Day 4: Education Day

Today was the beginning of our Education day here in the DR! After breakfast which was by far one of the heartier meals we have had—eggs, pineapple and bread we had a very good academic seminar on education where we discussed, “What is the value of an education?  What are aspects of a high quality education?”  It was such a dynamic debrief about what the students thought was the value and aspects that it was a great transition to the next activity; where the students had to categorize educational stats for both countries—Dominican Republic and USA.   

We wrapped up the seminar with analyzing a quote which was empowering and produced many students to think outside the box and formulate questions for the guest speaker Angela Zabala an educator that has worked in the educational system here in the Dominican for 15 years and is the owner of the Hotel D’Angel where we will be staying for two weeks!

After the education seminar we had the opportunity to have a guest speaker who just amazed me.  She was so knowledgeable about the educational system that the information that she gave us made me critically think about their educational system.  I was just dumbfounded that practically anyone can become a teacher…what?!?! I even asked if there was a difference in pay and of course if you teach at a private school you get paid more, but if you teach in the public sector it is much less.  To relate it to the US, a teacher here in the DR makes anywhere between $450-600 dollars a month…YIKES!

Also another interesting fact that I found out the DR by law is required to allow 4% of their GDP towards education and in reality they are only spending 2%.  Another aspect that completely was a shock to me was the way that Haitian are treated in the DR…is as if they are second class citizens.  Haitians are allowed an education until 8^th grade, but if they want to continue they must provide proper paperwork (birth certificate, citizenship) to continue to receive an education.

After our seminar and guest speaker, we went to lunch and again tried traditional Dominican food and couldn’t complain with the proportions and the variety that we had.  We came back to the hostel and had a bit of free time which our students used that time to work on their survey and their first English class which was enjoyable to see the students in “teacher shoes” and interacting with the students.  After the two hour English class we had an AMAZING dinner at our traditional restaurant with our traditional coffee.

We zipped through the nightly meeting and had an intense self-reflection discussion about education.  But after the lights went out that is when the hard work lesson planning for the next day’s academic seminar began…and believe it or not it was the earliest that I was able to go to bed even though it was midnight.