Well, it has been an interesting, full, and motivating first month here in Moyobamba, Peru. From serving at the deaf and mute school, to trying new foods, to engaging with the community, to making friendships, to finding a place of worship, and exploring many beautiful places- my heart is overwhelmingly full!
In the past month, we celebrated international week for deaf persons with a week-long agenda of activities! We brought our students to the movies, to the pool, and to different municipalities allowing the community to engage with our students and helping our students to understand that they are a part of society and can enjoy what the community has to offer.
We concluded our festivities with a gran fiesta celebrating the ability to learn, laugh, and party. Seeing our students smiling, hearing them laugh, watching them preform and dance, and enjoying one another was absolutely priceless. Together, we celebrated their ability to learn differently and together, we normalized what has been so negatively stigmatized around the world. This particular week made a difference in our students’ self-esteem, self-worth, and confidence as the community embraced our celebration.
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As far as what I have learned about the school thus far, is that a typical lesson plan focuses on one topic with eight vocabulary words. For example: School: desk, teacher, whiteboard, etc. The teacher then leads the lesson in three different ways: demonstrating the sign, spelling the word using LSP (Peruvian sign language), and also spelling the word in Spanish. The students work to remember all three forms through storytelling, writing, group work, drawing, etc.
However, as you can imagine, our students are just as playful, social, and distracted as any other child. This makes it difficult when realizing your voice won’t help control the class and that you have to personally address each child with a light tap and remind them to focus. Though teaching students with hearing loss has its difficulties, it’s amazing when you realize there are so many different ways to teach than the traditional style. Nothing feels better, then when your students understand the lesson and are so excited to show you the next day how they still remember to spell or sign a word.
The other day, we went on a field trip to help give context to last week’s lesson about the environment. We visited the environmental municipality and was given an informative, animated, and interpreted presentation about how the ecosystem functions. We learned about the climate, the weather, the origins of our drinking water and the way it is processed, about trees, flowers, animals, birds, and insects and how they help to create and sustain the environment. Lastly, we learned about how humans are effecting the ecosystem and about the ways we can make a difference. Overall, this sounds like a normal field trip that most children would experience but what stood out most to me was hearing some of the older adolescents saying, “Wow, I never knew this.”
Hearing that made me realize what a privilege it is to learn, to understand the day-to-day changes in climate, to understand why trees, flowers, insects, animals, etc. exist, to know the reasons and functionality behind the world we physically see and take part of daily.
I am so thankful for the dedicated teachers, parents, community members, and organizations for recognizing the importance of sign language, for allowing volunteers to join the work, and for including deaf and mute persons into wider conversations, whether it be in their homes, communities, and even on an international level. Our students continue to humble me and remain patient with me as I learn their language. They allow me to teach them as I learn alongside them.
Each day, the world makes a little more sense for our students (and me!), and for that I’m grateful.
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Thank you to all those who are keeping my fellow YAVs and I in prayer. Please know that your support does not go unnoticed. If you feel led and are able to help support my year of service- I am still short of reaching my fundraising goal of $5,000 and would appreciate any gift, no donation is to small. Please know that your funds are being used to service and support the demand for greater social justice in the states and around the world.
A Woman After God's Own Heart 