Well, it didn't go quite according to plan - but then again, what does?
Still - it was AWESOME!
In order to involve all of the 6th grade classrooms, 4-5 students from each classroom participated in this session (the rest of the students worked on social studies while we did this). We weren't actually able to make the connection to the group of people that were in the field that day working on the water tank for the villagers. However, we did get to spend about 40 minutes talking with a group of 11 year olds while they were in school. It took some patience due to connection issues (no internet in rural Guatemala, they had to connect through a satellite uplink, and it was a gray, cloudy day) and we had to have translators do a majority of the talking, but the kids got to learn about how different their lives are from those the same age in a different country.
For example, when our kids asked them what they like to do in their free time the boys responded futbol (soccer) and the girls responded with "What free time? We have to take care of our little brothers and sisters all day, plus do all of our chores before the sun goes down." No electronics, no video games or Nintendo DS to hang out with, just whatever they can find to amuse themselves.
They asked our kids what type of music we listened to and they had no idea who Usher, Kesha, Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber were (to which, Mr. Finn is totally cool with their being one place on this planet where 11 year old girls aren't going Bieber crazy).
A special thanks to Mr. Finn Sr. (or Mr. Mr. Finn as he is known as now) for helping set up this project and to Sandi - our expert who had been on this trip before and came into the classroom during our Skype call and gave the kids a ton of visuals and stories to help them understand a more complete story about what is really going on in Guatemala.
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