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Happy New Year! Today is 11 Ak’bal 1 Pop and we decided to wait until today to post this month’s blog. Spring has arrived, and a new day is dawning, with hope on the horizon that we will finally end this pandemic. I was fortunate to be able to receive my second dose of the vaccine, which became available to educators last month, and it is seeing vastly increasing distribution in the United States, where 148 million people so far have at least received one dose, which is 45% of the population. By comparison, in Mexico, 6 million people have received at least one dose, which is only about 5% of their population. In Belize, about 20,000 people have received one dose, which is also 5% of their population. In Guatemala, some 98,000 people have received one dose, which is only 0.59% or their population. We hope that equitable vaccine distribution will greatly expand in the near future for our friends and family around the world. It cannot come soon enough.
Given the unknown time frame for vaccine distribution, and the current restrictions on public gathering, we do not yet know when it will be safe to continue with face-to-face classes and conferences. Even with increased vaccine distribution, in my own school district, we have already decided to keep our campus closed this fall, due to the inability to know whether our students will be fully vaccinated by that time.
We are adapting to these ongoing circumstances, and there has been a great increase in the availability of online learning using platforms like Zoom. MAM would like to support and encourage the creation and distribution of online learning, which we hope to implement soon. As an example, this month, I would like to call attention to the wonderful presentation given by Archaeologist Memo Kantún for the Museo Palacio Canton in Mérida, Yucatan earlier in March. This was the first online conference of its kind for the Museo Palacio Canton, and it serves as an inspiration for other educators who would like to reach a wide audience by recording presentations like this in Spanish, English, or in various Mayan languages. This was not a conference supported by MAM, but we are very interested in housing presentations like this on our website in the future. Stay tuned for more coming soon!
I hope you all are staying safe, and that we will all be able to finally see one another in the near future. In the meantime, we hope to take advantage of the current technology to continue our important work.
Yum Bo’otik,
Michael Grofe, President
MAM