Literacy Training

Well the time finally came for me to train teachers to teach literacy. I had been a bit nervous about the upcoming 2 day training. It was a bit odd, a white girl teaching spanish speaking people how to teach other hispanics to read spanish. I am fairly comfortable in my spanish, but it is just in conversation, never taught a class before.

First I will give a bit of stats for the literacy here in Nicaragua. According to various websites the illiteracy rate is anywhere from 25% to 35%. With the population of Nicaragua at 5,800,000 that leaves anywhere from 1,450,000 to 1,800,000 that can't read. Now back to the training.

Thankfully I had a small class for the first one. I had a wonderful group of 4 that have a real desire to help others to become literate. And it also helped that they were all I know pretty well, so they were a bit forgiving with my spanish if I hit a rough spot.

We started Thursday morning at one of the student's house, Lenin. It is a small one room house and it worked beautifully. We had a wonderful day filled with learning and with fellowship. His wonderful wife had made lunch for us as well. Some very delicious rice, beans, platanos and cheese. I finished Thursday feeling very satisfied and thankful that I got the first day out of the way.

Friday, we began our second, and last, day of training. We had to change location to another one of the student's house, Jhossy. Once again we had a wonderful time learning and laughing together. Her mom was gracious enough to make lunch for us as well, (repeat of the first day, very tipical lunch). Once again a wonderful day. We finished it with 4 teachers ready to teach. I finished feeling a little tired of speaking spanish for 16 hours, and extremely satisfied that the first literacy class training was completed and successful.

November

The first week of November I had the priveledge to attend a workshop to teach both literacy (in spanish) and ESL. I wasn't for sure how it would all go but I was so pleasantly surprised.

We have a lot of trouble here of people being illiterate. There are nearly 2 million people in Nicragua that don't know how to read. Even in our town and the communities where we work there are over a hundred that I have been made aware of. I heard of this great program and thought I would look into it. The ministry is called LEI (Literacy and Evangalism Intl.). The great thing is that the curriculum that they use is also used as an evangalistic tool. It talks about the Bible throughout the books.

Here is a pic of the group that took the class in Managua to teach literacy. This was the english version for all the missionaries interested.

A week later I had the priveledge to take a course, closer to where we live, in San Marcos to teach others how to teach literacy.

I was overwhelmed with the information about the numbers that I had found locally of those that are illiterate and realized that it was too much to handle on my own. This was the reason for taking this course. I figured if I could teach others, locally and other places that we travel, many more lives could be effected. We all had such a great time. There has already been a group interested here in Jinotepe to learn to teach literacy. I am hoping that this month we will be able to get together for the 3 day course to equip the saints.

This is the group of us that had the priveledge to learn to equip other teachers with the same heart. (This was the spanish training session. Not a whole lot of us white people in the mix, just me and another friend from Managua, Carey!)

Please pray with me that God would direct my path concerning this project. There are many lives that can be changed, not only with literacy but also spiritually. But without God in the middle of it, it can't accomplish His good and perfect will.