For fifteen years, between 2002 and 2017, Princeton Friends School enjoyed a meaningful sister-school relationship with Escuela Miguel Vasquez, an elementary school in a working class neighborhood of Guatemala City. Each year a contingent of students, parents, and teachers would spend a week at the school, teaching lessons, carrying out projects, and making friends. In 2010 I participated in this trip.

From Monday through Thursday, I had the privilege of working with the Miguel Vasquez 6th grade for two periods each day, teaching them to play a few simple tunes on the recorder and to read a little music. The students – 30 of them seated in tight rows in an overcrowded classroom – were an absolute delight. They received the recorders I issued to them with enthusiasm, they followed the instructions I gave in pidgin Spanish with good humor, and throughout the week they could be heard practicing “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” a tune that was completely new to them, in the spaces between their other classes. On Friday the class performed what they’d learned for the rest of the school, not only “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” but also a traditional Guatemalan tune and a vocal rhythm piece in three parts that involved counting from one to eight, repeatedly, in English. Finally they sang the Guatemalan national anthem – hands over their hearts – to accompaniment offered by Alice on recorder and me on flute. The pride in their faces at the conclusion of their program I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

Two of the most powerful lessons that I learned in the course of the week happened in my recorder class, and both related to the lack of resources at the Miguel Vasquez School. At the beginning of my first class on Monday, I needed to draw the treble clef on the white board to explain the scale to the students. Finding no marker in the tray at the base of the white board, I turned to Estuardo, the 6th grade teacher, to ask for one. He nodded agreeably, reached into his desk drawer, and pulled out a small plastic box. Prying off the lid, he removed one of (maybe) three markers contained in the box and tested it on a piece of paper. Finding it faint, he removed a plug at the end of the marker, opened a bottle of red ink, and proceeded to pour ink into the marker to refill it. He replaced the plug, wiped off the marker and the recapped bottle of ink with a paper towel, and handed me the marker. As I received it I was struck by the fact that this is not what we do, in our school, when a marker runs out. We toss it, and then visit our supply closet for a replacement. When the supply closet runs out, we place another order to Staples. And we don’t even consider the fact that a white board marker might be a coveted teaching tool somewhere else in the world. I returned home wondering whether we might refill our own markers.

Another similar story…On the second day of classes I realized that my students needed the sheet music to “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” which I had neglected to include in the folders I’d brought for them. I kicked myself for not considering this before leaving home, as the Miguel Vasquez School has no photocopy machine for running off 30 copies of anything. Upon realizing that heading out across Guatemala City in search of a photocopier was logistically prohibitive, I settled on the solution I’d observed throughout the school during the previous day. I asked the students to take out a piece of paper and a pencil, I drew a treble clef and the music to “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on the white board and asked them to copy it, I squeezed between the rows of chairs to cast an eye over each student’s paper and correct a few, and then together we played the music. At the conclusion of the lesson I realized that the act of copying had, in fact, helped the students learn the notes on the staff – far more effectively than if I had handed out photocopies of the music. This is a truth that we have forgotten. While it certainly can be argued that the tools of technology open all of us to educational opportunities never before imagined, it can also be argued that the ease of technology – as in photocopying a lesson that could, given a little bit of time, be copied out directly by students – actually strips away opportunities for learning that have been enjoyed by generations of students around the world.

Jane Fremon
March 2010