Starting School and Returning to Church

Monday was our first day in the school—Colegio De Los Amigos de San Ignacio. Sunday we spent in church. Three churches to be precise. One in San Salvador with Raul and Glenda and their families, one in Soyapango with Leslie, our first host, and then an evening service in the church here in San Ignacio, a municipal area of 7,000 about an hour north of San Salvador.

People continue to go out of their way to welcome us. Pastors greeted us from the pulpit in the churches, Raul (a key member of the El Savlador/NYM partnership whom I got to meet and start getting to know at Northern Yearly Meeting) introduced us to his congregation during the service, and Danny (our host in San Ignacio and who I believe is also president of El Salvador yearly meeting) introduced us during the service here.

On Sunday evening the school’s board and school director Juan Miguel had a meeting to welcome us. On Monday we had a lovely late start to our work at 9am. Freddy, one of the school’s board members, met us at Danny’s and walked us into to school. We had an orientation to English classes by the English teacher before leaping in. After observing and participating slightly in her two middle school classes we had a delicious lunch at the home of Juan Miguel and his family. Not to mention the chocobanana and coffee break a little later. Let me tell you, this is the good life.

The first sermon last Sunday was on God’s call to strengthen ourselves through Him. The pastor then invited Raul to speak. Raul and his wife Loyda recently had a baby who has holes in his heart. The open heart surgery he needs costs thousands more than they can possibly pay. Their faith has been sorely tested. Raul stood crying as he talked about their struggles last Sunday. Then we laid our hands on them and prayed. The depth of love and faith and trust was palpable. The fact that the real and present challenges to faith were shared made the service profound. 

On our first day Juan Miguel, the school director, spent some time asking us about education in the United States. It was fascinating for me, just having returned to teaching. Education in the US has changed a lot in the five years I’ve been away from the classroom. As I was teaching this year, I kept thinking about what I’d want for a mid-sized urban district (aka Minneapolis) if I got to make the decisions. Talking to him today got me thinking about it again. How would I keep the good parts of the changes (e.g. much more attention to individual student progress), eliminate the bad (high stakes testing and accompanying anxiety), and enhance the education of the whole student. Education is always swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other, and it seems we always throw out the baby with the bathwater, abandoning the good aspects of one approach for something totally different.

Education in the U.S. has become very data-driven. In some ways I like this. I see value in being extremely clear on what we’re teaching and expect students to learn. I think explicitness about what and how we learn is especially important in a multicultural environment. On the flip side, there’s a question about what kind of data we collect, the time spent collecting it, and what it means for the long term. Sarah recently read a study showing that the earlier students are introduced to algebra the higher the high-school dropout rate becomes. Nothing we measure now in the classroom would tell us this. I worry that we now focus so much on specific skills that we don’t support students in making larger connections and retaining what they learn. The biggest danger, I think, is focusing so much on where a child is in comparison to benchmarks that we take the joy out of learning. 

Conversations with friends at here and at home have me thinking similar thoughts about religion. Congregations and denominations rarely swing from one worship approach or set of beliefs to another, They are more likely to splinter. The FGC branch of Quakerism that Savannah and I come from and the evangelical approach of friends here are, in a sense, on  opposite sides of the Quaker tree. Friends here are more able to talk about their faith than most Friends at home are. I think this may come from frequent Bible reading, prayers and the expectation to be vocal. During our time at NYM Raul and Glenda commented on how our annual gatherings are open to all and include time for relaxation and reflection, how clearness and support committees can be profound, and how our style of silent worship combined with vocal ministry was a deep way to experience worship. Raul talked about how he’d incorporated times of silent worship after his time with Friends in the U.S. I know I’ll bring back lessons in hospitality. I think the fact that this exchange and relationship has been building over 10 years helps it be the opposite of the swings in education and the debates over interpretation and doctrine that can split denominations. A slow but steady opening to new ways of experiencing Spirit with a slow but steady tug on our individual and corporate spiritual lives.

For more frequent updates and another point of view on the same experiences, check out Savannah's blog at http://savannahbug.blogspot.com.