On Earth Day, Cindy (sustainability coordinator) and I invited 20 students from the local school in Puerto Jimenez. Many of you that know me well may be shocked by this, but I absolutely loved my day of teaching the cute little 4th – 6th graders. As you know, I find some children especially obnoxious i.e. kids in stores carrying musical books and screaming for candy or kids on planes that feel the need to kick my chair for 2 hours and scream! But these children were so well behaved, polite, not demanding and all around happy kids.
Our day started out with a bird/nature tour of the grounds. This lead to animal charades …all the kids basically crawled around the floor all fours and we just ran through the list of jungle animals from Pizotes to monkeys to pigs until we guessed right. Then they were off to the recycling center to learn about composting and why it is so important to recycle. It is vital to teach these students about preservation because in Puerto Jimenez people do not recycle. In fact, most people still burn their trash or throw it into a dump. The people in town also let their laundry water drain into the ditches. Which you can imagine bleach water is pretty horrible for the environment as these ditches empty directly into the mangrove forests and the Gulf. Our last activity of the day was to have the children use recycled “terabrick” (milk and juice boxes) to make planters for seedlings.
I don’t plan on becoming a teacher anytime soon, but I will say it was fun for a day. Furthermore, you teachers out there I totally admire you!
I’ve included a few pictures from the day.
Our day started out with a bird/nature tour of the grounds. This lead to animal charades …all the kids basically crawled around the floor all fours and we just ran through the list of jungle animals from Pizotes to monkeys to pigs until we guessed right. Then they were off to the recycling center to learn about composting and why it is so important to recycle. It is vital to teach these students about preservation because in Puerto Jimenez people do not recycle. In fact, most people still burn their trash or throw it into a dump. The people in town also let their laundry water drain into the ditches. Which you can imagine bleach water is pretty horrible for the environment as these ditches empty directly into the mangrove forests and the Gulf. Our last activity of the day was to have the children use recycled “terabrick” (milk and juice boxes) to make planters for seedlings.
I don’t plan on becoming a teacher anytime soon, but I will say it was fun for a day. Furthermore, you teachers out there I totally admire you!
I’ve included a few pictures from the day.
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