At the center of Nueva San Ysidro is the school. It runs from first to sixth grade, and most of the children in the community go to school there. They don't really have access to any kind of formal education after sixth grade, and some don't even make it that far. Classes are Monday thru Friday, 7:00 to 12:00. The teachers live elsewhere and hike in to work everyday. The school teaches the basics: reading, writing, arithmetic. But it's also involved in a language recovery project. The people in Nueva San Ysidro speak Spanish, but are Maya-Chorti. Their native language, Chorti, has largely been lost. One of the teachers at the school is teaching the children a little Chorti, in an effort to preserve their cultural identity through language. A pretty cool idea.
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