Peace Train!

So some exciting news!

As many of you know, my thesis last year was creating a Peace Education class for children in El Salvador. This January, my class will start!

It is amazing to see things start to pull together. So December (in addition to watching over the skate park and "Historical Memory" Museum and teaching an English class) my job is to get everything ready to go!

There are three parts to this preparation:

1. Review my thesis and the foundation (pedagogical and contextual foundations I already have) and pull together the units and day to day lesson plan, as well as all of the materials!

2. have weekly (or twice weekly) meetings with my equipo -- my team. I am asking five or six 7th 8th or 9th graders to be my helpers. They will each have two or three 1st or 2nd graders that they will mentor through the class. So, we will be meeting and talking about peace and why it's important. we'll go over the peace train problem solving steps. some of the other volunteers and i will likely do skits and they'll have to use the train to resolve the conflict. sweet!

3. build the peace train! out of wood! There's a young man here who knows about constructing things, so he is team leader/manager of the train constructing project. I asked him is he would work with a couple elementary school kids and he said yes but that he would also need one more big person. SO! There's a team of 4 who will be building the 6-car peace train.

I am so excited! And so can't hardly know where to begin! I'll be in Connecticut for Thanksgiving and am planning on moving into Barnes and Noble and finding pictures books of Peace Makers to read -- quizas in Spanish, but if not I guess I'll translate.

I have to talk to Peggy and figure out special guest peace makers from the community to invite in, as well as decide what our first "project" will be. The converting of my thesis from the theoretical to the actual!