Starting in mid-May, Sandy starting working as a math tutor at Sagrada Familia, the teen orphanage, as well as at San Lucas which is a school covering elementary and secondary levels. He has been working with secondary students. There are extensive differences between American and Peruvian educational practices and resources. He has been trying to do more observing rather than criticizing of the differences and has a lot to learn in the months ahead. His normal schedule is 3 mornings per week at San Lucas and 4 afternoons per week at Sagrada Familia.
Elementary grades go from 1-6 followed by 5 years of secondary studies. There is no middle school concept here. Most graduates are 16-17 years old. Admission to a university is very competitive and less than 10% of the applicants pass the exams to get admitted.
Several of the older teens at the orphanage are doing vocational training during the week and doing a special program on Saturdays to prepare for something similar to a GED diploma. They still have some needs to review math topics to pass their exams. We'd like you to meet a few of these teens. We'll try to feature others on future blogs.
This is Jose who attends chef training every morning. He is a very pleasant and polite young man who is doing great work with picking up ideas of geometry like the Pythagorean Theorem and similar triangles. He is catching up quickly.
Sandy is working here with Giovana who started cosmetology school earlier this year. But here we are reviewing the geometry of quadrilaterals. She has just one more year of high school to wrap up her diploma.
Victoria and Marta are in 5th grade at San Lucas, even though they are 13. We have been working on mastery of multiplication facts and on order of operations.
Sandy is seen here assisting kids with algebra in Profesora Shelly's 4th year algebra class. Shelly, who is in her upper 20s, is a good teacher, very knowledgeable in math. You can see the classrooms are rather plain with just a few biology posters on the walls. It's all very low-tech with just a single whiteboard at the front of the room.
Profesora Juana teaches mathematical reasoning and physics. Sandy works with her 3rd and 4th year math reasoning classes on Fridays.
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