IST, VGR, PCV, Oh My!
23–02 EDU IST Recap
Written by Jarod with contributions and edits from Rosario
Welcome, one and all, to the rivetting rehash of all of the shenanigans and work done during the EDU 23–02 three month IST, short for In-Service Training. It was a great little rally to get together, swap stories about our first months in our respective communities, reflect on our progress, and sharpen our skills for a successful rest of service.
A few weeks ago, the 9 EDU 23–02 volunteers gathered from every corner of the country to combine all our powers to defeat Thanos. The furthest of us had to get there the day before to avoid the risk of missing the 6 am bus and then being an hour late to the pizza party Headquarters had in store for us. For those of us that did get there early, we had a lovely and restful night at the Bella Época.
The next morning, a few of us, headed by EDU 23–02 legend, Rosario, took a short field trip to the Biblioteca Infantíl y Juventíl República Dominicana. We highly recommend it for any nerds missing a proper library. They have several rooms filled with children’s books and a few areas, like the mathematics zone, that gave more of a children’s museum vibe. The librarians were great, with one taking the time to give us a full tour and tell us about upcoming workshops for educators.
TUESDAY- IST KICKOFF
We headed back to the Bella and got ready for the pizza party of the century. Almost all of us were there on time (*cough* Ify) and we all had a great time catching up with each other and some of the staff we hadn’t seen in months.
Tim kicked off our IST sessions with the importance of resiliency, where we watched a video of a baby bear successfully evade getting devoured by a puma… wildcat… bobcat maybe…. This was a good session to start off the workshop because it let us reflect and acknowledge all of the hard times we may have gone through in our first three months. Afterwards, we ended the day with a great presentation from PCV Gabby from the EDI Collective on discrimination at site: how to be an advocate for the students, community, and ourselves. We got to share some of the experiences at site that we noticed and we, as volunteers, can go back to site and be a positive example to the kids in our communities.
WEDNESDAY- IST MAIN EVENT
We got into the real meat of IST by starting off with 4+ hours of diagnostic presentations. We all got to learn exactly what we’ve been up to in our first three months apart from each other and it was fascinating. Some of us had a ton of data which made it hard to keep ourselves to our 15 minute time constraint. It looks like we’re all in schools that can use our help and it was inspiring to see what work has already been done (ideas WILL be stolen, trust that). It’s clear we’re working with some cute kids based on the photos and stories from the battlefield, and it was a treat to see how much everyone had improved on their Spanish. Not to toot our own horns, but we did a pretty good job.
After lunch, we came back together for some Volunteer Reporting and Grants (VRG) boot camp. This was helpful because most of us felt in-the-dark about this reporting thing that we are going to be doing every three months until the end of our service. Big shout out to the Paiges and PCVL Andrea for their presentations and the work that went into developing a spreadsheet that makes reporting SO MUCH SIMPLER. We were all pretty low energy after the diagnostics, so we didn’t engage much, but I feel like that is our EDU cohort’s brand at this point. Thankfully, we spent two days on the VRG stuff, so we got a second opportunity to let that information sink in. We are all going to know exactly what to do in two months when we submit our first VRG results and we won’t have any confusion 😀.
THURSDAY- IST DAY 3
We started the day with VRG stuff and we got to talk about deduplication (again, shout out to Paige Hopkins because I do feel like I could maybe explain what deduplication is to someone). This was interesting because I don’t know if any of us had worked with deduplicating data sets, so this presentation was very much needed. Some of us had trouble keeping up with the information so early in the morning (some of us were fighting some bad sushi eaten the night before), but I’m confident that some of the info will come back to us when we need it for our first reporting in April.
After Paige’s presentation, we got to the highlight of IST…
The Kahoot.
At that moment, we were no longer a cohort, we were enemies. No one was to be trusted. All of the bonds and experiences we had side by side fighting in the trenches of CBT were terminated. It was every volunteer for themselves. This was war. It was a tough, well-fought battle.
Naturally, Rosario ended up blowing all of us out of the water in a crushing defeat. She remembered things that the rest of us had somehow forgotten. I mean, how were we supposed to remember that VRG DIDN’T stand for Very Rigorous Graph? Or that Literacy Assessments were their own separate activity… or weren’t… meh who’s to say (this is a joke please don’t kill me).
Anyways, Jennifer and Louis had a tough act to follow. The Kahoot game took all of our energy (definitely was not because we were [REDACTED] or had eaten bad sushi). Country Director Jennifer talked about logistics on moving out of our host family’s houses and financially, what we should avoid (maybe don’t pay 6 months up front or get swindled by lawyer’s fees). Security Officer Louis followed that presentation by talking about the security side of moving out: be careful not to get electrocuted or catch things on fire, etc., and what his role is in helping us find a place. And in the event we do catch something on fire, we learned how to use a fire extinguisher. He also said something about a PASS… which maybe means pull, aim, squeeze, sweep? Oh well, luckily Louis will be visiting our respective apartment prospects when the time comes, just to double check so we don’t miss any glaring security issues.
After lunch, we had what I would call The Megan Wheeler Experience (™). PCV Megan talked about how she structures her tutoring sessions and gave us a ton of good ideas to have a productive tutoring session. We walked away with an idea or two we are going to use (This session was a huge help, thank you!!!).
Finally, as we were wrapping up the day, all of us tired and brains full, they saved the most fun and engaging activity for last… an hour long video lecture on literacy activities. To be fair, though, it was a solid video. Tons of good info that we will probably come back to at some point for ideas and advice on teaching kids literacy. And after having experience with the kids in our communities, it was a lot easier to see where these practices might fit in with our kids. Speaking for myself, I was like “Oh, that’s how I should go back and address that!” quite a few times while watching the video.
FRIDAY- PERMISSION TO STAY IN COUNTRY
On our final day, all we had left was our appointment at the immigration office. Luckily for us, this process only took 3.5 hrs and then 30 minutes to wait for our ride back. Maybe that is normal, but I think we all thought we would be having lunch at 2:00 or 3:00.
We commiserated over the fact that all of our ID pictures were… less than ideal. But Madalyn was the only one who didn’t share their photo with everyone (yes, this is a call out).
After that was done, we were free, gracias a Díos. We had the rest of the afternoon to do whatever we wanted. Some of us went to the Zona and some of us decided to crash at the Bella for a well deserved UberEats and nap. Little did we all know, however, Madalyn had a little surprise up her sleeve. Madalyn, being the responsible and considerate person that she is, was planning to take advantage of us all being in the Capital one final night and orchestrate an early birthday party for our fav Portlander, PCV Porter.
She enlisted the help of Rosario for cake duty and I was tasked with distracting him while they set up the party on the roof of the Bella. I accidentally fell asleep on the job but luckily woke up just in time. I gave him my little nonchalant routine when Porter discovered me asleep outside our room.
“Oh, we’re pregaming on the roof? Ok, I just need to go use the bathroom for 10 minutes, wanna wait for me?”
Classic stalling.
Then, when I thought the coast was clear, I saw PCV Candace and PCV Naijah running into the elevator to get up to the roof in a panic, so I stalled some more.
“Oh my water bottle’s empty, let’s go down to the first floor to fill it.”
He fell for that, hook, line, and sinker!
After that though, I get the message that everything is set to go and we head up to the roof. There to surprise Porter were the 23–02 cohort and a few other PCVs ready with a cake and some birthday music. PCV Madalyn had this to say, “I wanna shout out Rosario for going to get the cake, she was the brawn behind the operation. And now we know for next time, Porter’s favorite kind of cake is red velvet.” I think we were all grateful to be together and share in a nice night celebrating all that we accomplished this week. It was definitely a good release.
All in all, it was a good week to celebrate all of the work we had done and to think ahead for what we want to do in the future. We’ve got a clearer idea of what we want to do with our time here and the tools to make it happen. We want to shout out to all of the people that helped put it on, because it was needed to really set us up for the rest of the school year and beyond. Now, we just gotta make it to one-year IST 😀.
