I've been back now for several days and today I am trying to finish my postings on Guatemala. Our primary purpose for this trip was to give a presentation at the literacy conference. Karen and I have been working on our topic for a little over a year and we even developed a book proposal. We pulled out a bit of it to become our presentation for this conference. Our presentation was titled "Inspiring Writers: The Drama Connection."
We presented for about two hours on Friday morning. Many of our 35-40 participants were pre-service teachers, normala students of approximately 16 or 17 years old who are studying to become teachers in a few years. Everyone seemed interested and all participated in our drama activities that showed how to involve students to improve their writing skills, specifically adding interesting details to their work.
We each had a translator, Waleska and Viviana. After a brief time Waleska suggested to me that I talk in shorter sentences, so I learned to do that. Things went very smoothly: We had spent quite a bit of time in the lobby the day before putting on finishing touches, going through the entire presentation and deciding for sure when each of us would talk - basically working on flow. We took exactly the right amount of time. Afterwards a few people asked to have our presentation on their flash drives, and a few others stayed around to talk. Our translators gave us many hugs. So sweet.
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