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New PCVs join Healthy Schools team
FreeApril/May
La Hora Chapina
All the Healthy Schools news that’s fit to print
 
Content:
Tricks of theTrade: Keep tho-se little buggers
… errr … ener-
getic balls of joyon task 
2
Letters to theEditor: The diffe-rence betweenmanos and monos
3
Parting Words:Take a cue fromAlexis Guild
4
Photo Essay: LaPura Vida
5
Healthy Recipes:Skin Scrub (It pro-
bably won’t taste
great.)
6
Presenting the newest generation of Peace Corps Guatemala HealthySchools Volunteers:
Julia “Hugus” Dale,
 North Carolina
Don‘t call her ―Julia Gulia.‖ It doesn‘t
go over well. This
 Lost 
fan is also into
modern dance, which she doesn‘t con-
sider a sport, but I beg to differ. Do Ismell a secondary project in the works?She was a history major who loved MyLittle Pony as a girl, and the thing
she‘ll miss least about the States is ig-
norance. Her favorite quote is from fel-
low volunteer, Rebecca Dreyfuss: ―Ispent my college years wet.‖
 
Rebecca Dreyfuss
,
California
 Besides being a world-class humorist
(see Dale‘s entry), Dreyfuss is a Peace
Corps legacy. Her aunt was in the firstclass to serve in Ghana, her cousinserved in Mauritania, another cousin isserving in Namibia and her brother isapplying. Her favorite book is
The Poisonwood Bible,
 by Barbara King-solver and she played water polo at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.
 Mark Forsberg
,
Minnesota
This cross-country and track runner will be taking on the Cobán half mara-thon this month. He was a History, So-ciology/Anthropology and AmericanStudies major and his favorite book is
 Nelson Mandela‘s autobiography,
 A Long Walk to Freedom
. The last timehe was in Guatemala was 2007, whenvisited his sister and her husband, Kaciand Corby Lewis, who were PCVs inAlta Verapaz at the time.
Continued on page 3
 La Hora Chapina
Publisher:
ShenyHuerta, shuerta@gt. peacecorps.gov
Editor:
KristinaCrawley, kcrawley@gonzaga.edu
Senior Reporter:
 Kristina Crawley,kcrawley@gonzaga.edu
 La Hora Chapina
is anewsletter dedicated to providing PC Guate-mala volunteers withinformation regardingthe Healthy Schools program.
 La HoraChapina
welcomesletters to the editor.
 
The Smack Down!
I would like to take this oppor-tunity to thank a group of ex-ceptional HS PCVs. RoseWinchell, Jessica Taylor,Melissa Cuddy, KatherineFranks, Alexis Guild, JillianGeissler, Marlene Mora, EllenKernan, Michelle Henderson,and Nicole Hunt finished their service in April, after two yearsof outstanding work.They were spread outaround the country, from Cam- pur, Carchá, Alta Verapaz toPologuá, Totonicapán. Sevenof them started new schoolsand two of them certified four schools and started the HS program in another four!On behalf of my
―paisanos,‖ I want to thank 
you for your two years of gen-erous service, fine work andaffectionate cultural sensitivity.Please remember that
―Guatemala es su casa.‖ We
hope we will see you soon!On the other hand, we wel-come a professional, commit-ted and enthusiastic new groupof 16 additional PCVs! SamraBrouk, Adrian Ortega, BethanyHarmon, Rebecca Schwartz,Rebecca Dreyfuss, Mark Fors- berg, Jareau Hall, AmandaMayhew, Joanna Sylwester,Joshua Eckley, Julia Dale,Crystal Sand, Cori Purcell,Sarah Suwalsky, Travis Snow,and Valerie Walker have joinedus and are ready to continue thegood work started by the col-leagues they are replacing.Please join me in sayingfarewell to our colleagues whohave left and welcoming our new fellows!
 
Tricks of the Trade with Seño Katie
“Walk around 
the classroom asyou speak. Look children in theeye or slide your hand acrosstheir desk asyou walk by.
Don’t ever give
them a chanceto think they can get away 
with talking.” 
 
Page
2
La Hora Chapina
―Pay attention!‖
 
―Stop talking to your neighbor!‖
 
―Do your work!‖
 Ever get sick kids not pay-ing attention? As adults wehave been trained (at leastmost of us) to sit still and lis-ten for extended periods of time no matter how bored weare. But as elementary stu-dents, they are still learning.There are many ways tokeep students on task. Hereare some suggestions:
Keep your feet moving
.While giving a lesson, or evengiving simple directions, walk around the classroom as youspeak. Look children in theeye or slide your hand acrosstheir desk as you walk by.
Don‘t ever give them a chance
to think they can get awaywith talking to their neighbors.
Involve
. A good lesson is alesson that includes the chil-dren. We have all seen waytoo many lessons in whichteachers just talk while their students copy notes into their notebooks. Taking notes maykeep them occupied, but it
doesn‘t mean they are paying
attention. So, constantly ask questions to your students anddo hands-on activities. Makesure all students get involved.
Don‘t forget the shy ones.
 
No down time
. Never have breaks in your lessons that
allow the students‘ minds and
mouths to drift. Something asshort as needing to tape up a poster or rummage throughyour bag for a marker can getkids talking. So, always be prepared. Put the poster up inadvance and have your mark-ers and everything else youneed for the lesson out in frontof you ready to go.
Keep lessons short
. Not onlyare elementary students stilllearning to sit still, young ele-mentary students physicallyand mentally cannot pay atten-tion to one thing for very long.Making lessons interactivehelps a lot, but how much thestudents retain is what is mostimportant, and if a lesson istoo long, their brains go onoverload. Párvulos throughthird-grade lessons should not be longer than 15- to 20-minutes, while the older kidscan go up to 30 or 40. Thisapplies to all types of lessons;mathematics, language,Healthy Schools, etc.
Positive reinforcement
. Getstudents to do their assign-ments by reinforcing goodwork out loud. If the studentsare supposed to draw their daily habits, and some stu-dents are not doing their part,walk to a working student andsay out loud how awesome
they are; ―Wow!! Freddy‘sdrawings are amazing! I‘m so
impressed! Great work 
Freddy! (high five!)‖ The dis-
tracted kids will now want thesame attention from you andwill get back to work in hopesof earning your praise. Allkids need and want positivereinforcement.
*Katie Noren-Yeagle is a HealthySchools PCV living in Aguacatán, Huehuetenango. She is a graduateof Linfield College in McMinn-
ville, Ore. with a bachelor’s de-
 gree in early childhood and ele-mentary education.
 
Teachers in Buxup, Jacaltenango, Huehuetenango act out techniquesfor how to deal with rowdy students without disrupting the lesson.
Try out Seño Katie’s suggestions (and share them with your teachers)
for keeping energetic students like these involved and on task.
 
 
Volunteer monkeys around with teachers and CTA
Page
3
 April/May
Letters to the Editor
So I am giving a taller toall of my teachers (about 25)to start the year off right. Inthis workshop, of course, wetalk about our fundamentalHealthy Schools themes. Iwrite a request to the CTA tocancel classes and explainwhat the taller is all about. Igive it to the CTA who inturn signs it, stamps it, andgives one approved letter toeach of the schools.All four of my schools, allof my teachers see the letter when he returns it approved.I see my teachers today atmy first school of the week and they are all compliment-ing me on the letter and areso amazed at my Spanish andmy ability to write such agreat letter and how difficultit must have been. I acceptgraciously the complimentseven though it's just a basicletter and I really don't seewhat the big deal is. Still I gohome feeling really goodabout myself and how I'vefinally won the respect of theteachers. Now that I've got-ten their attention it's going be a great year.Just out of curiosity I go back to my computer when Iget home and read over theletter again. It looks prettygood and I'm just about toclose it when I read, "la im- portancia que los estudianteslavarse las monos." And justfor clarification, that's"monos" not "manos"
 — 
theimportance that the studentswash their monkeys. Yep,their monkeys. Amazing. Iam so awesome. Really gottheir attention, alright. Wayto start off the year right.-
 Dana Weddle
,
Tecpán, Chimaltenango
 
Continued from page 1
Jareau “Just call him Jay”
Hall
,
 New York 
 He was an African Studies ma- jor at Colgate University and healready misses sushi. FYI: thereare a couple sushi restaurants in
Antigua, but I‘ve yet to try them,
and as his biggest pet peeve is being around large groups of drunken foreigners, he may wantto avoid AntiguaLandia. Thissoccer player and
24
 
fan joinedthe Peace Corps because he
―enjoyed the idea of living in
another country and being ableto contribute to its develop-
ment.‖
 
Bethany Harmon
,
Washington
Like me, she survived the col-lege experience in Spokane, soGuatemala should be no prob-lem (I kid, I kid). Her worst jobwas held at age 12 when shespent a winter counting bee lar-vae in a cold warehouse for $3
an hour, so she‘s been prepped
for those chilly temperatures
she‘ll be experiencing in Santa
Polonia. Her favorite book is acollection of poems called
Sail-ing Alone Around the Room
, byBilly Collins.
Amanda “Manders” Mayhew
,
Colorado
She‘s already missing dairy products, but here‘s a word to
the wise: lactose intolerance hasa tendency to creep up on unsus- pecting Peace Corps volunteers,so proceed with caution whenyou finally get a chance to con-sume some quality cheese. Her  biggest pet peeve is people whothink they know more than youabout everything. But that
shouldn‘t be a problem here in
Guatemala, because as we allknow, all PCVs are experts inmedicine, agriculture, engineer-ing and, well, just about every-thing. Her mechanical bull re-
cord is five seconds and she‘s
going to have to buy somewarmer clothes, because shethought it would be hot here allthe time.
Adrian “Adeedo” Ortega
,
California
 
His favorite quote is, ―Go with
confidence towards your dreams. Live the life you have
always imagined,‖ and that‘s presumably what he‘s trying to
do by joining Peace Corps. He plays soccer, beach volleyball, baseball and surfs, and he got
his kicks from his Speak ‗n‘
Spell as a child in the 80s.
Adeedo says he‘s going to miss
 Nana most from home and rec-ommends the book 
Cien Años deSoledad 
.
Crystal Sand
,
California
 The Political Science/SpanishLiterature major joined PeaceCorps for an adventure and is ingood company with her fellowCalifornians as she already
misses all things Trader Joe‘s.
Make sure your nose is clean if 
you‘re hanging out with Sand, because she can‘t stand nose
 
Continued on page 4
of 00

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