My friend Rosann Kent returned from Nicaragua in 2008 after a trip with Amigos for Christ, during which she and Allison Morris laid the foundation for the Bead Amigas project developed to provide a way for women living in poverty to improve their lives through art and entrepreneurship. She told me the story of a little boy she met in Villa Catalina who was about ten years old and in the first grade. His name is David and he followed Rosann around repeatedly saying "teach me and only me." As a teacher educator at Piedmont College, I could not get those words out of my head and started repeating them to colleagues, teachers, and future teachers with a wish for all of us that we would have students with such a deep hunger to learn - even while living in the midst of great poverty.

As those words continued to resonate, an idea emerged, and after much planning a group of eleven women from North Georgia left during the last week of January, 2009 to work from the Amigos for Christ headquarters in Chinandaga - some to continue the Bead Amigas work and some to explore the possibility of working with teachers in two rural schools in Villa Catalina and Los Rotarios. When we met the children, met with parents, visited the schools and had our first meeting with the teachers, we were overwhelmed with the challenges they faced - overcrowded classrooms, students without books or even the most basic supplies, lack of curriculum materials, low pay and many others. We found that we shared many of the same concerns - how do you help students who are having a hard time learning, how do you encourage parental support and involvement, and how do you motivate students to learn? What followed was a week of sharing, teaching, learning, and a deepening appreciation for the thirteen Nicaraguan teachers we named "Sister Teachers." We exchanged teaching and classroom management ideas and created materials to use in the classroom. We ate, sang, cried, and laughed together. We made lists of supplies needed in the hopes that we could somehow get them delivered. We all listened in awe as a fifteen-year-old girl spontaneously recited a long poem by the great Nicaragua poet Ruben Dario and showed us how children can learn from poetry as a form of expression, cooperation, and performance. We concluded the week by celebrating the work the teachers in these schools do under extraordinarily difficult conditions and left with the beginning of a plan to continue work together.

What was born of this time together is now Teach Amigas. Our goal to establish collegial, professional long-term relationships with teachers in two Amigos schools to share teaching ideas, develop materials and resources, and honor the work that the teachers do. Our goal is to fill the need of that child who is compelled to say "teach me and only me" and help develop schools that lift children out of poverty and overcome the lack of equity in Nicaragua. The way we have chosen to meet this is by supporting teachers who are fatigued, yet hopeful, that education is the instrument to help people move ahead and improve their lives and communities.

Jane McFerrin , Dean of Education
Piedmont College
Demorest, Ga.
jmcferrin@piedmont.edu
(Left picture:  Rossanna Canales translates for Jane McFerrin during Teach Amigas workshop in Nicaragua)