Friday, November 14, 2008

Paychecks, Futbol, and Rain…No School

Three weeks ago…..
Tuesday kids didn’t have school because the teachers went to another town to get their paycheck. Wednesday school was cancelled do to the Paraguay vs. Peru futbol game (we won!). Thursday it rained (there is never school when it rains) and Friday it was too muddy to go to school.

Last week….
Monday we were out of town so the kids missed the school day. Tuesday school was cancelled because of a teacher’s meeting. Wednesday and Thursday it rained – no school. Friday school was cancelled because the teachers were writing tests.

This week….
Monday it rained. Tuesday the kids went but came right home – “No teachers” they said. Wednesday school was rained out again. Finally, Thursday and Friday they went to school!

School Stats
The average time children spend in the classroom a year:
(recorded in the Asuncion paper, the ABC Color)
700 hours in Paraguay
1600 hours in Korea
1500 hours in Europe
1100 hours in the USA

Another study showed that Paraguay offered the third worst quality of education world-wide.


Kids walking to school


The kids school

4 comments:

McCoy Farm said...

Oh neat! More pictures please! =) We have close friends who just arrived about a week ago in Paraguay to start building a missionary training center. We're eagerly awaiting news, pictures & hopefully the good Lord's guidance to head out "somewhere" ourselves!

Fiona L Cooper said...

Yep, school culture is a whole lot different here than back home. I wonder what the root causes are and whether things might ever change?

paraguayalyssa said...

At the beginning of the year I told my kids that they would have to quote Romans 8 for their final exam. Each week, we've learned 1-2 verses. They've had a quiz EVERY FRIDAY all year. They always write out 5 verses. 1-5, then 2-6, then 3-7, etc, so they would get lots of practice. The girls have done a fantastic job, as well as the 5th and 6th grade boys. The 7th grade boys, however, are the laziest lot I've met. They have gotten zeros on every quiz of this trimester. They simply turn in their papers with nothing (or very little) written down. Then last week, they complained to the directors that my test was going to be too hard- that I was making them memorize all of Romans 8- and THE DIRECTORS CHANGED THE DATE OF MY EXAM so they'd have an extra day to study! They said they wanted to make sure the students were all successful.

paraguayalyssa said...

By the way- lest you think I'm a complete tyrant- they were only going to have to write 10 verses from the chapter. Anything that they could remember from the first 2 trimesters was extra credit.