Some thoughts on my work

Text message sent to a friend today: Sometimes I think that making puppets out of toilet paper rolls isn’t really doing much to help the people of Paraguay.

Funny, but true. My recycled puppets do rock. Yesterday afternoon I cut out photos from old Newsweeks and just taped ‘em around toilet paper rolls, and now I have little puppets of George Bush, Bill Clinton, Queen Elizabeth, Shakira, Iman, and about a dozen other random people! A teacher could use these to help kids dramatize stories they read in class, make up their own stories, think creatively, practice speaking in a 2nd language, etc etc. I went to a workshop today in fact where we spent a good hour creating and playing with puppets made from all sorts of recycled materials. This is good shit.

But I can’t help but think that while these puppets will help teachers help kids learn, sometimes that doesn’t seem like enough. Remember that definition of development, helping people to be more and to have more? My project is all about helping people “be more,” which I thought was more important, but it turns out I’m itching to do more work to help people “have more.” I think I want to teach people about nutrition and hygiene and help them grow better crops and do things that’ll have tangible results. I guess I feel like I’m not really DOING much yet, just planning and getting to know the people and waiting for them to invite me to their meetings or classrooms. And making loads of didacting materials. When I think about what I’m doing, or what I’m going to start doing soon, the ideas that motivate me, sometimes even move me to tears honestly, are these:

Good teaching is the art, not of putting ideas into people’s heads, but of drawing ideas out.

Education needs to focus on helping people learn how to change their situation in life.

Go in search of your people:
Love them;
Learn from them;
Plan with them;
Serve them;
Begin with what they have;
Build on what they know.
But of the best leaders
When their task is accomplished,
Their work is done,
The people all remark,
“We have done this ourselves.”

And then I compare my work, or the work I hope to be doing soon, with that of Marisol. She is a very nice Columbian woman studying for her Master’s degree in Asuncion who has come to Tacuati several times to give workshops and work on a project in the high school. While I try to be friendly and bond with her as fellow outsiders, it’s hard not to notice the differences in our approaches to working here. She busts in here without so much as learning the teacher’s names, tells them how they need to teach the alphabet and organize their classrooms, marks up the sample schedule made by the previous PC volunteer to “correct” it, hasn’t yet visited a classroom, and sits down with the teachers in the high school with a list of things she’s identified as needing improvement, and requires them each to choose one (and allows only one teacher per project). She had one meeting a month ago with the students and expects that they now consider this library “their” project. I’m torn between wanting to help and fill in the gaps and be sure this project is sustainable, and waiting to watch this thing fall flat on its face b/c she’s doing it all wrong.

So somewhere between Marisol’s aggressive and dictatorial “getting things done” and my passive puppet-making is where I want to be. That much I know.