In my plan for summer school, I had included the world map project as part of a geography/ecology/culture class. As we know, my summer school plans fell through but from its remnants would rise the world map as a project all unto itself! (Did that sound epic? I wanted it to sound epic). In just one week I, with my battalion of niños, drew, outlined, painted, outlined, labeled and sealed a 1 meter x 2 meter mural map of the world.
Among other challenges, I found myself working with kids much littler than I had hoped. This proved challenging in a few ways. 1) The little kids couldn’t help my transfer my 8X11” drawing of the world to a 1X2 meter. So I found myself penciling Patagonia onto the wall myself and 2) The little ones couldn’t quite reach Russia. Meaning that they were a little too short to paint the countries further north. So I found myself stretching to paint Finland while the little ones painted Oceania a nice deep blue.
I could have found myself getting frustrated by plans going awry but to be honest, drawing and painting lost in the solitude of my iPod ear buds was incredible soothing. I was feeling productive and not overly stressed. As everyone passed by, they would flatteringly comment on my artistic abilities, asking for drawing lessons. The kids showed up on days I asked them to and they kept me company on the days that they were unable to help. And at the end, we had this wonderful masterpiece.
But the real eye-opening experience of this project proved to be learning just how much (or how little) my students and fellow comuneros know about the world. Most everyone could point out Peru on our map but ask about anything beyond South America and they were lost. Mention Australia and they are looking towards Greenland. Most everyone knows that I am from the United States by this point but not many people knew where that was.
Maybe most interestingly was watching everyone realize how small Peru is in comparison with other countries of the world. To people of a small town in the Andes, the biggest world they know is Lima. But when they saw the size of China, Russia, Australia, Canada and the United States, their world views expanded with their idea of what it a country can look like. And since we painted with sticky oil-based paint, hopefully the map can give some geographical perspective to the kids and any passersby for a long time. And just like that I took some baby steps back in to feeling impactful.
Blessings.
