Profesora Mariela

I'd like to take the time to write about a teacher who really makes me feel like my time here has been worthwhile. There are many days when I just feel completely frustrated with my work, when the students just aren't paying attention, and when it seems like none of my work with the teachers is getting through to them. For example, spending three months tending a tree nursery, finally transplanting the trees in the schools, and then having them fumigate the lawn just weeks after, killing almost every single one of the trees, is not something that motivates you to continue with your service, living in a foreign country, away from your family and friends, for over two years. And then there's Profesora Mariela, without whom I would feel completely deflated.

Just to give you a little bit of a background, Mariela is an independent 25 year old, has been teaching for 10 years (no this is not a typo), has a 7 year old son, is divorced, and is college educated. She is one of the few teachers with whom I work who tells me how appreciative she is for our work together and is really applying some of the techniques I've shared. In her school, the kids are already keeping and mantaining their own compost, and plan on continuing with the vegetable garden and reforestation campaigns year after year. They've stopped fumigating the lawn, and instead are adopting more environmentally friendly ways of maintaining the school (cutting the grass, by hand, with machetes...tedious but effective). She tells me, too, that her son takes my class so seriously. He goes up to people on the street who are burning their trash and tells them that they're polluting the environment haha. He carries his garbage with him in his backpack instead of tossing it out the bus window like oh so many Nicaraguans. And he started separating his organic and inorganic trash to start making a home compost. When you ask him questions about the class, he spits out the information like a dictionary, word for word, like it was presented in the class. It's really cute :).

So thank you Profe Mariela and her son, David. Because of you, my work here has been worthwhile.