Sao Mai Structure

Growing up, my grandma always told me that an organized room is an organized mind. For the longest time it went into one ear and out the other because I thought she was wanted to make sure that my room was clean just in case anyone ever came over that they do not think that I live in a pig sty, that I was lazy or that my family didn't raise me right (BTW: I love mi familia--I'd do anything for them as long as I don't lose sight of who I am...it's unlikely that it'll ever come down to that). Lol.

Anyways, this week at Sao Mai, Anh Thai, Nancy, Lan, and myself were finally able to meet to talk about our final project. YAY!!! After working at the organization for about a month and a half we've gained a lot of insights about the organization and we think that there are some possible changes that we'd like to see happen. As I might have mentioned before Sao Mai is a well organized and ran organization dedicated to help and teach children with mostly psychological disabilities. During the morning the parents feed their children and drop them off at school. The day starts out with a few children sing-alongs. Next, they dedicate 30 minutes to an activity where the child has to pick out the picture of themselves from a pile of pictures and then they would trotroduce themselves to the class (the tracheebuaually take the child's hand and speak as if they were the child so that they can be conditioned to understand what it meant). Then came play/exercise time and the day continued with every 30 minutes being a different activity. Everything that happens in Sao Mai is structured and they have a pretty strict time schedule. It so happens that on Friday though, one of the senior teachers decided to skip learning/classroom time because it was Friday Nd she wanted to go home.

Structure is important because without it, some teachers or not know what to do or does not want to do anything that might make them tired. Also, these 30 minute intervals are also helpful in the sense that the child doesn't get bored becuase of their short attention span. When I first came to Sao Mai, I was closed minded. I thought that the organization was unorganized, ineffective and inefficient. Although I still do not believe in hitting children, I understand why the teachers do what they do and what goes through their mind when they do that, I believe that the classroom is well organized and there was a lit of though and planning put into the program and this is due to the effort of the higher people of the organization.

I learned during pledging that "poor planning promotes poor performance" and I think that that phrase does not apply to this organization.

Tre em la van hoa,
Tre em la hanh cong,
Tre em la tuong lai,
Sao Mai Ton Tai Vi Tre Em...Sao Mai Muon Doi!

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