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Melchor Ocampo Elementary, Grades 4-6 Journey North tries to visit this school season after season, however, somethimes the rocky trail leading to it into the mountains makes it sometimes not possible to transit. This season, it has been possible to get to it. The school is located into the mountains facing up to “El Rosario”. State assistance has recently supported this school with furniture, painting and some construction. The families of children living in this community are rather low-income. These children may reach middle-high school level if possible, and hardly high school level, since neither are available at their community. Walking to the nearest community would take them more than one hour. High school would be practically out of possibility, since going down to Angangueo town is not possible. There is not public transportation available to do it. Parents having a car at home, would hardly be able to afford expenses for daily driving them back and forth to and from school. Parents mostly live from agricultural activities. On the other side, their location is so spectacular thinking about ecoturism activities, for example. Unexplainably, this community has no relation whatsoever with activities related to Monarchs and its sanctuaries, however, their forests’ preservation play a determinant role in the sheltering belt of the core área to overwintering sites. The experience visiting this school today has been specially compensating. Both children and teachers have welcomed Journey North with great excitment, really happy to have been visited by the program, since their rather far location and innaccesibility make them feel sometimes excluded from certain local events and life in general.Children learn about Monarchs needing to escape from the terribly cold winters in the north to shelter themselve in our warm winters in the Oyamel forests in central México, our region, unique in the world for being the Monarchs’ overwintering sites. As Estela explains how a Monarch is born, they get simply taken away at hearing about the many eggs laid by Monarch moms to the incredible hatching stages and the complex process of methamorphosis! They can only ask a few questions, since it all sounds as magic to them! Students, excited to know that they will get their symbolic Monarchs from Canadian and North-American students, choose to first write their own letters and to get their surprises and gifts until the end of the visit! Students enjoy so much sharing their knowledge on their local hábitat to their counterparts in USA and Canada. They get thrilled to reflect about the kinds of butterflies we have in the region, starting by the Monarch butterfly!; beautiful birds, other polinators and their importance, local plants, medicine plants, mushrooms, different types of trees at the forest where Monarchs overwinter… hours seem not enough to go from topic to topic! Estela encourages them to “feel highly proud of the wonderful natural surrounding in which they live, which should be preserved as a treasure for their future life and that of every plant and animal species, including, of course Monarch Butterflies! Over the years, children decorate their letters by hand-drawing and coloring them; it would not be possible to get a postal card, a nice stamp, a magazine image, a photo from their own village, since, they should not have a way to get a printed image, internet service, a printing machine at home, neither an stationary service to buy some extra supplies. Parents buy for them what is really basically needed at school according to their financial possibilities. When students open their Ambassador Butterflies they find out that their letters have come from different states in the United States: Tennessee, Minnessota, North Carolina… just to mention a few of them! Their gifts as signal of accepting with high enthusiasm the responsibilite passed over to them on caring as most as possible their natural surrounding and beautiful Oyamel forests, unique among the ones existing in our country!. At breaktime marbles game is one of the most played by boys. Our public elementary education does not include learning to play a musical instrument, neither arts class; this might be one of the great weaknesses of our educational systems. Children rather stay too quiet and sitting at the classroom working on their books and notebooks. Teachers, on the other side may not have such training as to include additional activities on their own, so that our children develop other skills implying moving, creating, etc., however, some teachers try to do this and introduce once in a while a hand-made activity, like making their own piñatas previous to Christmas time. A unusual natural event occurred here during the earthquake in the central part of Mexico this past September. The school has a natural well (which lately got a cement cover). The well is 7-8 meters deep. Normally it is full, but last September 19th., after the earthquake in México city (the community is located at around 150 kilometers distance from México City), the water in the well practically disappeared within 24 hours. An astonishing fact.
Butterflies Received South Side Elementary, Johnson City, TN
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