Teaching the silly cow

For the past eight weeks or so, I've been teaching a series of orientación vocacional (vocational education) classes to high school seniors in two of Cajabamba's public schools. We've talked about goal setting, making a savings plans, writing a resume, preparing for a job interview, being a leader, and other job- and future-related topics. Even though this teaching project has required me getting up extremely early every Wednesday (schools start at 7am here!), it's always fun to work with young people and feel like I'm meeting a significant need in the community. Schools here typically offer a world-of-work-related class, but it is purely focused on a practical skill, such as computation or sewing. Thus the type of orientación vocacional that I teach fills what I view as an important gap in the kids' education.

Since the students are getting into end-of-year exams and Christmas festivities, this week was my last week of teaching for the semester. The theme of the day was entrepreneurship, and the lesson plan included one of my favorite dinámicas: la vaca tonta (the silly cow). It's an activity that forces the students to be creative, with each of them inventing three ideas for potential businesses that have to do with cows. Since the Peruvian school system emphasizes rote memorization and regurgitation rather than creative or independent thinking, it usually takes a lot of explaining and a little convincing the kids that it's OK to be silly. Once they get into it though, they really enjoy it, and reading all the "business" ideas out loud afterward always results in fits of giggles. We had a discoteca for cows, a cow beauty salon, a restaurant where the waiters were all cows, etc. etc.

And of course, at the end of each class, we took the requisite end-of-year photos. Here's one of my three classes at the all-girls school:

And here's me with one of my teacher socias, in which I look like a giant compared to this tiny Peruvian lady:

Schools are going into summer vacation now, and start back up again in March. My hope/plan is to continue working with seniors next year, with a start-your-own-business class first semester, and more orientación vocacional second semester. Until then, sitemate Jessica and I are planning a series of summer school classes - assuming the municipality man in charge of education ever answers his phone so we can ask him for funding :)