EXPERIENCE AT THE ZOLHER SCHOOL, LA ZURZA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
My life experience encourages me to work for the neediest children in this beloved country, the Dominican Republic. “Let’s learn together” is my great contribution to education in the Dominican Republic. Because we are all learning, besides, every child has the right to receive education and thus make known what he or she thinks. I consider it a blessing from God to be part of the team of formators in the Solher school as a teacher of Human and Religious Formation.
As Missionary Dominican Sister of the Rosary and a teacher of Human and Religious Formation, I believed that I could teach the children from what I have learned and from what I was taught in the university. But, little by little I was releasing my scheme that I had to teach, because they taught me that there is no teaching method superior to the learning capacity of the human mind. I was taught that when my method fails, when what I have planned does not produce the desired learning, I cannot say that the child who is having difficulty is the one who is watching me. I must consider modifying my method for a better human growth. For this reason, I thank each and every one of the students whom I have had the pleasure of teaching, but at the same time they were the ones who taught me how to teach. I affirm, the children are the best teachers because they show a lot of patience and, above all, the value of forgiveness and tenderness. They also taught me to listen, but to listen is to ask myself why they say what they say, why they do what they do. I can tell you that it has been a challenge for me to be a teacher of Human Formation in a neighborhood where the children are almost all immersed in the violence, poverty, lack of meaning and drug addiction which is a reality in most families.
However, I have managed to bring smiles to the children who sometimes arrive saddened by the reality they live in. Currently, I am still trying to open minds to listen to them, to awaken their curiosity. In Human Formation we talk a lot about God and human growth, but the most challenging thing is to talk about a God who loves everyone, it is shocking to talk to the children about this God while many of them do not receive love in their homes because their families are divided, also to talk about how God cares and protects, while they constantly live a lot of insecurity, poverty and hunger. We know that the experience of God is experiential. In the midst of the hard reality, I try to help and allow them to believe in themselves, to be the creators of something good and to be aware of it, to participate with the world and to dialogue with the universe using clarity, commitment, work and love.