Our First Day

After waiting out an early morning torrential rain, we were off to the school to greet our participants and begin the first week of the program. The opening ceremonies were short but meaningful with everyone joining in the singing of both the Belizian and Canadian national anthems. Members of the local Rotary Club and Ministry of Education gave heartfelt speeches and expressed their gratitude for the support and contributions of the Rotary Clubs in District 5370 and Rotary Club of Red Deer. Dangriga is also one of the sites that will be benefitting from the Belize Playground Project this year and the Rotary Club of Dangriga also gave thanks for District 5370's support to build a new playground in Dangriga.

It seems a bit funny to have those first day of school jitters in the middle of summer vacation, but those jitters were soon put to ease when we met with our over 50 enthusiastic principals and 17 excited learning coaches. Sandra and I had a lot of fun team teaching the CAPS material to our group of learning coaches and I am so excited to continue working with this group over the next few days.

One of the quotations that was used to open the ceremonies was "Don't just belong - participate." This quotation really resonated with me both as a Rotarian and a teacher and I think it really captures what we are doing here.

Stan