Week 5- The Mosquitos are Alive!!!

Well hello there!

Here we are, another week later, still trying to understand where all the time is flying. We had another jam-packed week, filled with non stop lesson planning and teaching. This week, we had the pleasure of starting at yet another new school, The Business School. With 3 new classes, we jumped right into mental health and mental illness, focussing on stigma and the importance of reaching out for support. Following with this trend, on our weekly news segment, we spoke of depression and suicide. While it is a difficult topic, our commitment to starting the conversation and spreading awareness continues to grow.

Andrew teaching a Grade 6 class about peer pressure

At our other schools, all teaching pairs taught a variety of lessons including puberty, sexual health, menstruation and pregnancy, STIs, bullying, peer pressure and self esteem. Over the past few weeks, we have loved watching classes open up, as we have seen through increased participation in discussions and the desire to ask questions.

The ladies of both initiatives reunited!

On Friday, we connected with the Ministry of Public Health's Mental Health Unit. While it is only 4 weeks old, they are already making great strides to providing the best possible resources, information and awareness to the Guyanese public. We are excited to watch this unit unfold, are looking forward to following its developments and implementations. Later that afternoon, the four of us made our way to Berbice where we were reunited with our other half of the initiative. We had the honour of watching the Berbice PEs teach one of their weekly classes, and can't wait to use some of the techniques and teaching points we took note of in the rest of our classes! It was great to see how the other half of QHO Guyana's initiative is engaging with their community, and we loved meeting some of their friends from the Letter Kenny Youth Space! We headed back for Georgetown with a weekend of memories, new ideas, and one million new mosquito bites.

While it is crazy to think that this experience is coming to an end, we are excited to head into our last full week of teaching back here in Georgetown.

Still sweating,

The Georgetown Crew
Shayna, Andrew, Grace + Becca