English classes
In early 2024 volunteers started to help with teaching in San Pedro Itzicán but this time with the children who were at the Community Center for activities anyway. Mark and Julia have been regularly coming on Monday mornings to teach the children basic English classes. Sometimes there are over 30 children in the class!
While they may not speak much English yet, the children are learning to listen to instructions, follow along with the teacher... and this will help them when they eventually attend school. Poco a poco....
Despite this lack of success, in 2024, a new volunteer, Mark Skrivanek, has been coming on Monday mornings to teach the young children (2-12 years of age) at our community center in San Pedro Itzicán, the basics of English. The children are there anyway waiting for lunch, so they enjoy having Mark come to teach them. Thank you for doing this Mark - and Julia Karns who is now helping too!
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We originally started ESL classes in 2019, thanks to David Ellison, a Stanford University trained teacher, who created a structured English class for adults and youth in San Juan Tecomatlan, Mezcala and San Pedro Itzicán. He, together with Ron Robertson and many other wonderful volunteers, taught in person (or on Zoom during covid), on Saturday mornings. But over time, we had mixed results in teaching because of the different levels of education in the towns. Many students did not understand grammar of their own language. so it was difficult to teach English grammar to them. And sadly over time, fewer students were attending the classes and few would take time to study. So reluctantly we ended these classes in 2023.
Poco a Poco is so grateful to David and Ron for running this program, together with the many great volunteers.
Do you remember that special teacher that would spend time helping you? David is one of those teachers....