Also in Mexico and this makes the children of the Gonzales family come to the rancho at Punta Boca del Salado.
To be with the grandparents and to enjoy the free life in nature, with the animals and with each other.
There are the three children of Norma: Edgar, Rocio and Angelito.
The two children of Christina: Antonio and Lucretia.
And the four children of Juan Manuel: José, Manuela, Juan and Angelito.
Some of the kids take an ATV-stroll.
These kids immediately after arrival at the rancho Punta Boca del Salado asked:
“Miguel, can we have classes again, please?”
When children ask for teaching, it is a privilege to be invited but a duty as well to make time and give the best to answer their request.
Hence, every morning and every evening for over an hour, the students come together under the large palm leaves roof around the big table, equipped with pen and paper.
They themselves decide what will be the teaching and the level of difficulty.
They also need to decide themselves who will be the first to start.
In other words, a lot of responsibility is asked to be carried by themselves: the teacher is not going to be a policeman or dictator.
This is an important element of the pedagogic strategies employed.
They must negotiate with each other to reach compromises.
To give an example, in the beginning they all would attack the teacher demanding to be the first to get attention.
It was a turmoil and chaotic situation.
So, when it calmed down it was explained that there might be a better way to start the class each time.
The suggestion was made that they should talk to each other to come up with a solution.
When children are given this kind of responsibility, they know very well how to come to a compromise.
In this case they decided that the first one will be another student each time.
And now there is no more problem.
Because of the difference of age and development, the education is individual.
Each student gets specific challenges to answer to.
This is the fun part for the teacher, because it requires a lot of creativity to come up with inspiring and interesting tasks for the five students.
The son of Juan Manuel named Juan, but whom everybody calls “El Gollo”, is only 5 years old but wants of course to participate in the class as well.
He is very interesting to teach because it is on a high level of abstraction.
The teacher makes a simple drawing for him: like a triangle with a circle in it.
He is requested: “Juan, please finish this drawing!”
Pretending there is a thing like finishing a drawing like that…
So, after some hard work, Juan returns to the teacher with some crazy and weird result due to his additions.
The teacher carefully studies this while Juan is nervous if he will earn a point every student gets when a task is performed correctly.
Eventually the ordeal comes: “Juan, this is exactly right! You get one point!!”
The young boy radiates happiness you may see when on the moon.
And asks for another drawing to finish.
Of course not each time his result is awarded with a point.
Sometimes, to keep things with the feet on the earth, he is asked: “Is this the correct way to finish the drawing?”
And he looks in the eyes of the teacher and moves his head in a “no”-sign.
He then is asked to do a better job, comes back later with something more intriguing to obtain the so desired point.
Juan is wild about coming to the classes.
Rather exceptional for a 5-year old boy.
But he experiences feelings of being able to accomplish something and to be able to join the others.
In other words, he feels good about himself and his abilities and that is exactly the purpose of the pedagogic strategy.
At the end of the class Juan is asked how many points he got.
It takes him awhile and most of the time with the help of the others he proudly announces: “I have 6 points!”
The teacher shows to be deeply impressed with such a result and asks Juan to go to his father to show him the drawings and the points.
Juan runs to his Dad, who is the sweetest we can imagine, and proudly shows him his results.
Juan Manuel, his father, understands what is going on and takes his son in his arms, hugs him and tells him what a great job he has been doing in the class.
For Juan to come back to the others and the teachers to explain how happy his father is.
These are probably fundamental experiences for a child.
Building blocks for the rest of his life to be constructed on.
With the others the same methods are applied.
It has been explained to the students that they are all champions.
That there is competition because of the awarded points for every job well done, but that every one of them is the best.
So, at the end of the class they compare the results and ask the teacher to write on their paper how many points they have in total and what rank they have.
So, the system is used that each is a champion and winner but that the difference is that one can be the winner with 6 points and another a winner with 4 points.
They accept this and feel proud of their achievement.
Of course there is this option of influencing who is the winner with the highest points.
Because they get individual assignments.
If one is getting too many points, or has already got the most points a class before, the level of difficulty of the new challenge is raised.
So the student fails and gets a zero.
In this way “miraculously” each class sees a different student with the most points as a session before.
Fortunately the students have not figured this out yet.
Besides mathematics and drawings, also English is taught.
They write simple sentences in Spanish and learn how to say this in English.
“Grandmother is in the kitchen”.
“I go to the beach”
This gives them tremendous pleasure as well and contrary to mathematics they can exercise their English among themselves during the day.
To assist children in their process of growing and developing is a fantastic thing to do.
It is exhausting because it draws all energy available.
But this is replaced by a feeling of satisfaction only known from making a convincing photograph.
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