Balls and Books

We've mentioned our Balls and Books program in previous blog posts, but it's about time it got a formal introduction. The idea came about when we started comparing our own high school experiences with those of our secondary students here in San Nicolas. Here is the kind of thing we were thinking about:

Pretty Much Any US Public High School	The San Nicolas High School
Students have the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of organized after-school sports.	There are no organized school sports teams.
The school owns a huge collection of quality sports equipment to make practicing easier.	The school owns a flat, battered volleyball, a rimless basketball court, and a flat basketball.
There are tons of other after-school clubs and activities (choir, band, drama, etc) for students to participate in.	There are no after-school clubs or activities.
Students not only have textbooks (or even iPads with textbooks) for all of their classes; they also have access to a school library that will lend them books.	There are no textbooks – students copy what teachers write on the board into their notebooks. The only library in town (which consists of a couple of shelves of books) doesn't lend books out.

We had noticed in our English classes that many of our students had a serious lack of confidence in their own thoughts and ideas. Even if they absolutely knew that their answer had to be correct, they refused to say it out loud until we had confirmed that they were correct. This puzzled and frustrated us for a while. (*Footnote)

But then it occurred to me: there must be a direct link between participating in sports and activities and a person's self-confidence. More important than learning how to kick a soccer ball or play the flute is building up the confidence to do these things for an audience, and then receiving positive affirmation for your efforts. Because these kinds of activities aren't available to them, most San Nicolaseno high school students have never had to perform anything under pressure, and in turn have never been affirmed for their own ideas or talents.

Anyway, the money just didn't exist within the public school system to get any extracurricular activities like this going in San Nicolas, so in the end we took matters into our own – and your own – hands. We created an official “Balls and Books” fund through VMM's web site, so that all of the donations that go into this fund will go directly to starting extracurricular activities in San Nicolas.

We have already raised enough money through this fund to buy six new sports balls for the school and start an after-school book club. (More on this below). But there are plenty more expenses to come: buying more books for the book club, painting the basketball court with basketball and volleyball lines, purchasing soccer balls, buying instruments for a potential future band . . . The list goes on. So please, with the goal of instilling talent and self-confidence in the teenagers of San Nicolas, consider donating to our Balls and Books fund. (Scroll down to our bio and click on the second "Donate" button under our bio).

Want to know more about the extracurricular activities we're working on? Here is a little recap.

Balls

Students playing with the new basketballs

During the world cup, Davie did a fundraiser through the school. Students bought and filled out brackets, and the student who predicted the bracket closest to the actual world cup won a soccer ball. With the rest of the money and some of the money donated to our Balls and Books fund, we were able to purchase three volleyballs, three basketballs, and one soccer ball for the school P.E. and sports programs.

The P.E. teacher, Reynaldo, is working on developing a high school soccer team. This year the team played one league game in Esteli, but he is hoping that next year it will be more successful.

Books

I have been working in the community library one day a week, helping the librarian organize the few shelves of books they own by the Dewey Decimal System. Thanks to friends and family who have donated books in Spanish, the town library has also inherited several nice new books.

This week we had our first book club meeting. A nice-sized group of four high school students showed up, interested in reading. When I asked them how much reading they had done before, one girl said that she had read two books. Another girl said that she had read a few Shakespeare quotes on the internet. We voted on what book they wanted to read together, and The Hunger Games won.

I am hoping that getting a couple of copies of The Hunger Games into these students' houses will spark a bit of enthusiasm for reading, but we'll see. We'll meet to discuss the book as we read it together, and I also want these students to help me with a reading program for elementary school students. My plan is to bring the high school students into the elementary school once every other week or so to read picture books to the littler kids. My hope is that this will not only instill a bit of curiosity about books in the elementary students; it will also give the high school students that sense of self-confidence and leadership that they so need.

*Of course, this also has a lot to do with the one-right-answer educational methods that still reign in the campo of Nicaragua.