners? We decided the best way to go is first to spend some time together brainstorming on what we would like to do together. Later in the week, we will plan a full-day workshop based on these discussions.

Finally, we would like to spend an extra day in San Salvador to meet with Concertacion de Mujeres, a coordinting body of women involved in a whole variety of empowerment initiatives throughout the country. We also would like to find a way to transfer our Compadres logo onto a t-shirt! Rene had some good ideas on how to do this.

All in all a great day!