Pollito... Chicken

The week after the visit to the estancia, Max, Andrea (another trainee from our group) and I arranged to go back to teach the kids about business. Since they are all little entrepreneurs that sell in the streets we wanted to teach them about good customer service, how to handle money, and to have a clean physical appearance. We prepared our “charla”(talk) with visual aids, leading questions, and fun activities to help reinforce the learning.

The kids were really attentive and participative. At the end of the lesson when we asked what had they learned, they could explain why smiling was important when dealing with customers, why keeping the money in a safe place is wise, and why being clean and selling a clean product is a good idea. Before going there, we had been told they were problem kids, difficult to deal with… but we had seen differently.

Before leaving, I taught them a song that I learned in elementary school that had helped me learned English. It starts: Pollito…Chicken; Gallina… Hen; Lapiz… Pencil; y Pluma… Pen. They all sang loudly and excitedly and promised to practice to sing it to me next time we met again (we had already signed up to join them on Saturday to sell items to raise funds for the school, and would be seeing them then).

We said our goodbyes and headed out. As we walked away we could hear in the distance a group of kids singing Pollito…Chicken...