I don't know how much I've talked about school here so I'll just start from scratch. Kids go to school 4 hours a day, either in the morning (7-11am) or afternoon (1-4pm). School never starts on time, most of the time the teachers don't even show up on time. The director, if he is there, will gather the students, line them up and they will sing the national anthem. Then they go to their classrooms and spend about half an hour cleaning the room while the teachers sit around and chat. Later on in the day half an hour is given to recess, if not more depending on how good the gossip is in the teachers' circle that day. So overall the kids get about 2 hours of actual "learning".
Students "learn" here by copying whatever the teacher writes on the board directly into their notebooks. Teachers care more about their writing looking lindo than the actual content. If kids don't want to pay attention, they sit in the back and talk or just get up and leave and wander around the school grounds.
School started here a couple weeks ago so I went to talk to the directors of the elementary and high schools about our plans for this year. The director of the colegio (7-9th grade) informed me that while he really wanted to work with me, half of the school day this year (2 out of 4 hours) would be spent on learning about the Bicentennial (Paraguay turns 200 in May). Today I learned what this means: high school kids sitting around singing songs in Guarani while the teacher plays guitar. It's great to learn about your culture but what about everything else? Nobody seems to care if their kids can read or write but they sure are patriotic!
I guess I'm just frustrated. I have been trying to get my director serious about working with me to get parasite pills and fluoride for all the students. It's not difficult, just 2 documents I need him to look over and sign them so I can turn them in at the Centro de Salud in town and get the pills. And he has been complaining that the last volunteer never did it and that he has tried to do it and that it's so hard and all this crap. But when I try to do his work for him, he still won't help me at all.
EDIT: So it's the next day, I was extremely frustrated yesterday. I finished the pedidos to the best of my ability yesterday and printed them off. Today I took them to the school with the intention of not leaving until I had a signature. The director was more than happy to see me and show off his new car that he had been out picking up yesterday. That's why he never showed up. Awesome. Anger in check, I sat down with him and explained that all he needed to do was tell me how many students were in the school and sign his name. I even brought a pen, just in case.
The paper got signed and tomorrow I going to town to hunt down the right people at the hospital to get the pills for the students. I'll accompany the fluoride and parasite pills with charlas about dental health and preventing parasites so hopefully in the future those pills won't be necessary. So although it's disheartening that the kids aren't learning a single thing from anyone else at school, at least I can try to teach them something worthwhile while I'm here.
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