October 20, 2011
Dear Friends:
All around we sense the monarchs butterflies should arrive to our region soon. We now have the bright sunny days, and ice-cold mornings and evenings, typical at this time of year. As we wait, our children are in a rush to attend school, and townspeople are preparing to greet monarchs and tourists!
This week, I'd like to tell you more about our school life. The school year starts late-August and lasts until late June. We have three vacations during the year:
- two weeks off at Christmas
- two weeks off at Easter
- and about six weeks off in the summer.
Children usually begin school when they are 3-4 years old. They attend school until they complete the 3rd year in high school at age 18. Not all students in our region will go to high school, however. If a family lives in the mountains, for example, they would have to pay too much for daily transportation. Also, sometimes rural children will help work on the family farm instead. We have many schools in our region, in fact, each winter I visit about 25 elementary schools to distribute your symbolic Monarch Butterflies.
Graduation from one level to the next is a big celebration. A child graduates after 3 years of kindergarten term; 6 years of Elementary school and 3 years of Mid school and 3 more years of High school; So we graduate 4 times during our life in our region.
It is very exciting for us to finish a term. After several years at one school, we face the experience of a big and exciting change in terms of friends, teachers, knowledge and our own culture.
I will tell you about the very traditional way our children graduate:
Since we are a Catholic community almost entirely, our graduation day starts with a service at church in the morning. The whole family attends. If possible, the service is accompanied with a choir and guitars.
When the service ends, a mariachi is awaiting outside the church playing our most traditional songs. The musicians accompany us to the school facilities for the official ceremony. There we render honor to our flag and nation, sing our national hymn, and then receive our graduation certificates. While all this is happening, our indigenous dances are performed by our lower classmates.
Last, we say good bye to our school, classmates and teachers. Most of us cry, since we are by culture, very emotional and tried to our family and community nucleus.
We continue our studies and living with our families until we finish high school. During those three years, we learn what we call an "oficio", in different branches, to be able to work at a technical level. (This means being able to install electricity or water system in a house, carpentry, led/copper manufacturing, computers, secretarial, dressmaking, hair-doing habilities, etc.). Once again, after many years of being cancelled at schools, technical mining will be a choice. By the way, this was MY speciality and diploma, believe it or not. This involves a special agreement, between the mining company and the school to allow us to go down into the mine to make practising in there!!!
Many of us will not have the opportunity to attend university because that means going to live in big cities and not all of our families have such possibilities to provide to us. However, we think that our bringing up is so rich in values and courage to face up to life, that we are very proud of fighting hard to look up to the future.
Many greetings from your local reporter in Angangueo,
María Estela Romero
Angangueo, Michoacán.
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| Angangueo is in the mountains, near the largest monarch sanctuaries. | The monarch sanctuaries are in central Mexico. Can you find Angangueo on this map? |
Estela Romero reports from Angangueo
One of the many schools in the region.
Graduation day starts with a service at church.
A mariachi playing our most traditional songs.
We say goodbye to our school, classmates, and teachers
