School Visit

Nery Martinez

I need a school visit to round out the education chapter of the book. The Nehemiah Center recommends Mount Hermon school in Cedro Galan, a comarca (semi-rural area) just south of Managua.

I meet  with its principal Elsa Madrigal and its founder Daniel Aragon. I work to mask my sadness at what I hear:

·         Students do not have textbooks. Teachers have older teacher’s editions of the government-required curriculum. To learn about the current edition, they visit cyber-cafes to browse the Internet.

·         The school has 17 computers, but the electrical power can only handle 10 at one time. ___ students, grades 3 through 11 receive computer training, two per computer, jostling each other for control of the keyboard.

·         Teacher salaries are $120 per month.

·         Starting with six year olds, attendance drops in harvest season, as the students head for the fields. By age 10 students are on their own in a field, supervising younger siblings, while parents work elsewhere.

·         Each year since 2001, the school year begins with less than a month’s budget on hand.

Then Elsa and Daniel introduce me to Nery Martinez , a 23-year old, Mount Hermon teacher in third grade, who tells me her story. Nery was 13 when Mount Hermon school was born. Although she longed to go to school, she had not done so. Her single mother, who worked as a maid, could not afford the uniforms and school supplies. So Nery could  not read. Neither could the other children in Cedro Galan.

Daniel Aragon and his wife Darling did not plan to found a school. They had bought Cedro Galan land to build their home. But, working on that plot each weekend, they soon discovered the plight of neighborhood children. They did not mask their pain. They set to work: a Sunday school, a Bible club, and then a Mount Hermon, which began on the porches of two neighborhood families. Ten years later Mount Hermon has a primary school, and high school with a total of 196 students—and a multi-level preschool, as well.

When Nery finished Mount Hermon high school, she immediately started teaching third grade. She simultaneously began studying pedagogy at a Managua university and is now in her third year. 


Daniel prompts her to talk about her future. When she finishes her pedagogy study, she’d like to specialize in Spanish teaching at another university. Someday, she’d like to be a university teacher herself.

I ask where she thinks she would be without Mount Hermon.  “I would not have learned to read,” she says. She, too, might have become a single mother, a maid.  She might have been without dreams, hopes, vision. . .

Her vision lights mine. Daniel and Elsa are not indulging in a pity party. That party been mine alone. Their faces, like Nery’s, have been lit with hope.

And when Daniel takes me on a walk through the school grounds, I see with his eyes. I see children laughing, playing, learning. …

I see 196 reasons to hope.

…......

I finish this afternoon’s blog, dissatisfied.

It's longer than I'd like, and I have only told a fraction of the Mount Hermon story.

But it will have to do for now. After all, no one on the globe reads chapter-length blogs.

For the rest of this story, you will need to wait for the book. Stay tuned!