Linda and Emory Blackwell

Mayatan is sorry to announce that we are losing a long-time volunteer teacher and administrator. This week, Linda Blackwell and her husband Emory are heading back to their home in McMinnville, Oregon, after nearly eight years in Honduras. The school and Copán won’t be the same without these affable, dedicated, silver-haired stars of our community.

Linda, who was most recently the Director of Development for four years, originally came to Mayatan in the Fall of 2004. She and Emory discovered the school on TeachAbroad.com. Emory was teaching ESL at a public library following a long career as a teacher and coach for football and wrestling. The couple were retired, their daughter was through her first year of college, and they were growing a little bored.

At the time, Mayatan had two jobs open. The couple thought, “Oh, we can do that for a year. Then it turned into much more.” Their family and friends in the U.S. thought they were nuts, of course, but their daughter, Megan, was really supportive. Megan didn’t know that it would be such a long commitment. (She has come down every year except one at Christmas, and Linda and Emory have gone back every summer.)

When they arrived, Emory was a 5th grade teacher, and he moved with the same class to 6th grade (today’s 12th graders). Linda started in 2nd grade and went all the way to 5th grade with her kids (the current 9th grade).

Linda says that they stayed so long because “We liked the school and our relationships here, including to the founders like Nora, Mayra, and Maru.”

Among her favorite teaching experiences, Linda says that, “The first time I walked in my classroom, I started jabbering away in English, and my kids didn't understand, so I had to throw all my plans away. By Christmas, they were laughing at my jokes and understanding all of my stories. They learned fast. If you never speak Spanish, they learn real fast.

Both Linda and Emory took on a variety of jobs during their Mayatan tenure. Emory was Director of the school from 2005-2007. Linda became the Development Director in the fall of 2008-09. She was not teaching then but living in San Pedro Sula, where Emory was tutoring a student with special needs. The Development Director position was open and the school needed help, so Linda agreed to do it temporarily. Four years later, she was still here.

Linda reports that she loved getting money, especially surprising money, to help kids who really, really need. “It feels good to make the parents so happy.” She recalls when the father of a 1st grader came in to get a scholarship application in PK. He carried a bank statement that showed that tuition, books, and registration would be half of his income. He said they’d sacrifice anything for her to be here. They did so for two years, after which the school was able to increase her scholarship to a full tuition.

The Blackwells have seen a lot of Copán and Honduras. They have lived all over town in Las Vegas, Buena Vista, and then across the street from the school. The latter is their favorite spot because it’s cool, quiet, and has outdoor space.

During her last week here, Linda said that she was “ready to be going back. At the same time, I’m sad. I’ll be missing all the kids. As well as I know them, it would be hard to leave them at anytime, even two years ago. [In the U.S.A.,] I’ll always have water, I’ll always have electricity, but … I’ll see if we can handle the weather in Oregon.”

Linda thinks the hardest part of the transition will be in the fall—not getting ready to return to school after all these years. She says that she will miss the weather and the people most, especially her Honduran friends’ “honest warmth.” She mentions Jenny and Rigo, Juan Angel and Nora, Mayra and Jose Raul, Mauricio and Maru, Pat and Lloyd at the Bird Park, and so many others. In addition, Emory has many private students for his English classes that he’s gotten to know. “He’s the only one who does this in town,” so there will be a real gap when he goes.

Before she left, Linda reflected upon watching school grow into what it is today from when they first got here. At the time, the primary school had just moved into the building at the top of the hill. It was very much a place in transition, very muddy from the construction, and there was no grass yet. The school was PK-9th grade only, Lindsay Hill was the terrific Director, and there were well under the 300 kids we have today. She’s watched the grass and plants grow, the enrollment increase, the academics improve, the addition of the high school, and the overall increasing level of organization, quality, and solidification of the school in the hearts and minds of Copanecos.

Thanks for being a part of that!

Through June 2012, Linda Blackwell’s duties will be assumed by Tommy Flint, the incoming Director of Development (development@mayatanfoundation.org), and David Harrington, the Fundraising Director (fundraising@mayatanfoundation.org), who worked with Linda for two years. The positions will be merged and Tommy will assume all responsibilities when David leaves in June.

Despite their nerdy reputations, math and science can be both cool and integral to students' future success. I thought I'd highlight just a few of the cool math and science projects I've seen teachers doing recently.

Bridge Building, 6th Grade

Kids got really into this project, maybe because Miss Laura turned it into a competition with a prize pizza at the end. Bridge Building is a physical science Science Olympics event. It challenges junior engineers to build a bridge using only toothpicks and white glue. It combines physical science principals and lots of math. Each bridge must be built to the same scale, twenty cm from tower to tower. The winning bridge is the one with the best strength to weight ratio, the lightest bridge that can hold the most weight before breaking.

We were surprised at how much weight the bridges held! We used all our gram weights and they didn't break so we solved the problem by suspending a bucket from the bridge and slowly filling it with water until it came crashing down. Then we weighed the water bucket and subtracted the weight of the student holding the bucket on a bathroom scale. We then divided weight of bridge by weight to break it and declared a winner! The winning toothpick bridge held 37 pounds! They got a certificate for a free pizza, everyone's favorite. The winners were Hector and Luis in 6B, and Leonardo and Adan Jose in 6A.

Math Twister

Miss Amy, the secondary school math teacher, needed a way to make boring coordinates accessible to kids. What better way than to put them on a grid itself?

Noticing that her floor was a perfect grid of squares, all she had to do was apply tape and number them. She divided it up into four mini grids and then created a set of directions involving left and right hands and feet.

The result was Math Twister, which got the kids all tied up as they learned their negative and positive X and Y axes. There was some falling (and therefore elimination) and some awkwardness, but hopefully it burned the grid into their minds.

I am the Lorax

Miss Love, the secondary school science teacher, commemorated Dr. Seuss's birthday by watching The Lorax to inspire some positive messaging about the importance of the environment and an exercise in concise writing.

After watching the movie, they had a class discussion about its relevance to society. Students were then asked to write a concise statement about the environment and illustrate it in the form of a bumper sticker. You can see the results below.

April 22 was Earth Day, and Mayatan students celebrated a little bit early. On April 20, after spending some time in class learning about protecting the environment, students went out armed with plastic bags and gloves and did the dirty work of cleaning up a small slice of mankind's mess.

Younger kids, like those pictured below, stayed around campus and picked up trash. Older kids went off on mini field trips to different neighborhoods and spent 3 hours scouring the area for the litter and detritus that are common here and all over the world. As most visitors to Honduras know, the country suffers from a general lack of proper infrastructure for handling garbage and litter control hasn't caught on with everyone yet.

Earth Day is about education and awareness -- not just of world-wide environmental concerns, but of how each of us affects the environment and how each of us has a small amount of control over and responsibility for how we interact with the world we share. These were small efforts, but we hope it will make an impression on our students, ensuring that they and future generations are better aware of their impact on their immediate and the global environments.

Folklore Day is a celebration of Honduran culture and all of its many subcultures, from the Garífuna of the Caribbean coast to the Lenca and Maya of the Western mountains. It's a day that's best appreciated through the senses: the colors and costumes, the dances, the music, the essays, and, of course, the regional foods. We recommend you browse through our photo gallery for a good sense of all that happened.

The day was overfull with delights and people. Students, parents, and staff collaborated on the building of champas (huts) in regional designs on our central lawn. Each hut was made in the style of a subculture and included posters about that culture along with photos and other artifacts. Inside each hut were also mothers with coolers, stoves, plates, and plastic forks, ready to dole out fried fish, tamales, sea food soup, pupusas, rice and beans, horchata, chicha, and other drinks, dishes, and desserts from around the country.

We started events by awarding prizes in the Mayatan Appreciation Contests, which students used as a chance to show off their writing skills and reflect upon all of the benefits they receive by attending here. Teachers and staff were proud to see that many of the winners, like Ludy in 8th grade, were scholarships students who wrote about their experiences receiving a life-changing education.

After the awards, it was time for traditional dances performed by 10th graders, followed by the Mayan Princess and Warrior competitions, in which male and female students strutted their stuff in elaborate home-made costumes constructed from things like corn kernels, coffee beans, and corn husks.

Then we ate -- well!

Our March 2012 Newsletter is out. It was originally sent out to our e-mail list using Vertical Reponse. If you didn't receive the email, you can read it on our website. Don't forget to sign up for our mailing list so you can keep in the loop.

View it online: Mayatan Newsletter March 2012

Last month, a group of 14 Mayatan students, 6 teachers, and numerous parents headed off in a school bus bound for a weekend in Tegucigalpa. You don't take an 8 hour bus ride with kids lightly: their destination was the famed Discovery School, where Mayatan would participate in its first ever English and Spanish Spelling Bees and Speech Contest against contestants from over dozen members of the Association of Bilingual Schools of Honduras (ABSH).

Although the trip was a serious event, it also included a lot of fun, especially before the Spelling Bee.

Emily Monroe, 4th Grade Teacher, reports that everyone really bonded through the exciting, emotional, sometimes difficult trip. She says that the bus ride there was practically silent because the children were all from different grades and were shy with each other. "But on the way back, they had all bonded as friends, and they opened up. They were talking and even singing together."

The singing was lead by Otto in 6th grade, and it included all the songs the songs the children learned at Chiminike, the children's museum in Tegucigalpa. Another important role was played by Jose Rodolfo in 8th grade, who was kind of the "dad" on the trip, schooling younger kids in facts and world trivia, and preparing them for the contest.

Chiminike, whose mascot is a frog, had an anti-gravity room, interactive exhibits on space and physics, a human body, and more. After visiting on Friday afternoon, everyone stuffed themselves at the mall food court. Some people bought clothing and supplies for Fun Week, which was going to begin on Monday. Then there was a night in a hotel, where teachers report the kids went a little nuts, even though they were broken up into boys and girls rooms and by age.

On the day of the event, everyone piled back into the bus to head to Discovery School, one of the best and most elite schools in the country. The sprawling campus was "amazing," with huge, well-tended buildings and grounds. It was also very well-organized. There was a giant assembly to welcome the delegations from various schools, and there were speeches by the ambassadors from the United States and Spain, who had a child enrolled at a participating school. Following a cue from her boss, Hillary Clinton, the U.S. ambassador talked about how "It takes a village to raise a child."

After the ceremony, the kids went into rooms by grade for the competition. Spectators were not allowed in the rooms, so we don't have photos of that. There were two practice rounds and then real thing before panels of three judges. During this time, Samuel in 10th grade practiced his speech for the afternoon, and parents and kids played games, hung out, and enjoyed snacks. Eventually the Mayatan crowd caught word that 4th grader Maria Jose had placed 2nd in the Spanish Spelling Bee, which would be our top placing that day.

After all the competitions were over, it got emotional. Almost everyone cried, having invested so much effort and nerves into the day. There was an awards ceremony afterwards. Maru, a Mayatan board member and a Discovery School parent, cheered everyone up, explaining that this was Mayatan's first year of competition and that they were all winners in her eyes.

All in all, it was a great experience. Mayatan has a lot to learn, and a lot of room to adjust to the culture of ABSH competitions, but we have no doubt that we will get there and be a better school for it in the long run. All of us are proud of this pioneering group, and we're excited for the years of contests that await.

Participants:

Kensy 2nd Grade - Span
Abigail 2nd Grade - Eng

Carlos 3rd Grade - Eng
Ana Cecilia 3rd Grade - Span

Gandhi 4th Grade - Eng
Maria Jose 4th Grade - Span (2nd place)

Erica 5th Grade - Span
Dayana 5th Grade - Eng

Otto 6th Grade - Eng
Elsa 6th Grade - Span

Fidelina 7th Grade - Span

Jose Rodolfo 8th Grade - Eng
Kency 8th Grade - Span

Samuel 10th Grade - Speech contest

Teachers:

Mr. Valera Chekmazov

Miss Marin Jackson

Miss Emily Monroe

Mrs. Norma Murcia

Mrs. Paty Sarmiento

It's not the Nashville that you're thinking of. Rather than country music from the heartland of the USA, students at Nashville School in Tegucigalpa probably listens to the same mix of American and Latin pop that are common all over Honduras. What they definitely do, however, is play football. This spring, they sent over a large group of 11th graders (their junior class is bigger than our entire high school) to play Mayatan boys and girls teams in soccer. It was a nice chance to meet, greet, and beat students from other parts of Honduras -- not beat, of course, in any violent way, but we did have a great show by our soccer plays and terrific support from the hundreds up students who showed up to cheer the Mayatan Jaguars on.

This was Mayatan's first year participating in the Association of Bilingual Schools of Honduras's (ABSH) annual speech and spelling bee competition.

We fielded contestants from elementary, middle, and high school in English and Spanish spelling, and a brave 10th grader named Samuel Leiva participated in the speech competition.

Samuel memorized an eloquent speech about the necessity of remembering all of the positive things about Honduras despite its struggles.

Download (Samuel-Leiva-Speech.pdf, PDF, 64.74KB)

The transportation nightmare is over. After only 7 months of construction, the new road from downtown to the Bird Park just beyond Mayatan has been completed. It took a lot of labor, a lot of political wrangling, and a lot of delays along its half-mile path to the cobblestone roads below, but it's there: a clean, reasonably even, new road paved with concrete blocks.

About three weeks ago, the road finally opened to traffic along most of its length, shaving off a good ten minutes and a hairy ride over muddy mountain passes from the trip to school. This week, the town will celebrate with a party at the bottom of the hill that leads to the Mayatan campus.

While some teachers and students learned to enjoy the traffic-free walks to school up the road in mornings, it provides a safer, smoother, faster trip for everyone, and it is sure to benefit Mayatan, Macaw Mountain Bird Park, and the aldeas beyond us.

Why the delays, our friends in North America and Europe might ask? The road was built with mostly hand labor--tiring, heavy work. The municipality of Copán also had to raise money for the road, not by levying automatic taxes, but by asking individual property owners along the way to divvy up, including Mayatan. You make do with the resources you have.

Miss Emily's 4th grade class travels around the world. Throughout the year, they learn about various cultures from Asia to the Americas, and then they create hands-on projects about those cultures: Mummies for Egypt, paper lanterns for China, and so-forth.

Most recently, they spent several weeks studying France. Besides crepes, vineyards, metal towers, accordions, and flourishing arts, France is of course known for its fashion industry. The obvious reward for such hard work was to engage the class in a French fashion show that incorporated many of the things they'd studied about--after all, you learn best by doing and experiencing something for yourself.

Almost the entire class participated in the festivities, and those that didn't made up the oohing and ahhing audience. There were security guards and waitresses; fashion models and one designer who modified some articles of clothing; a photographer/videographer; and an MC who led the event in Sfranglish--mostly English, with a few French and Spanish words thrown in.

The models walked the red carpet, strutted the stage, and we all enjoyed a snack of crepes, cheese, crackers, and soda. Check out the videos and photos taken by a 4th grader himself, and see what fun we had.