Become Our Next Education Volunteer!
We need volunteers and educational resources so they can do their jobs
Volunteers are the greatest assets of the education program. We need volunteers who stay months and volunteers who stay weeks, volunteers who are fluent in Spanish and volunteers who aren’t. While we do encourage volunteers to stay for at least one month, we can find a rewarding placement for volunteers on a short time frame. We need volunteers and we would love to have you! Go to our Volunteer Placements page to find out more about working in Education!
We also need educational resources for our volunteers and for local schools to which we make donations. We need donations of art supplies, markers, crayons, coloring books, paint, paper and more. We need donations of card games, puzzles and books for kids. We also need cash donations for school supplies for children whose parents cannot afford them at the beginning of February through April. School supplies are about $60 per kid and most families have 3-6 kids. Considering that minimum wage is about $180 per month, this is a very significant sum for families. Can you donate materials or cash? Donate stuff or funds here.
A day in the life of a volunteer
At 8:30 I arrive at the jardin. While we wait for everyone to arrive, the kids, all 4 and 5 years old, sit in a circle and participate in an activity- telling the other kids what they dreamed about the night before, whether they brush their teeth, etc. There are 20 students total in the class, but there are always 3 or 4 absent, so it’s a very manageable group.
Marta is the main teacher in the classroom, and for now I’m assisting her with everything. She’s fantastic with the kids. She wants to create a learning environment where the kids do what they enjoy doing, and then we assist them in learning and discovering this way. For example if one of them does a puzzle of the human body, we’ll teach them the names of everything in English. There’s lots of playing and smiles involved, and I think that’s the way it should be.
Once we're all settled in, the kids go to their tables. We have a teacher at each table, and we ask each student what they want to do that day. Usually responses are something like, “I want to paint flowers and rainbows” or “I want to be a little cat” or “I want to make chicken and rice in la cocinita (the little kitchen).”
The kids play for the next hour; there’s always a table with art materials such as paints, pastels, glue, paper, and clay, and the children are very creative. Other kids enjoy playing with their classmate Diego, the boy who every day - without fail - pretends to be a little cat, and they take care of him, or get chased by him, or make him pretend soup. There are the boys who play with cars and tin cans and legos, building things and having races.
When it's snacktime, everyone washes their hands and brings out their snack. Each kid has a couple of bananas, apples, or pieces of bread, and everyone shares what they brought. The student who was appointed as “lunch maker” for the day will help one of the teachers to cut all the fruit.
Once we've all eaten, we go outside into the yard between the school buildings and play for a little bit. Marta wants to improve their confidence, so the other day we drew a stage on the floor in chalk and put on a show. Each kid went up one by one and sang and danced (with a marker as their microphone). Some were too nervous to go up, and of the ones that did go up, almost all of them sang the same song, “Mi Nina Bonita.” Three of four boys went "on stage” and sang "Gasolina," which was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Picture nervous four-year-olds rapping “A mi me encanta la gasolina, dame mas gasolina” and attempting to dance to it. They were really adorable.
When the day wraps up, it’s 1:00m, and the parents are arriving to pick up their kids.
How did I like the work:
I really loved working at the preschool. At the beginning, I felt like my skills could be better utilized in a formalized English teaching environment, but by the end I really loved where I was placed and wouldn’t have wanted to be somewhere different. I got very attached to many of the children. When their teacher went on vacation at the end of my time there, another volunteer and I had the job of teaching the class just the two of us. By then the students really respected me, and I enjoyed the work a lot. On the last day I was smothered in hugs and given a really sweet book of drawings the kids had done for me and notes they wrote to me. It’s one of my favorite gifts I’ve ever received. It was a very rewarding experience.