El Bichito: Week of June 10th

Week of June 10^th

Brennan Howick and Dane Smart 

For this week we decided to focus the theme on creating a future for ourselves.  It was a goal of ours to engage the children in thinking their career path, future family life, and goals on how they will achieve these aspirations.  We wanted to emphasis self empowerment and self worth, in helping them to see that they can accomplish whatever they put their mind to.  

In one activity we wrote a large list of occupations on the board and had the children write down the top three they were most interested in.  After they did so we discussed how they would obtain this profession.  They were then instructed to choose their top choice and draw themselves performing their profession in the future.  The children said they enjoyed envisioning themselves as “big people with real jobs.”

The next activity was focused around visualizing their future family and what that entails.  Out of craft paper we made blank cards and distributed them to the children. Once each child had a card, we instructed them to, first, draw each member of their future family, second, list 5 characteristics they wanted their future family to have, and third, was to list 5 characteristics they didn’t want their future family to have.  I.e., no fighting, unhealthy conflicts, divorce, etc (Attached is a photo of Brennan with Jose Luis and Marcos with their completed cards about their future families).

On Wednesday we talked about our future plans for life.  A discussion was held about what goals are and the importance of creating and achieving them.  We as well as each child set a long term goal that we plan to accomplish in the future. We then set a short term goal that would help us achieve our long term goal.  It was great to see the similarities between the goals that were set and the children’s potential professions they had chosen a few days prior.  It showed that the children saw the correlation between having a profession and the goals that lead to it. 

For a final activity we talked about the importance of community and proceeded to set a community goal.  To do this, we presented a picture to the children that illustrated an important issue.  The picture was a man dropping his trash on the street.  Littering is prevalent in Cajamarca, and we felt it important to discuss our role in keeping our communities clean for future generations.  For this activity we utilized a method taught to us by Eagle Condor called FAMA, in which a picture is displayed and the participants are asked to identify Facts of the photo, Associations to their own life, the Meaning of what is happening, and Actions they can take to solve the problem. 

We have already seen an impact by using this teaching method, as earlier in the week a child had taken a marker and written a wall close to the facility.  Without being prompted, we observed another child cleaning the marker off the wall.  We were so happy to see this application of learning and awarded the boy with a Jolly Rancher candy (Included is a picture of Dane rewarding him for this good deed). Throughout our time here we wanted to emphasis the use of positive reinforcement to obtain better behaviors.  We look forward to seeing more growth out of children with so much potential.