Susan Schmidt has used her upcoming trip to Guatemala to visit a nephew in the Peace Corps as a way to make her fifth-graders at Irving Pertzsch Elementary in Onalaska aware of how hard the living is in other parts of the world.
Teacher's trip to Guatemala turns into student's lesson in global assistance
Caption: Susan Schmidt, at right, has used her upcoming trip to Guatemala to visit a nephew in the Peace Corps as a way to make her fifth-graders at Irving Pertzsch Elementary in Onalaska aware of how hard the living is in other parts of the world. Photo by Paul Sloth
By PAUL SLOTH/Staff writer
Ask any of Susan Schmidt's fifth-graders to find Guatemala on a map and they'll do it, eagerly. Ask them to find the place their teacher will visit during Christmas vacation and they are hard put to find it, because it's usually not on any maps.
Schmidt, a teacher at Irving Pertzsch Elementary in Onalaska, isn't teaching her students about the Central American country as part of any traditional curricular unit. In fact, she's learning about the place right along with them.
She'll learn even more about the country when she travels there later this month to visit her nephew, Brian Smith, who has spent the past two years there working with the Peace Corps.
What started out as a vacation has turned into an opportunity for Schmidt to teach her students about the importance of helping people in need.
"We're just trying to do stuff this year without any reward attached," Schmidt said. "Just because it's the right thing to do."
Because of that, she'll be carrying several pounds of donated items, some her nephew requested, many he is not yet aware of.
She didn't plan it that way, but the work her nephew is doing and the people he is working with motivated her and in turn motivated her students. "It didn't enter my mind until he started sending pictures," Schmidt said. "It's kind of grown from there."
As her students looked at pictures of young children not much older than themselves, they decided they wanted to help. Many got a chance to see children from another part of the world who live without a lot of the things they are used to in Onalaska.
"It makes you appreciate what you have," said Clare Platt, a student in Schmidt's class.
While Schmidt and her students have been looking through guide books, only one showed the tiny village of Chisec, where Schmidt will spend 10 days. She is traveling with her friend Andrea Van Sickle, an Onalaska School District nurse.
The remote mountain village is located in the district of Alta Verapaz in central Guatemala, 183 miles north of the capital, Guatemala City.
Nearly 75 percent of the population is illiterate and extremely poor, earning approximately $100 U.S. annually. The region was the latest massacre site during the country's nearly four-decades long civil war.
It's probably not first on a person's list of travel destinations, but Schmidt is looking forward to the experience. Not only to take a trip unlike any she's ever taken, but to see what her nephew has been doing with the Peace Corps.
While helping to create a system to provide clean water to the village, Schmidt's nephew also helped organize a soccer league for village children.
Smith asked his aunt to find donations for the soccer league. She will bring 12 donated soccer balls with her. She also found shirts the children can wear for uniforms.
Dan Wick, Onalaska's parks and recreation director donated leftover shirts from the city's summer programs for Schmidt to bring with her. Now she is looking for any area businesses that would be interested in donating shorts to complete the uniforms.
Once her students realized how little the children in Chisec had, they decided to start collecting school supplies and toys to donate.
"It's turning out to be quite a project involving a lot of people," Schmidt said.
