Seven more hours in South America. What does that even mean?
In a certain sense, I feel as though it is already over. Everything that I have experienced since leaving la Región de Magallanes in Chile has given me perspective, but it also made the time there feel as distant as its physical location 2800 miles South.
Everything feels surreal. Instead of having to take an extremely uncomfortable bus full of puking Peruvians for forty-eight hours, followed by a collectivo on the fly and a stowaway passage on a cargo boat to get home, I will walk onto my flight to the States and be home within ten hours. It seems impossible.
I always find my self grasping at strings to sum up a journey adequately when I confront returning home. Words and phrases that I want to lean on because they are easy fall flat. "Overall, it was a ______ experience..." is not sufficient. "At the end, I see that ______ was _______ all along..." doesn't cut it. "When I began this journey, I thought _______, but now I've learned _______..." just can't work.
I can't tie the thousands of experiences and lessons into a nice little box and package them in shiny wrapping paper. I can't even get them all straight in my mind. Besides, I think somehow that there is no box big enough. Especially not this tiny one on Blogger.
Instead I will make a minor and inefficient attempt to draw the closing lines Al Camino que Hicieron Mis Zapatos quoting...myself. From the beginning.
"Now this experience is beginning, and it feels surreal still...So much craziness has already happened and I feel as though it can only get better from here (and here is pretty great already)..." -26 February
"Occasionally a shooting star that only I get to see shows up and streaks across my life. And I get to be satisfied that there are people like me out there in the world, and that we occasionally find one another." -2 March
"Holy shit. I'm about to see someone get stabbed." -3 March
"Complete And Utter Chaos would come today when my head teacher decided not to come back from his lunch break and the director asked me to substitute with no preparation or lesson plan or materials." -15 March
"And maybe all the things that seem to be contradictions are simply juxtapositions that I am not used to. Maybe my definition of contradiction needs to evolve. And maybe I'm over-reacting because this is actual culture shock instead of the "I'm at home!" feeling Italy immediately gave me." -23 March
"Am I just a cog in the English Cult Machine here in Chile? Maybe." -31 March
"I had no idea how hard I would be expected to work here, nor how hard I would have to push myself." -10 April
"They all think I am crazy. Also I am covered in cat pee." -20 April
"I'm not even concerned with breaking even anymore. I just want a little sprinkling of good surprises and minor victories to season the greater confusion, frustration, and lack of progress. It's enough." -3 May
"I can't change everything. Maybe, just maybe, I can't change ANYthing. I hope that the reality is somehwere in the middle, but it remains to be seen." -16 May
"So, what do you do when there is nothing more to do? When you have nothing more to give? When what you thought was the point of your life has been erroded by three months of floundering and you wonder what the point of trying is?
You tell the existential crisis bearing down on you to go fuck itself, and you spend some of the UN's money on some new boots and a coffee." -24 May
"The images of all the places I have been able to travel so far on this trip materialize out of the bluish gray light, seeming to shine in the snow and cloudy sky. Torres del Paine. Tierra del Fuego. Ushuaia. Natales. Puerto Bulnes. The Straight of Magellan. That big hill over there, that we spent the day climbing yesterday. All the toughness of the teaching and the daily stuggles, did it pay for those places?" -27 May
"Circumstantial changes mimic the coming and going of the weather here. If you don't like it, wait five minutes. The chaos will shift again and you will be humbled by your smallness in the face of Patagonia. But you will also find that you can change some of it, and occasionally outsmart the chaos for just long enough to move to the next challenge." -7 June
"I am not working here. This is not a job. This is something at I am choosing to do and that I can just as easily choose not to. I am a volunteer."- 8 June
"There was no assistant teaching. No orientation. No gradual transition from non-teacher to Miss Coleen. Hell, there wasn't even an observation period. I made the transition in a day, in front of a room full of seventh graders. But honestly, I think I've risen well to the challenge. After four months of the struggle in this school, I can say with some confidence that I have at least a tiny claim to that kick ass brotherhood of teachers making a difference." -22 June
"I have done the best job I could do to change and adapt and accept. A lot of what I have learned and changed is great, and I will use the new point of view Chile has offered me to judge my own life more carefully. But that doesn't mean I should lose myself completely either. My own culture and identity have a lot to offer, and the exchange should change Puerto Natales and the people I meet as well." -30 June
"You did it. You did what you came here to do. And you did it so well.
I didn't look back. Really, I couldn't...the more pressing needs to watch out for stray ankle-biting poodles, speeding POS cars on the avenue, and boot-swollowing mud puddles pressed me back to Chilean reality. The Goodbye Spell complete, I walked home." -8 July
"To any observer including me it appears that she has been trying to kill me...but she was actually trying to save me.
Chile woke me up and made me realize that I have a lot of work to do on myself before my life can have stability and I can truly be happy. She laid my own issues and those of the world bare, forcing me to deal with pain, sadness, lonliness, anger, and my own personal tormentors from the past. She forced me to give up a lot about my own way of viewing the world and to try to get by on fumes (and a ton of white bread) even when I was exhausted. She made me feel so tiny and powerless in the face of mountains and the problems of her society, but yet huge and powerful as the most noticeable gringa this side of Puerto Montt and able to do something to help those students." -18 July
"In one week, I've literally done Chile end to end. Punta Arenas to Arica." -9 August
"I don't want to give up on one of the things that I've always held dear to me... The idea that I could act and change something about the world for the better. It is easier to choose to be jaded. The narrow path is not convenient." -16 August
I suppose that my 24 hours in this overly white hotel room ought to have given me the time to emerge with some great Truth about my time here in South America, but to be honest I've been filling it with Law and Order re-runs and The Other Boleyn Girl.
All the tethers to this experience are breaking free, one by one, to flutter in the wind. This week I felt the surprise of already missing Patagonia and everyone who was witness to my adventure here. I especially miss and want to thank Dimitris. Without you, I wouldn't have made it.
Likely whatever change there is within me will only become clear in the stark contrast this last, short leg of the journey will inevitably bring. I have an inkling that there is a big enough physical change that people may be shocked. South America stripped pounds from my frame, changed my hair color, and put the first lines on my face. Also my clothes haven't had a real washing in almost six months.
A girl in my hostel (a random, faked-tanned and overly-bleached California blonde) listened to a few lines of concentrated six months in South America the other day over a mediocre vegetarian sandwich. She was shocked at how long I've been here, and clearly had no grasp on how far South Puerto Natales is. She couldn't stop complimenting my Spanish (that language I did not speak six months ago that I now take for granted).
"Would you do it all again?"
I hesitated. This was, without question, the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. A few weeks ago, I said that I wished I had never come to South America, through tears in the fancy SkyBar at the Punta Arenas casino.
"Yes. Yes, I would do it again."
My answer surprised even myself. Something must have shifted in the 3000 miles since then. I don't know what that shift is yet, but that tiny glimmer of light peeking out from the darkness seems to be a good omen.
"It is known that one who returns never left..." -Pablo Neruda
Showing posts with label Teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teaching. Show all posts
18 August 2011
07 July 2011
Adioses~The Goodbye Spell
My favorite poem by Pablo Neruda is called "Adioses" (Goodbyes). I read it on the floor of my room in my parents' basement last February...almost an incantation breathing life into Chile for me. It has played a very important role in my camino here, including giving the name of my blog, being read by a friend who felt like a missing puzzle piece to my soul on the roof of a hostel in Santiago, being the only thing left in my hand when my purse was stolen by an armed robber...keeping me sane through all the changes and the crushing sense of futility. I encourage you to read it here http://d0rkalici0u5.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/adioses-by-pablo-neruda/
I am trying to memorize it tonight, because today was my last day of classes at Escuela 5. Imagine the scene:
After trying very hard to sit through an hour and a half of awards, recognitions, monotonous speeches, and a completely superfluous ten-minute saxophone solo the students of Escuela 5 were slowly devolving into chaos. It was far too much to ask of them to remain quiet and seated for that long. I was trying to amuse myself by taking pictures and eating Altoids. It wasn't working.
Out of nowhere, they announced that they would be recognizing a special person who worked so hard with them all semester and loved the children very much. I suddenly wished I had been paying attention or at least looking like I was.
The announcer said something like, "the incomprable Tia Coleen!" and I walked up to the middle of the gym, silently fearing for just a second that the students will boo me. I was focusing on not tripping, and I didn't hear the cheer until it was so loud that I couldn't even hear the director telling me to take the certificate that he was handing me.
Standing ovation. Certificate of merit from the director. Even the parents standing and cheering. I felt like I was in a movie. I tried to look at all the students, but instead I just started crying.
I walked over to the integration teacher, Tía Christine, who I feel is one of the few who truly is called to teaching in that school. She hugged me. My students, all of them, mugged me, pushing and shoving to be able to hug me. I worried we would all fall down and crush each other like soccer fans storming the field.
With help from the inspector, we restored order and they said goodbye, one by one. A mixture of each level, so much that I could hardly remember who was who and which was which. So many kisses and hugs and "Tía, I will miss you," and "Tía, I love you."
"Tía don't leave...please don't leave..."
Everything, the whole semester, the whole struggle, the tears, the swearing, the wanting to give up, the money I and some members of my family gave for supplies (thank you so much, Aunt Barbara), all the drama of a small town...it all was worth it.
The reality that these kids face every day is so much harder than I ever did, and I broke under the weight of the emotions in the school and the constant struggle just to get through the day. I am an adult. The students taught me how to act like one. They are children, and they have to grow up struggling harder than I did for these four months for all their childhood and adolesence.
I cannot change the circumstances of their lives. I cannot give them all money for school and help them to work. I cannot force their parents know how important school is. I cannot throttle a mother who dared hit her child, my student, at the school today and then leave her alone to cry (even though I really, really wanted to). I cannot fight the systemic and cultural problems that are holding Chile back.
I didn't come here to teach English, when I step back and look at it. Let's get real...my students still can't answer "How are you?" after four months of daily repetition. I came to experience Chile and to try to be a positive influence in the lives of these kids. I traveled 6,000 miles to them to show that there is another way...that just because their parents never finished school doesn't mean they shouldn't, that they are valuable and capable and that someone cares about them. And will always care. Even after they threw spitballs and erasers at me every day for four months.
I can only hope that someday a couple of them will remember me and think of how much I put up with to be with them. That maybe, just maybe a few of them will mature and realize that I was demanding because I refused to accept anything but their best effort.
And that I loved them unconditionally. Maybe even especially the tough ones.
I wanted to leave my students with an example of how to say goodbye. One last chance to lead them by example. So I chose a song that expresses a lot of how I feel about leaving my students ("For Good" from Wicked) and hand-wrote the words in English and Spanish. I paid for photocopies for each one. And I made cards for every course. I played the song, we talked about what it meant, and then I read them the card.
I thought it would be easy, but I surprised myself. I choked up the most with the little ones...the first graders are too young to truly understand that I am leaving, but their eyes glowed with love and innocence (it sounds so cheesy, but it really happened). The second graders refused to let me leave the recess hall. The third graders, the class that made me want to keep teaching more than any other...they made me a huge envelope of letters and put their pocket money together to buy me a stuffed penguin and a Magallanes flag.
I didn't even teach the fourth graders, but they swarmed to the classroom and hugged me and cried. The fifth graders listened to me and asked when I was coming back. The sixth graders smiled and didn't cry. The seventh graders rolled their eyes at my admonishment to make good choices, but behaved better than I had ever seen. And the eighth graders begged me to come back for their graduation in December.
As I stepped through the door of the school, holding it open for some parents and students, everything felt normal. I walked out to the street and saw a few students playing soccer, with no coats despite the cold and smiled, thinking of myself at that age. I looked at the mountains, capped with snow and shining in the afternoon sun.
A breeze came up from nowhere, as the wind in Patagonia always does. I breathed it in deeply, and something echoed in my heart like a raindrop creating ripples on a puddle's surface. The weight lifted. The silence spoke to me.
You did it. You did what you came here to do. And you did it so well.
I didn't look back. Really, I couldn't...the more pressing needs to watch out for stray ankle-biting poodles, speeding POS cars on the avenue, and boot-swollowing mud puddles pressed me back to Chilean reality. The Goodbye Spell complete, I walked home.
I am trying to memorize it tonight, because today was my last day of classes at Escuela 5. Imagine the scene:
After trying very hard to sit through an hour and a half of awards, recognitions, monotonous speeches, and a completely superfluous ten-minute saxophone solo the students of Escuela 5 were slowly devolving into chaos. It was far too much to ask of them to remain quiet and seated for that long. I was trying to amuse myself by taking pictures and eating Altoids. It wasn't working.
Out of nowhere, they announced that they would be recognizing a special person who worked so hard with them all semester and loved the children very much. I suddenly wished I had been paying attention or at least looking like I was.
The announcer said something like, "the incomprable Tia Coleen!" and I walked up to the middle of the gym, silently fearing for just a second that the students will boo me. I was focusing on not tripping, and I didn't hear the cheer until it was so loud that I couldn't even hear the director telling me to take the certificate that he was handing me.
Standing ovation. Certificate of merit from the director. Even the parents standing and cheering. I felt like I was in a movie. I tried to look at all the students, but instead I just started crying.
I walked over to the integration teacher, Tía Christine, who I feel is one of the few who truly is called to teaching in that school. She hugged me. My students, all of them, mugged me, pushing and shoving to be able to hug me. I worried we would all fall down and crush each other like soccer fans storming the field.
With help from the inspector, we restored order and they said goodbye, one by one. A mixture of each level, so much that I could hardly remember who was who and which was which. So many kisses and hugs and "Tía, I will miss you," and "Tía, I love you."
"Tía don't leave...please don't leave..."
Everything, the whole semester, the whole struggle, the tears, the swearing, the wanting to give up, the money I and some members of my family gave for supplies (thank you so much, Aunt Barbara), all the drama of a small town...it all was worth it.
The reality that these kids face every day is so much harder than I ever did, and I broke under the weight of the emotions in the school and the constant struggle just to get through the day. I am an adult. The students taught me how to act like one. They are children, and they have to grow up struggling harder than I did for these four months for all their childhood and adolesence.
I cannot change the circumstances of their lives. I cannot give them all money for school and help them to work. I cannot force their parents know how important school is. I cannot throttle a mother who dared hit her child, my student, at the school today and then leave her alone to cry (even though I really, really wanted to). I cannot fight the systemic and cultural problems that are holding Chile back.
I didn't come here to teach English, when I step back and look at it. Let's get real...my students still can't answer "How are you?" after four months of daily repetition. I came to experience Chile and to try to be a positive influence in the lives of these kids. I traveled 6,000 miles to them to show that there is another way...that just because their parents never finished school doesn't mean they shouldn't, that they are valuable and capable and that someone cares about them. And will always care. Even after they threw spitballs and erasers at me every day for four months.
I can only hope that someday a couple of them will remember me and think of how much I put up with to be with them. That maybe, just maybe a few of them will mature and realize that I was demanding because I refused to accept anything but their best effort.
And that I loved them unconditionally. Maybe even especially the tough ones.
I wanted to leave my students with an example of how to say goodbye. One last chance to lead them by example. So I chose a song that expresses a lot of how I feel about leaving my students ("For Good" from Wicked) and hand-wrote the words in English and Spanish. I paid for photocopies for each one. And I made cards for every course. I played the song, we talked about what it meant, and then I read them the card.
I thought it would be easy, but I surprised myself. I choked up the most with the little ones...the first graders are too young to truly understand that I am leaving, but their eyes glowed with love and innocence (it sounds so cheesy, but it really happened). The second graders refused to let me leave the recess hall. The third graders, the class that made me want to keep teaching more than any other...they made me a huge envelope of letters and put their pocket money together to buy me a stuffed penguin and a Magallanes flag.
I didn't even teach the fourth graders, but they swarmed to the classroom and hugged me and cried. The fifth graders listened to me and asked when I was coming back. The sixth graders smiled and didn't cry. The seventh graders rolled their eyes at my admonishment to make good choices, but behaved better than I had ever seen. And the eighth graders begged me to come back for their graduation in December.
As I stepped through the door of the school, holding it open for some parents and students, everything felt normal. I walked out to the street and saw a few students playing soccer, with no coats despite the cold and smiled, thinking of myself at that age. I looked at the mountains, capped with snow and shining in the afternoon sun.
A breeze came up from nowhere, as the wind in Patagonia always does. I breathed it in deeply, and something echoed in my heart like a raindrop creating ripples on a puddle's surface. The weight lifted. The silence spoke to me.
You did it. You did what you came here to do. And you did it so well.
I didn't look back. Really, I couldn't...the more pressing needs to watch out for stray ankle-biting poodles, speeding POS cars on the avenue, and boot-swollowing mud puddles pressed me back to Chilean reality. The Goodbye Spell complete, I walked home.
05 July 2011
What To Do When You Accidentally Swear In Front of Your Students
"ALL RIGHT THAT'S IT! THIS IS RI-FUCKING-DICULOUS!! TAKE YOUR SEAT NOW!" Tía Coleen just seriously lost her temper. Even the infamous seventh graders fall silent and take their seats.
Oh, shit. Did I just swear in front of my students? Kind of...*at* them? They are giggling. I stand, stunned at myself for a good thirty seconds.
This is the last week. A month ago, I was seriously asking myself if I could make it. I'm not sure that anyone but me knew exactly how close I came to saying, "All right, that's it! I'm packing it up and moving to a shitty apartment in Viña del Mar, to live off my remaining savings and sell friendship bracelets for pocket money..."
It was close. Very close. Close enough that I actually looked at flights.
I am not cut out to be a middle school teacher. I love teaching, don't get me wrong. Ever since I was a child, I've given impromptu lectures about things that fascinate me to any hapless "student" who happened to cross my path. My parents had to invent a game about a little bird who ate from her parents' hands in order to get me to eat while lecturing during dinner. I would eat a bite of food, standing and pacing on a windowsill near the table, barely stopping to chew before continuing my stories.
I am actually pretty good at teaching, especially with the littlest ones. Their problems are mostly simple ("Tía, she hit me!" "No, she hit me first!" "I don't care who hit whom, you will both apologize and shake hands.").
But being a middle school teacher means combating behavior problems and a sea of hormones. It means seeing children transform into adolencents before your very eyes. It means seeing problems that they will carry their whole lives beginning. I means knowing that these kids may have kids of their own in a couple of years, that they are very close to failing out, that they are using drugs and alcohol.
All of that sucks...to put it mildly. But the worst part by far is the apathy, which permeates everything for most of these kids. You have to do this activity to learn the vocabulary. I don't want to. You have no grades *at all* in this class from this semester, because you have not turned in a single assignment. I don't care. You need to have an education to have a better life. I don't see why...my life is already fine.
To be completely honest, I can't stand the daily push-pull-fight-throw-things-ignore-the-teacher struggle that it became. But what got under my skin, week after week, was the apathy. These kids can't possibly just sit there and not care. They can't leave that page that I hand-wrote and paid to photocopy completely blank. They can't just tell me that they refuse to do their work. And if one more student interupts me and stands up to push another student I just might....
All of that anger, frustration, and pure emotion welled up during the last few months surprised me by bursting out in the loudest, sharpest, most angry yell I've yelled at my students all semester...complete with an F-bomb. Suddenly I felt like a stupid adolescent, too. And worse, I am supposed to be a role model and to give these kids a good example. And I totally just swore at them. I suck.
It is easy to say something, and much harder to do it. I told my fifth graders that yesterday, when they told me they would all study a lot and speak great English one day. I am interested in actions, I told them.
I composed myself, asked the students to hand in their papers and sit down in silence, and sat at my desk. My students were watching, wondering what would come next. And then I practiced what I preach to my students, from the very youngest to the very oldest.
I apologized. We talked about what had happened. How I care about them and want so much for them to do well, that I got extremely frustrated with their behavior. How sometimes when we get angry, we say things we regret. How ashamed I was of my loss of composure. They helped my Spanish and filled in words where I needed them.
"Do you forgive me?" I asked, honestly.
"Yes," they said.
Jordon, a ham and a smart kid said, "Do you forgive us, Tía?"
"Of course! Remember, guys...we're all human."
"We all make mistakes," summed up Jordon.
We finished the activity I had planned, in half the time. They didn't behave perfectly, but I hardly expect that from them at this point.
Suffice it to say that those 13-year-olds will never forget the day that I lost my temper. I can only hope that a few of the things I tried to tell them about education, about being good people, about admitting mistakes and asking forgiveness when necessary stuck.
I feel as though it was a final exam for becoming a teacher. Take your mistake, admit it, and turn it into an opportunity to teach a life lesson. I hope I passed.
Oh, shit. Did I just swear in front of my students? Kind of...*at* them? They are giggling. I stand, stunned at myself for a good thirty seconds.
This is the last week. A month ago, I was seriously asking myself if I could make it. I'm not sure that anyone but me knew exactly how close I came to saying, "All right, that's it! I'm packing it up and moving to a shitty apartment in Viña del Mar, to live off my remaining savings and sell friendship bracelets for pocket money..."
It was close. Very close. Close enough that I actually looked at flights.
I am not cut out to be a middle school teacher. I love teaching, don't get me wrong. Ever since I was a child, I've given impromptu lectures about things that fascinate me to any hapless "student" who happened to cross my path. My parents had to invent a game about a little bird who ate from her parents' hands in order to get me to eat while lecturing during dinner. I would eat a bite of food, standing and pacing on a windowsill near the table, barely stopping to chew before continuing my stories.
I am actually pretty good at teaching, especially with the littlest ones. Their problems are mostly simple ("Tía, she hit me!" "No, she hit me first!" "I don't care who hit whom, you will both apologize and shake hands.").
But being a middle school teacher means combating behavior problems and a sea of hormones. It means seeing children transform into adolencents before your very eyes. It means seeing problems that they will carry their whole lives beginning. I means knowing that these kids may have kids of their own in a couple of years, that they are very close to failing out, that they are using drugs and alcohol.
All of that sucks...to put it mildly. But the worst part by far is the apathy, which permeates everything for most of these kids. You have to do this activity to learn the vocabulary. I don't want to. You have no grades *at all* in this class from this semester, because you have not turned in a single assignment. I don't care. You need to have an education to have a better life. I don't see why...my life is already fine.
To be completely honest, I can't stand the daily push-pull-fight-throw-things-ignore-the-teacher struggle that it became. But what got under my skin, week after week, was the apathy. These kids can't possibly just sit there and not care. They can't leave that page that I hand-wrote and paid to photocopy completely blank. They can't just tell me that they refuse to do their work. And if one more student interupts me and stands up to push another student I just might....
All of that anger, frustration, and pure emotion welled up during the last few months surprised me by bursting out in the loudest, sharpest, most angry yell I've yelled at my students all semester...complete with an F-bomb. Suddenly I felt like a stupid adolescent, too. And worse, I am supposed to be a role model and to give these kids a good example. And I totally just swore at them. I suck.
It is easy to say something, and much harder to do it. I told my fifth graders that yesterday, when they told me they would all study a lot and speak great English one day. I am interested in actions, I told them.
I composed myself, asked the students to hand in their papers and sit down in silence, and sat at my desk. My students were watching, wondering what would come next. And then I practiced what I preach to my students, from the very youngest to the very oldest.
I apologized. We talked about what had happened. How I care about them and want so much for them to do well, that I got extremely frustrated with their behavior. How sometimes when we get angry, we say things we regret. How ashamed I was of my loss of composure. They helped my Spanish and filled in words where I needed them.
"Do you forgive me?" I asked, honestly.
"Yes," they said.
Jordon, a ham and a smart kid said, "Do you forgive us, Tía?"
"Of course! Remember, guys...we're all human."
"We all make mistakes," summed up Jordon.
We finished the activity I had planned, in half the time. They didn't behave perfectly, but I hardly expect that from them at this point.
Suffice it to say that those 13-year-olds will never forget the day that I lost my temper. I can only hope that a few of the things I tried to tell them about education, about being good people, about admitting mistakes and asking forgiveness when necessary stuck.
I feel as though it was a final exam for becoming a teacher. Take your mistake, admit it, and turn it into an opportunity to teach a life lesson. I hope I passed.
22 June 2011
What Teachers Make
Two months ago: I walked out of the English Classroom on a Friday, angry that the eighth graders refused (again) to remain seated, to work, to do any part of the lesson I had meticulously planned. Probably too meticulously (I had written the exact amount of time each activity was to take). The students slammed the door behind me, and then opened it to yell down the hall and throw a few spitballs at my back.
I didn't even roll my eyes this time. Let them be. They are just being what thirteen year olds can't help being sometimes: little douchebags. In five minutes they will regress to their happy to learn five year old selves and be content coloring pictures. They are still children, after all.
A strange man with a weird hat was standing in the hallway as I marched down, books and materials in hand. The other group had shut the door to the classroom, and I could hear what appeared to be a pack of wild elephants destroying an innocent stack of school desks inside. Hoping they were not lying in ambush for me with more spitballs, I knocked smartly on the door.
Strange Hat Man: "La profesora no está." ("The teacher isn't there.") Scornfully. As if he had something to prove to the (not really all that) lost-looking Gringa.
"Yo soy la profesora." ("I am the teacher.") With the calm that only a primary school teacher can maintain while trying not to be drowned out by screaming students.
In that moment, I realized I truly was a teacher. It happened suddenly, sneaking up on me in a definitive moment of transition from the girl who was always a good student to the woman who is actually a pretty good teacher. Demanding, but just. Trying hard to bring out the absolute best in her students. I've been thinking about that moment a lot this week.
Earlier this week, a fellow volunteer shared a kick-ass TED video about What Teachers Make http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/taylor_mali_what_teachers_make.html.
It's been inspiring me all week to kick my students into high gear and demand of myself and them the very best we have. Fewer than two weeks remain.
I know I have only been teaching for four months, and that many may day I have little claim to being a true teacher. I lack certification. I never took a single education class in college. But I walked into an elementary school serving some of the highest-risk students in a far-flung part of the world, and I transformed almost immediately into Miss Coleen...with upswept hair, glasses, professional clothes, and strict classroom rules.
There was no assistant teaching. No orientation. No gradual transition from non-teacher to Miss Coleen. Hell, there wasn't even an observation period. I made the transition in a day, in front of a room full of seventh graders (check out the post in the aftermath here http://caminochile.blogspot.com/2011/03/tia-coleen-and-total-utter-chaos.html).
But honestly, I think I've risen well to the challenge. After four months of the struggle in this school, I can say with some confience thst I have at least a tiny claim to that kick ass brotherhood of teachers making a difference.
I didn't even roll my eyes this time. Let them be. They are just being what thirteen year olds can't help being sometimes: little douchebags. In five minutes they will regress to their happy to learn five year old selves and be content coloring pictures. They are still children, after all.
A strange man with a weird hat was standing in the hallway as I marched down, books and materials in hand. The other group had shut the door to the classroom, and I could hear what appeared to be a pack of wild elephants destroying an innocent stack of school desks inside. Hoping they were not lying in ambush for me with more spitballs, I knocked smartly on the door.
Strange Hat Man: "La profesora no está." ("The teacher isn't there.") Scornfully. As if he had something to prove to the (not really all that) lost-looking Gringa.
"Yo soy la profesora." ("I am the teacher.") With the calm that only a primary school teacher can maintain while trying not to be drowned out by screaming students.
In that moment, I realized I truly was a teacher. It happened suddenly, sneaking up on me in a definitive moment of transition from the girl who was always a good student to the woman who is actually a pretty good teacher. Demanding, but just. Trying hard to bring out the absolute best in her students. I've been thinking about that moment a lot this week.
Earlier this week, a fellow volunteer shared a kick-ass TED video about What Teachers Make http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/taylor_mali_what_teachers_make.html.
It's been inspiring me all week to kick my students into high gear and demand of myself and them the very best we have. Fewer than two weeks remain.
I know I have only been teaching for four months, and that many may day I have little claim to being a true teacher. I lack certification. I never took a single education class in college. But I walked into an elementary school serving some of the highest-risk students in a far-flung part of the world, and I transformed almost immediately into Miss Coleen...with upswept hair, glasses, professional clothes, and strict classroom rules.
There was no assistant teaching. No orientation. No gradual transition from non-teacher to Miss Coleen. Hell, there wasn't even an observation period. I made the transition in a day, in front of a room full of seventh graders (check out the post in the aftermath here http://caminochile.blogspot.com/2011/03/tia-coleen-and-total-utter-chaos.html).
But honestly, I think I've risen well to the challenge. After four months of the struggle in this school, I can say with some confience thst I have at least a tiny claim to that kick ass brotherhood of teachers making a difference.
16 June 2011
Tía Coleen's First Strike
First strike ever for Tía Coleen. Kind of anticlimactic, really. I went to school to teach two hours of classes, and then came back to the house to change and watch the Chilean equivalent of the Maury Povic Show. The most effort I've put forth so far was to explain to my most difficult students in fifth grade why they need to take their education seriously (dismal failure) and to wring out my laundry in my bathtub.
This strike is bigger than just Escuela 5, Puerto Natales, or even the Magallanes region. Nation-wide protests of university students, teachers, parents, and others have been quietly festering for several weeks. Currently the news is reporting that 50.000 people have manifested in the streets of Santiago, with the largest protest outside the building where we had our orientation...the MINEDUC. So far everything is rather peaceful, but it is only a matter of time before they bring out the armor-plated mobile water cannons at Chileans called Guanacos to disperse the crowds.
I devour whatever I can find about education system in Chile and elsewhere by scanning newspapers and blogs, and I asked everyone I could think to ask (including the teacher is who supposedly my boss) about the strike. I wish I could say I was better informed, but I still don't exactly get what exactly the strike is seeking to accomplish. My limited information suggests that the we are seeking equality in education, protesting privatisation of schools, and demanding that the government of Chile step up to the plate and deliver a better system.
Many of the protesters here are referencing the recent US documentary "Waiting for Superman" as a connection to educational problems in my own country. Many of the problems that show up here are similar in parts of the USA...lack of funding/resources for public schools, difficulties with parent/guardian support and responsibility, and problems with execution of government initiatives for educational equality. I have no real experience with the US education system, but anecdotes from friends who are teachers (especially those working with Teach for America) suggest that we have just as much inequality in education as Chile.
Obviously, my experience with the Chilean educaiton system is extremely limited. I have only been teaching here for four months, after all. But I have seen problems manifest in the microcosm of my school that surely must be repeated in some form nationally.
My students are high risk. They come from the toughest economic and family situations in Puerto Natales. Many of their parents work all day to support them (often in dengerous jobs like off-shore fishing), are unsupportive because they themselves never finished school, are abusive or addicted, or have passed away. I often run into my students long after dark, on their own, in the street. I tell them they should go home, since their parents must be waiting for them. They sadly tell me that they aren't. Others lack even pencils to write with. Others cannot afford to pay for their uniforms. Many probably come to school hungry.
Thus the lack of resources: yes, it is real. The government of any country ought to help mediate them to include students from all backgrounds in well-equipped, adequately-staffed, safe, clean schools. You could protest for this. From what I gather, that is a main sticking point of the protest today...that the government is not giving enough resources or distributing them equally.
Then again...the government of Chile provides teachers with laptops. Students too, from tough backgrounds with good grades. Every classroom in my school has a government-issued projection/sound system. The computer lab comes from the government, too. Everything from posters about healthy eating to anti-bullying initiatives is embalzoned with the blue and red Gobierno de Chile logo. Even my school bag. To an outsider, that almost appears like an excess of government involvement.
Maybe the problem is not with the government, but with the actual distribution of resources. If the government laptops arrive in the schools, but teachers mainly use them for facebook and personal email...are they really being put to use the way that they should? If the projectors are almost never used because teachers prefer to make students copy from out of date textbooks, what is the point of having them in the classrooms?
The government must be held accountable, but individuals must maintain some personal responsibility as well to use the resources the way they are meant to be used. That means relying on individuals to do their part, which unfortunately is a very unreliable system. I am here in Natales part of the English Opens Doors government program, and I am a resource for my students as a native English speaker. I work in relative-well equipped classrooms and have a head teacher who speaks English very well.
And yet I did not even have a list of my students in some classes until I made one myself (result of which was that a bunch of students gave false names for two months). That little disconnect cost valuable time, when it could've been fixed easily by the people in my school. It is only one of numerous problems that I've run into, all stemming from my school's failure to adhere to the guidelines of the a EOD program (substituting my second day, teaching students with special needs, teaching alone despite my complete lack of language skills and experience, never planning with my head teacher...etc etc etc).
It doesn't give me much faith that government resources are used well in my school or others if they are mismanaged so gravely in just my situation.
What happens when there is a strike in schools? The students who cannot leave because their parents cannot pick them up have to stay in the building...languishing in education limbo with the few teachers and administrators who choose to stay. Classes are lost for the day. Parents have to interupt their work. We lose one more day of time together before I have to leave.
I understand that the point of a strike is to disrupt normal activities, but in this particular case it seems a little counter-productive. We demand that education improve and that everyone have access to it by...closing schools and removing teachers, taking away hours of learning from the students. Not to mention wreaking havock on the families who count on schools to keep their children safe and help raise them when they have to work. Plus students learn that their teachers can leave whenever they want, and that school is out when there is a strike. It's not a serious cry to government help in their eyes...it's a vacation! How am I supposed to make the point stick with those fifth graders that they must attend school if they see their teachers all leaving for reasons they don't understand?
I don't have the answer. I am neither for the strike nor against it. In all reality I lsck the information to make the call. But educational inequalities are real. Privatisation will not help undo them. There are improvements to be made to the system in Chile. Education will be the way that Chile finally develops, and the struggle for the future starts in the classrooms (even the president said it, check out this entry http://caminochile.blogspot.com/2011/05/with-love-from-battle-of-blackboard.html).
Education appears to be the lightning rod for all the other problems that a country has. Social, economic, developmental, general...it is a multi-factorial pressure cooker. This strike is only a couple of hours, rather insignificant even in the face of only a week of class hours (2 out of 30-ish). But people are talking, debating, discussing. And that is the whole point.
This strike is bigger than just Escuela 5, Puerto Natales, or even the Magallanes region. Nation-wide protests of university students, teachers, parents, and others have been quietly festering for several weeks. Currently the news is reporting that 50.000 people have manifested in the streets of Santiago, with the largest protest outside the building where we had our orientation...the MINEDUC. So far everything is rather peaceful, but it is only a matter of time before they bring out the armor-plated mobile water cannons at Chileans called Guanacos to disperse the crowds.
I devour whatever I can find about education system in Chile and elsewhere by scanning newspapers and blogs, and I asked everyone I could think to ask (including the teacher is who supposedly my boss) about the strike. I wish I could say I was better informed, but I still don't exactly get what exactly the strike is seeking to accomplish. My limited information suggests that the we are seeking equality in education, protesting privatisation of schools, and demanding that the government of Chile step up to the plate and deliver a better system.
Many of the protesters here are referencing the recent US documentary "Waiting for Superman" as a connection to educational problems in my own country. Many of the problems that show up here are similar in parts of the USA...lack of funding/resources for public schools, difficulties with parent/guardian support and responsibility, and problems with execution of government initiatives for educational equality. I have no real experience with the US education system, but anecdotes from friends who are teachers (especially those working with Teach for America) suggest that we have just as much inequality in education as Chile.
Obviously, my experience with the Chilean educaiton system is extremely limited. I have only been teaching here for four months, after all. But I have seen problems manifest in the microcosm of my school that surely must be repeated in some form nationally.
My students are high risk. They come from the toughest economic and family situations in Puerto Natales. Many of their parents work all day to support them (often in dengerous jobs like off-shore fishing), are unsupportive because they themselves never finished school, are abusive or addicted, or have passed away. I often run into my students long after dark, on their own, in the street. I tell them they should go home, since their parents must be waiting for them. They sadly tell me that they aren't. Others lack even pencils to write with. Others cannot afford to pay for their uniforms. Many probably come to school hungry.
Thus the lack of resources: yes, it is real. The government of any country ought to help mediate them to include students from all backgrounds in well-equipped, adequately-staffed, safe, clean schools. You could protest for this. From what I gather, that is a main sticking point of the protest today...that the government is not giving enough resources or distributing them equally.
Then again...the government of Chile provides teachers with laptops. Students too, from tough backgrounds with good grades. Every classroom in my school has a government-issued projection/sound system. The computer lab comes from the government, too. Everything from posters about healthy eating to anti-bullying initiatives is embalzoned with the blue and red Gobierno de Chile logo. Even my school bag. To an outsider, that almost appears like an excess of government involvement.
Maybe the problem is not with the government, but with the actual distribution of resources. If the government laptops arrive in the schools, but teachers mainly use them for facebook and personal email...are they really being put to use the way that they should? If the projectors are almost never used because teachers prefer to make students copy from out of date textbooks, what is the point of having them in the classrooms?
The government must be held accountable, but individuals must maintain some personal responsibility as well to use the resources the way they are meant to be used. That means relying on individuals to do their part, which unfortunately is a very unreliable system. I am here in Natales part of the English Opens Doors government program, and I am a resource for my students as a native English speaker. I work in relative-well equipped classrooms and have a head teacher who speaks English very well.
And yet I did not even have a list of my students in some classes until I made one myself (result of which was that a bunch of students gave false names for two months). That little disconnect cost valuable time, when it could've been fixed easily by the people in my school. It is only one of numerous problems that I've run into, all stemming from my school's failure to adhere to the guidelines of the a EOD program (substituting my second day, teaching students with special needs, teaching alone despite my complete lack of language skills and experience, never planning with my head teacher...etc etc etc).
It doesn't give me much faith that government resources are used well in my school or others if they are mismanaged so gravely in just my situation.
What happens when there is a strike in schools? The students who cannot leave because their parents cannot pick them up have to stay in the building...languishing in education limbo with the few teachers and administrators who choose to stay. Classes are lost for the day. Parents have to interupt their work. We lose one more day of time together before I have to leave.
I understand that the point of a strike is to disrupt normal activities, but in this particular case it seems a little counter-productive. We demand that education improve and that everyone have access to it by...closing schools and removing teachers, taking away hours of learning from the students. Not to mention wreaking havock on the families who count on schools to keep their children safe and help raise them when they have to work. Plus students learn that their teachers can leave whenever they want, and that school is out when there is a strike. It's not a serious cry to government help in their eyes...it's a vacation! How am I supposed to make the point stick with those fifth graders that they must attend school if they see their teachers all leaving for reasons they don't understand?
I don't have the answer. I am neither for the strike nor against it. In all reality I lsck the information to make the call. But educational inequalities are real. Privatisation will not help undo them. There are improvements to be made to the system in Chile. Education will be the way that Chile finally develops, and the struggle for the future starts in the classrooms (even the president said it, check out this entry http://caminochile.blogspot.com/2011/05/with-love-from-battle-of-blackboard.html).
Education appears to be the lightning rod for all the other problems that a country has. Social, economic, developmental, general...it is a multi-factorial pressure cooker. This strike is only a couple of hours, rather insignificant even in the face of only a week of class hours (2 out of 30-ish). But people are talking, debating, discussing. And that is the whole point.
08 June 2011
Epiphany
I think I've had something of a breakthrough today in terms of my volunteering experience and mentality. Or maybe a tiny breakdown. Or both.
I felt pretty crummy all day today. When I awoke, my stomach was upset from a course of antibiotics that I am taking. I simply lacked motivation to go to school. I slept in turbulent, escapist dreams all morning and felt guilty all day that I was missing (more) class. I felt anxious to even go downstairs to get something to eat because I had made myself a film (an expression in both Spanish, "Hacerse una película," and Italian, "Farsi un film," meaning something along the lines of "making up a whole story for oneself that things are worse than they actually are") that people were judging me for missing class. Talking to each other about how I was a bad volunteer. How they would talk about it for years to come, saying "She started out so well, but then she just fell apart..."
Then suddenly my Chilean mother knocked on my door, rousing me from my film.
"Can I come in?" She had a look of genuine concern on her face. "I have to go out for groceries and I just got back from the school, but I wanted to see you before I left. Are you ok?"
We talked about how my stomach hurt and how I felt sick. I mentioned the antibiotic.
"You can't take an antibiotic without eating! How about you come downstairs and I make you some cooked rice? You have to eat something and it can't have any milk or butter or you will get sicker."
I came downstairs. Everyone, instead of sitting around talking about me behind my back, was worried about me and asked me how I was. They offered advice on how to get better. They told me I absolutely should not go to school if I am sick and that they will tell the director. It's not my responsibility. You have to take care of yourself. Don't worry about it.
My film dissolved. I think that I have been approaching this whole experience far too intensely. Pushing myself far too hard. Telling myself that I have to be the responsible one, and try to make up for the ways that the responsibilities of the program and my "boss" teacher and my school have been somewhat shirked lately. Taking a mentality that I had to do battle with the entire systemically flawed (but improving) Chilean Education System. Keeping myself in a constant state of Fight or Flight has done a number on my health, physically and mentally. And when I couldn't measure up to my own impossibly high standards, I felt that I wasn't doing a good enough job.
But that's just it. This is not a job. I really am a volunteer here. I am volunteering my time, my money, my effort, and a big chunk of my life to help out in Chile, but it is still voluntary. If I am sick and I don't want to go to school...then I don't have to. I can pass off the actual responsibility to teach classes and maintain order and decide students' grades to the people for whom it actually IS A JOB. And from there it is not my fault if things get mismanaged. I figure that the contracts and payment from the UN and pressure from the school to be a real, live teacher all skewed my view over the last three months.
I am not working here. This is not a job. This is something at I am choosing to do and that I can just as easily choose not to. I am a volunteer.
That little epiphany may just change my outlook on the rest of my time here in Chile. I am volunteering, trying to bring a little fun and light and care to these kids, almost all of whom come from high-risk situations in their families, economics, and resources. (This little revelation came to me from our guidance counselor last week, nearly three months after I arrived. I honestly thought that all schools in Chile were this way. Turns out that I actually am in a tougher school for Natales...suspicion confirmed! I wasn't just making up a film!) I have to take care of myself and remember that I am already doing my best.
So now, my stomach is full of plain white rice and chamomile tea. My heart is full of knowledge that people do care and worry about me. And my brain is full of the epiphany of how volunteering actually works. I am ready to continue.
I felt pretty crummy all day today. When I awoke, my stomach was upset from a course of antibiotics that I am taking. I simply lacked motivation to go to school. I slept in turbulent, escapist dreams all morning and felt guilty all day that I was missing (more) class. I felt anxious to even go downstairs to get something to eat because I had made myself a film (an expression in both Spanish, "Hacerse una película," and Italian, "Farsi un film," meaning something along the lines of "making up a whole story for oneself that things are worse than they actually are") that people were judging me for missing class. Talking to each other about how I was a bad volunteer. How they would talk about it for years to come, saying "She started out so well, but then she just fell apart..."
Then suddenly my Chilean mother knocked on my door, rousing me from my film.
"Can I come in?" She had a look of genuine concern on her face. "I have to go out for groceries and I just got back from the school, but I wanted to see you before I left. Are you ok?"
We talked about how my stomach hurt and how I felt sick. I mentioned the antibiotic.
"You can't take an antibiotic without eating! How about you come downstairs and I make you some cooked rice? You have to eat something and it can't have any milk or butter or you will get sicker."
I came downstairs. Everyone, instead of sitting around talking about me behind my back, was worried about me and asked me how I was. They offered advice on how to get better. They told me I absolutely should not go to school if I am sick and that they will tell the director. It's not my responsibility. You have to take care of yourself. Don't worry about it.
My film dissolved. I think that I have been approaching this whole experience far too intensely. Pushing myself far too hard. Telling myself that I have to be the responsible one, and try to make up for the ways that the responsibilities of the program and my "boss" teacher and my school have been somewhat shirked lately. Taking a mentality that I had to do battle with the entire systemically flawed (but improving) Chilean Education System. Keeping myself in a constant state of Fight or Flight has done a number on my health, physically and mentally. And when I couldn't measure up to my own impossibly high standards, I felt that I wasn't doing a good enough job.
But that's just it. This is not a job. I really am a volunteer here. I am volunteering my time, my money, my effort, and a big chunk of my life to help out in Chile, but it is still voluntary. If I am sick and I don't want to go to school...then I don't have to. I can pass off the actual responsibility to teach classes and maintain order and decide students' grades to the people for whom it actually IS A JOB. And from there it is not my fault if things get mismanaged. I figure that the contracts and payment from the UN and pressure from the school to be a real, live teacher all skewed my view over the last three months.
I am not working here. This is not a job. This is something at I am choosing to do and that I can just as easily choose not to. I am a volunteer.
That little epiphany may just change my outlook on the rest of my time here in Chile. I am volunteering, trying to bring a little fun and light and care to these kids, almost all of whom come from high-risk situations in their families, economics, and resources. (This little revelation came to me from our guidance counselor last week, nearly three months after I arrived. I honestly thought that all schools in Chile were this way. Turns out that I actually am in a tougher school for Natales...suspicion confirmed! I wasn't just making up a film!) I have to take care of myself and remember that I am already doing my best.
So now, my stomach is full of plain white rice and chamomile tea. My heart is full of knowledge that people do care and worry about me. And my brain is full of the epiphany of how volunteering actually works. I am ready to continue.
26 May 2011
Chile Doesn't Ask. She Demands.
Just ONCE in Chile I would like to have a heads up more beforehand if I have no more classes, have to organize a field trip, have to attend an assembly, partcipate in a national holiday or community one, meet the governor, or attend a meeting. And just ONCE I would like someone to tell me that it was their mistake or change of attitude or unwillingness to speak clearer Spanish (and not my stupid Gringa-ness) that caused the misunderstanding between us. And just ONCE I would like someone to acknowledge that I am working three times as hard for half of the recognition (school full-time, hostal part-time, fourth language all the time).
To put so much heart into it and get so little response infuriates the part of me that craves equality in the world. Perhaps I am still too much of an idealist, and all of this is one big fat reality check to transform me into an idealistic pragmatist.
Do what you can, with what you have, in the time you are given. No one can ask anything more of you.
I thought I had reached a hard limit of how much I could give this week...of how much I can take. Turns out, Chile demands more. She is pushing me to new limits, forcing me to adapt and learn and change. She is demanding. Exigente. And then I remember what I tell my students when they are frustrated. When they say I am demanding or mean or pesada (lit. "heavy").
"When a teacher demands a lot of you, it is because they are demanding that you learn. It is because they know you can do better."
Bring it, Chile. I made it this far and if you demand more...it must be because you know I will find it within me to take it.
To put so much heart into it and get so little response infuriates the part of me that craves equality in the world. Perhaps I am still too much of an idealist, and all of this is one big fat reality check to transform me into an idealistic pragmatist.
Do what you can, with what you have, in the time you are given. No one can ask anything more of you.
I thought I had reached a hard limit of how much I could give this week...of how much I can take. Turns out, Chile demands more. She is pushing me to new limits, forcing me to adapt and learn and change. She is demanding. Exigente. And then I remember what I tell my students when they are frustrated. When they say I am demanding or mean or pesada (lit. "heavy").
"When a teacher demands a lot of you, it is because they are demanding that you learn. It is because they know you can do better."
Bring it, Chile. I made it this far and if you demand more...it must be because you know I will find it within me to take it.
24 May 2011
Fuck this Week. I'm Buying Boots
All right, you all out there know that I am not normally a Debbie Downer. I am trying to capture the experience here as it truly is, and convey some part of it to you. This is, of course, yet another impossible task I have given myself. Whatever.
I returned to school to find give a small test (with no grade) to my students in seventh grade. After six weeks on this unit of pure struggle, of writing on the board and insisting that they take notes, of repeating myself over and over and over...nothing. Even the best students in the class couldn't do the test. Every last one would have failed.
So the English absorption level of my students is at about 20%. At best. At worst, they know absolutely nothing from the unit. Apparently my expectations need to slip another ten notches lower.
But wait! There's more!
A student of mine, who I know is smart and understands English more than he lets on, has been causing problems in my class for a few weeks now (since the seventh and eighth graders collectively lost their hormonal minds over crushes). I asked him six times today to take his seat. He openly refused to even put his name on my test. He distracted other students.
And then, the seventh time I told him to sit down...he reached out and hit one of the other students, one who has special needs and developmental problems. It made a huge noise and it was obvious that he had hit him hard.
"All right, that's it. Get out! A fuera!" I told him. "Go to the office and tell them what you've done. I do not accept that kind of behavior in my class." The other students clapped.
They suspended him.
The whole class turned on me in an instant. They called me evil. They told me that it was my fault that he got suspended. They swore at me and stole from me. They didn't do their work.
Let's take a moment to remember that I actually paid to be here. I receive a small stipend from the United Nations Development Program (the check I cashed today actually had the UN logo on it!), but it is equivalent to about $8 a day. Minimum wage in Chile is 34,000 pesos a day (about $7.50 an hour, same as Colorado). Damn, my stipend sucks. I pay the difference in blood, sweat, and tears.
The money isn't the issue, really. I wanted to help people, and teach, and make a difference. Change things. Be part of something bigger than myself. But what I am realizing is that one cannot help people who don't want the help...and no one wants to admit that they need help, and one cannot teach people to recieve help graciously. No one wants to admit that they could do better.
The change has to come from within. Because my students and hosts and the town and Chile are not ready to change from within, everything that I do is moot. I cannot change the tide alone, and I apparently cannot convince even my best students that studying is important. And I wonder if it is only here in this school or this community, or if my life's mission to help people in whatever way I can in many places around the world is pointless. Impossible.
In some cases like that of José who got suspended today, maybe things would have been better if I had never come here. In any case it seems on the whole that there would have been no difference if I had not, and I could have saved a bunch of people the inconvenience of having to fulfill a contract or host a foreigner or learn a simple phrase in English. My students can't even answer "How are you?" after nearly three months. I don't know what more I can do.
So, what do you do when there is nothing more to do? When you have nothing more to give? When what you thought was the point of your life has been erroded by three months of floundering and you wonder what the point of trying is?
You tell the existential crisis bearing down on you to go fuck itself, and you spend the UN's money on some new boots and a coffee. Because sometimes you have to stop thinking for awhile and take care of yourself before you lose it completely. Tomorrow is a new day, and you have to face the crisis first thing in the morning. A little break never hurt anyone.
I returned to school to find give a small test (with no grade) to my students in seventh grade. After six weeks on this unit of pure struggle, of writing on the board and insisting that they take notes, of repeating myself over and over and over...nothing. Even the best students in the class couldn't do the test. Every last one would have failed.
So the English absorption level of my students is at about 20%. At best. At worst, they know absolutely nothing from the unit. Apparently my expectations need to slip another ten notches lower.
But wait! There's more!
A student of mine, who I know is smart and understands English more than he lets on, has been causing problems in my class for a few weeks now (since the seventh and eighth graders collectively lost their hormonal minds over crushes). I asked him six times today to take his seat. He openly refused to even put his name on my test. He distracted other students.
And then, the seventh time I told him to sit down...he reached out and hit one of the other students, one who has special needs and developmental problems. It made a huge noise and it was obvious that he had hit him hard.
"All right, that's it. Get out! A fuera!" I told him. "Go to the office and tell them what you've done. I do not accept that kind of behavior in my class." The other students clapped.
They suspended him.
The whole class turned on me in an instant. They called me evil. They told me that it was my fault that he got suspended. They swore at me and stole from me. They didn't do their work.
Let's take a moment to remember that I actually paid to be here. I receive a small stipend from the United Nations Development Program (the check I cashed today actually had the UN logo on it!), but it is equivalent to about $8 a day. Minimum wage in Chile is 34,000 pesos a day (about $7.50 an hour, same as Colorado). Damn, my stipend sucks. I pay the difference in blood, sweat, and tears.
The money isn't the issue, really. I wanted to help people, and teach, and make a difference. Change things. Be part of something bigger than myself. But what I am realizing is that one cannot help people who don't want the help...and no one wants to admit that they need help, and one cannot teach people to recieve help graciously. No one wants to admit that they could do better.
The change has to come from within. Because my students and hosts and the town and Chile are not ready to change from within, everything that I do is moot. I cannot change the tide alone, and I apparently cannot convince even my best students that studying is important. And I wonder if it is only here in this school or this community, or if my life's mission to help people in whatever way I can in many places around the world is pointless. Impossible.
In some cases like that of José who got suspended today, maybe things would have been better if I had never come here. In any case it seems on the whole that there would have been no difference if I had not, and I could have saved a bunch of people the inconvenience of having to fulfill a contract or host a foreigner or learn a simple phrase in English. My students can't even answer "How are you?" after nearly three months. I don't know what more I can do.
So, what do you do when there is nothing more to do? When you have nothing more to give? When what you thought was the point of your life has been erroded by three months of floundering and you wonder what the point of trying is?
You tell the existential crisis bearing down on you to go fuck itself, and you spend the UN's money on some new boots and a coffee. Because sometimes you have to stop thinking for awhile and take care of yourself before you lose it completely. Tomorrow is a new day, and you have to face the crisis first thing in the morning. A little break never hurt anyone.
Halfway Through the Marathon
I'm going to kiss the dishwasher in my parents' kitchen when I get home. And the laundry machines. And the stove, and the pots and pans, and the bathtub, and my laptop. I'm going to go to the Boulder Farmer's Market and cry like a baby. I'm going to look at how our house doesn't have a lean to it and how all of our streets are paved and how ridiculously clear the picture is on our HDTV and wonder how I ever got along with something different. I am going to step inside a state-of-the-art hospital and feel uncomfortable that everything is so clean.
In talking with a dear friend yesterday, I was reminded that all of this struggle and pain and frustration and disorganization and confusion all adding up to a big fat sense of futility is temporary. For me. It sounds like I'm homesick because I am, but it also alludes to a greater issue.
I feel guilty that this is temporary for me. Because it isn't for the people who live here.
All the things that were supposed to be one way and actually are totally different. All the systemic confusion and lack of responsibility on so many levels locally and nationally. All the corruption that seems to happen with deals like the recent HidroAysén fiasco here in Chile (if you don't know what I am referring to, check out this article http://matadornetwork.com/change/11-disgusting-facts-about-a-massive-dam-project-just-approved-in-chile/). All the struggle to change and develop and become a world player. All the unequal distribution of resources and opportunity.
I can and will leave at some point and go back to my cushy life in the States. Honestly, I have the resources to leave tomorrow morning if I wanted to. I could be sitting on my couch on the back porch in late spring with a pool to swim in within three days, instead of struggling yet again with my eighth graders on Friday, wondering why I am here if they don't want to learn and not one of the teachers in the school can control them. They know I am frustrated. The 8th graders keep telling me that I have no patience and the seventh graders ask me why I am not ashamed of my Spanish.
I am beginning to hit some kind of a limit within me, which appears to be manifesting as anxious butterflies and a sincere desire to just leave the classroom and walk out of the school forever. My "boss" teacher didn't show up to school today, meaning that I had to throw everyone off by insisting that they fulfill the terms of their contract with the program and not force me to take a full class. People act like my presence is more of an inconvenience than anything else, whether it is in the school or at home or in Chile in general. I try so godamn hard every day to make everyone else's life easier and to give my time and work and sweat and money to help Chile, and some of it feels unappreciated on days like today.
I want to hope that this is just yet another "wall" like the ones that long-distance runners experience and that I just have to push through it...because make no mistake, my time in Chile is a marathon that is not getting any easier. Maybe this is just the feeling of the uphill section beginning after the first thirteen miles.
But I don't want to leave. Not yet. Because I want to prove to myself that I can stick it out, that I am tough enough and flexible enough to stay even when I could easily cop out. Besides, only 34 days of teaching remain. Less than a third of the time I have left here in South America. The rest will be split between English Camps and traveling.
At the very least, this time in my life gave me the perspective to truly appreciate the life I have lived up to this point...my education especially. And I now speak passable Chilean Spanish. And I have a lot of really beautiful photos. Maybe those three things are the whole point. Or maybe there isn't one.
At this point it doesn't seem to matter too much. I'm halfway through the marathon. Only thirteen more miles (uphill) to go.
In talking with a dear friend yesterday, I was reminded that all of this struggle and pain and frustration and disorganization and confusion all adding up to a big fat sense of futility is temporary. For me. It sounds like I'm homesick because I am, but it also alludes to a greater issue.
I feel guilty that this is temporary for me. Because it isn't for the people who live here.
All the things that were supposed to be one way and actually are totally different. All the systemic confusion and lack of responsibility on so many levels locally and nationally. All the corruption that seems to happen with deals like the recent HidroAysén fiasco here in Chile (if you don't know what I am referring to, check out this article http://matadornetwork.com/change/11-disgusting-facts-about-a-massive-dam-project-just-approved-in-chile/). All the struggle to change and develop and become a world player. All the unequal distribution of resources and opportunity.
I can and will leave at some point and go back to my cushy life in the States. Honestly, I have the resources to leave tomorrow morning if I wanted to. I could be sitting on my couch on the back porch in late spring with a pool to swim in within three days, instead of struggling yet again with my eighth graders on Friday, wondering why I am here if they don't want to learn and not one of the teachers in the school can control them. They know I am frustrated. The 8th graders keep telling me that I have no patience and the seventh graders ask me why I am not ashamed of my Spanish.
I am beginning to hit some kind of a limit within me, which appears to be manifesting as anxious butterflies and a sincere desire to just leave the classroom and walk out of the school forever. My "boss" teacher didn't show up to school today, meaning that I had to throw everyone off by insisting that they fulfill the terms of their contract with the program and not force me to take a full class. People act like my presence is more of an inconvenience than anything else, whether it is in the school or at home or in Chile in general. I try so godamn hard every day to make everyone else's life easier and to give my time and work and sweat and money to help Chile, and some of it feels unappreciated on days like today.
I want to hope that this is just yet another "wall" like the ones that long-distance runners experience and that I just have to push through it...because make no mistake, my time in Chile is a marathon that is not getting any easier. Maybe this is just the feeling of the uphill section beginning after the first thirteen miles.
But I don't want to leave. Not yet. Because I want to prove to myself that I can stick it out, that I am tough enough and flexible enough to stay even when I could easily cop out. Besides, only 34 days of teaching remain. Less than a third of the time I have left here in South America. The rest will be split between English Camps and traveling.
At the very least, this time in my life gave me the perspective to truly appreciate the life I have lived up to this point...my education especially. And I now speak passable Chilean Spanish. And I have a lot of really beautiful photos. Maybe those three things are the whole point. Or maybe there isn't one.
At this point it doesn't seem to matter too much. I'm halfway through the marathon. Only thirteen more miles (uphill) to go.
18 May 2011
With Love from the Battle of the Blackboard
"The battle to achieve economic development will 'won or lost in the classroom,' declares Chile’s president, Sebastián Piñera. To try to secure victory he has begun what he called Chile’s 'most ambitious educational reform since the 1960s.'"
Remember a few weeks ago, when I compared my struggles in teaching to "fighting in the trenches all day?" (If you don't, check your notes from this blog entry http://caminochile.blogspot.com/2011/05/its-enoguh.htmlYou don't have your notes? You don't have your notebook? Where is it? You lost it. OK, take this piece of paper and copy it again. Let's go, Tia Coleen knows you can do it).
I am not the only one who feels the strain of the struggle for a better educational system in Chile. As it turns out, even the head of state called for changes and improvements to the barely controlled scholastic chaos last December. (Read the full article here: http://www.economist.com/node/17679703) The reforms are a great idea. Implementation is a concern. It took two months for my materials to get here from Santiago, after all.
The calls for change come on the heels of an educational revolution already trying to jump from infancy to adolesence in a single bound. Since 2000, reforms and initiatives (including Idiomas Abren Puertas-IAP, which is the one in which I am partipating) have made the attempt to shift Chile's educational system drastically toward being able to compete globally.
Only in 2003 was high school made mandatory for all Chileans, and free of charge until 21 years of age (In perspective-Massachusetts was the first US state to pass compulsory education laws in 1852, and Colorado school districts made it cumpulsory 114 years earlier than Chile in 1889).
According to the information given at the orientation for IAP in Santiago, seven out of ten university students in Chile are the first in their families to attain tertiary education. In 1990, there were approximately 245,000 university students. In 2008, there were 769,000. This year, they will likely pass a million. That is a 400% increase in twenty years.
The main problem is that increasing the sheer quantity of Chileans receiving an education is not enough. The quality of the education (particularly in public schools like mine) must increase in step with the growth in numbers, or all that growth in the student population serves no purpose. Already it feels as though school is just a time/space holder in the lives of many of my students...something that they are required to do for reasons that even their parents may not understand. A relatively safe place to keep children during the day, where they can learn a few basics until they begin to work whenever adulthood rears its head. I suspect that in many parts of the US it is this way as well.
I don't pretend to know how in the hell one can implement true and lasting reform in a scholastic system and increase the quality of the education that students recieve. Likely the answers lie in the galacial changes of a culture over generations, a transition to a society that values education and encourages it. Probably too minute to see in the course of the five months since Piñera's declaration.
But the numbers and programs are a start. Even massive glaciers have to start with a few determined flakes of snow clinging to a Godforsaken piece of rock. Hopefully my school is one of them.
Sources/More Information
http://www.ncsl.org/IssuesResearch/Education/CompulsoryEducationOverview/tabid/12943/Default.aspx
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0112617.html
Remember a few weeks ago, when I compared my struggles in teaching to "fighting in the trenches all day?" (If you don't, check your notes from this blog entry http://caminochile.blogspot.com/2011/05/its-enoguh.htmlYou don't have your notes? You don't have your notebook? Where is it? You lost it. OK, take this piece of paper and copy it again. Let's go, Tia Coleen knows you can do it).
I am not the only one who feels the strain of the struggle for a better educational system in Chile. As it turns out, even the head of state called for changes and improvements to the barely controlled scholastic chaos last December. (Read the full article here: http://www.economist.com/node/17679703) The reforms are a great idea. Implementation is a concern. It took two months for my materials to get here from Santiago, after all.
The calls for change come on the heels of an educational revolution already trying to jump from infancy to adolesence in a single bound. Since 2000, reforms and initiatives (including Idiomas Abren Puertas-IAP, which is the one in which I am partipating) have made the attempt to shift Chile's educational system drastically toward being able to compete globally.
Only in 2003 was high school made mandatory for all Chileans, and free of charge until 21 years of age (In perspective-Massachusetts was the first US state to pass compulsory education laws in 1852, and Colorado school districts made it cumpulsory 114 years earlier than Chile in 1889).
According to the information given at the orientation for IAP in Santiago, seven out of ten university students in Chile are the first in their families to attain tertiary education. In 1990, there were approximately 245,000 university students. In 2008, there were 769,000. This year, they will likely pass a million. That is a 400% increase in twenty years.
The main problem is that increasing the sheer quantity of Chileans receiving an education is not enough. The quality of the education (particularly in public schools like mine) must increase in step with the growth in numbers, or all that growth in the student population serves no purpose. Already it feels as though school is just a time/space holder in the lives of many of my students...something that they are required to do for reasons that even their parents may not understand. A relatively safe place to keep children during the day, where they can learn a few basics until they begin to work whenever adulthood rears its head. I suspect that in many parts of the US it is this way as well.
I don't pretend to know how in the hell one can implement true and lasting reform in a scholastic system and increase the quality of the education that students recieve. Likely the answers lie in the galacial changes of a culture over generations, a transition to a society that values education and encourages it. Probably too minute to see in the course of the five months since Piñera's declaration.
But the numbers and programs are a start. Even massive glaciers have to start with a few determined flakes of snow clinging to a Godforsaken piece of rock. Hopefully my school is one of them.
Sources/More Information
http://www.ncsl.org/IssuesResearch/Education/CompulsoryEducationOverview/tabid/12943/Default.aspx
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0112617.html
03 May 2011
Backpedal!!
Wait wait wait wait wait wait a just a second. I think my blog has gotten a little bit complain-y and appears to be leaking frustration like an old car leaks break fluid. Because I received so many concerned responses to it, I want to make sure that everyone out there knows that I am not in some God-forsaken barren landscape, teaching English to completely unwilling students and suffering through a mounatin of dishes as high as the ceiling each night.
Yes, there are hard times. There always are. I cannot grow without suffering through some tough situations and being forced to learn how to rely on myself. Pain is the the water that makes us grow up and blossom. Frustration is thhe MiracleGrow.
There are so many wonderful things about Chile and about what I am doing here that it would be impossible to recount them all. Just the same, I am going to try to enlighten you about some of them.
-There is plentiful bread with butter and marmelade almost every day. Homemade marmelade. Sometimes homemade bread. So delicious I often eat five pieces a day.
-Chileans are joyful people and laugh easily. Even in my fourth language, in which I nearly completely lack tact and subtlety, I can make jokes and make people crack up. It's contagious. And it makes it really difficult to take myself so goddamned seriously in classes (for the better).
-Seeing my students' eyes light up when they know the answer to a question makes my day. Even when they don't quite say it right, or sometimes especially when they don't. The other day I was teaching the alphabet to my third graders and we got to the letter "P."
I asked, "How do we pronounce this letter?"
In unison, at the tops of their lungs, "Poooooooooooooooo!!!"
I had to put the card down because I was laughing so hard! Then I said, "No, the other one! Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!"
-I am learning to be extremely resourceful, flexible, and innovative since I lack materials and am trying to teach without any previous knowledge.
-My Spanish is beginning to kick ass. But seriously. And sometimes I even have a tiny Chilean accent!
-Despite at first glance appearing empty, this part of Patagonia is actually quite full of things to do and see. My desire to spend time outside in the nature has never been greater, and I felt that it will continue for sure in the coming years. I feel lucky to be here every time I look at the mountains.
So you see? It's not all bad at all. It's great.
Yes, there are hard times. There always are. I cannot grow without suffering through some tough situations and being forced to learn how to rely on myself. Pain is the the water that makes us grow up and blossom. Frustration is thhe MiracleGrow.
There are so many wonderful things about Chile and about what I am doing here that it would be impossible to recount them all. Just the same, I am going to try to enlighten you about some of them.
-There is plentiful bread with butter and marmelade almost every day. Homemade marmelade. Sometimes homemade bread. So delicious I often eat five pieces a day.
-Chileans are joyful people and laugh easily. Even in my fourth language, in which I nearly completely lack tact and subtlety, I can make jokes and make people crack up. It's contagious. And it makes it really difficult to take myself so goddamned seriously in classes (for the better).
-Seeing my students' eyes light up when they know the answer to a question makes my day. Even when they don't quite say it right, or sometimes especially when they don't. The other day I was teaching the alphabet to my third graders and we got to the letter "P."
I asked, "How do we pronounce this letter?"
In unison, at the tops of their lungs, "Poooooooooooooooo!!!"
I had to put the card down because I was laughing so hard! Then I said, "No, the other one! Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!"
-I am learning to be extremely resourceful, flexible, and innovative since I lack materials and am trying to teach without any previous knowledge.
-My Spanish is beginning to kick ass. But seriously. And sometimes I even have a tiny Chilean accent!
-Despite at first glance appearing empty, this part of Patagonia is actually quite full of things to do and see. My desire to spend time outside in the nature has never been greater, and I felt that it will continue for sure in the coming years. I feel lucky to be here every time I look at the mountains.
So you see? It's not all bad at all. It's great.
It's Enough
Teaching. It's what I came here to do, right? Right?
Yes. I still feel called to be here, still called to be here for these kids. I still feel alone in my planning and like I am flying by the seat of my pants to learn as I go how to teach. Sometimes (yeah, let's be honest...every single day) I need to take a long walk with my ipod and go fast enough that the frustration finally cedes to my endorphins and the Patagonian wind, drifting off to return the following morning.
I have a reputation as a hard-ass amongst my students because I ask them to stay in their seats, not use cell phones, not hit each other, and copy a few lines every day in English. My new rule this week is that I am going to count how many times I have to say a simple instruction (for example, "Sit down"). If I have to say it more than ten times without a result, the class loses its sticker for the day...meaning that the may lose the inter-class sticker competition.
In a perfect world, this would be relatively easy and my students might be able to learn more.
In the real world, it takes forty minutes to write down five sentences. My students grab me by the hands and clothes to get my attention and run around the classroom throwing paper at each other. The girls take all of the ink from their pens and smear it all over themselves and their companions. My eighth graders hurl insults at me almost as hard as they hurl their chairs against the ground.
Not to sound melodramatic, but I often feel like I've been fighting in the trenches all day when I get out of school.
But each day is a new day. Occasionally my students surprise me and make it all worth it. One of my first graders today revealed that she can write as well or better than some of the fifth graders.
I'm not even concerned with breaking even anymore. I just want a little sprinkling of good surprises and minor victories to season the greater confusion, frustration, and lack of progress. It's enough.
Yes. I still feel called to be here, still called to be here for these kids. I still feel alone in my planning and like I am flying by the seat of my pants to learn as I go how to teach. Sometimes (yeah, let's be honest...every single day) I need to take a long walk with my ipod and go fast enough that the frustration finally cedes to my endorphins and the Patagonian wind, drifting off to return the following morning.
I have a reputation as a hard-ass amongst my students because I ask them to stay in their seats, not use cell phones, not hit each other, and copy a few lines every day in English. My new rule this week is that I am going to count how many times I have to say a simple instruction (for example, "Sit down"). If I have to say it more than ten times without a result, the class loses its sticker for the day...meaning that the may lose the inter-class sticker competition.
In a perfect world, this would be relatively easy and my students might be able to learn more.
In the real world, it takes forty minutes to write down five sentences. My students grab me by the hands and clothes to get my attention and run around the classroom throwing paper at each other. The girls take all of the ink from their pens and smear it all over themselves and their companions. My eighth graders hurl insults at me almost as hard as they hurl their chairs against the ground.
Not to sound melodramatic, but I often feel like I've been fighting in the trenches all day when I get out of school.
But each day is a new day. Occasionally my students surprise me and make it all worth it. One of my first graders today revealed that she can write as well or better than some of the fifth graders.
I'm not even concerned with breaking even anymore. I just want a little sprinkling of good surprises and minor victories to season the greater confusion, frustration, and lack of progress. It's enough.
15 April 2011
The World is Pretty Cool Sometimes
For the information of those who may be in Turkey...this blog was apparently deemed unsuitable for comsumption by people within Turkish borders. Apparently I talk too much about life in a tiny town half the world away for thekr liking. Or swear too much. Or something.
First censorship ever! Great success!
"Tia, do you know the national anthem of thhe United States? Here's Chile's..."
My sixth graders launch into a rendition of the national anthem at once, complete with drumroll effects on the desks and standing on chairs. Every one of them knows the words by heart and sings with pride, even the ones who have learning disabilites and the ones with bad attitudes.
It appears to be a clever diversion to distract me from the lesson about healthy and unhealthy foods. It partly is. But I am amazed at how united they are, how proud.
They ask me to to sing my own national anthem (and by "ask" I mean "demand repeatedly").
I start it too high. Start again.
Oh, say can you see?
By the dawn's early light
For once, their attention is intensely focused on me alone. No cell pones, no pencils being sharpened to an unholy degree, no standing up and running around the classroom.
What so proudly we hailed
At the twilight's last gleaming
Matías' eyes are glowing. "Oh yeah!! I've heard this before!"
Whose broad stripes and bright stars
Through the perilous fight
Even Vahitea (I had to gently throw a marker at to get her attention ten minutes ago) has put away her hand mirror and is staring.
O'er the ramparts we watched
Were so galantly streaming
And the rockets red glare
Benjamin is giggling at my voice's strain to reach the note and gesticulating wildly like a conductor.
The bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there
Nearly lost it right here. Struggling to swallow a slight partiotic bubble in my throat so I can sing.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave?
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Cheers from the students. A brief attempt to explain why we have the song, and why our flag is really important to us.
I've spent a lot of time effacing my American-ness this trip, and in my general life. I often try to be as culturally and liguistically neutral as possible, and more than thrice since leaving the States I've been told that I don't look or act like an American. I normally take it as a compliment. But something about singing our national anthem 6,000 miles away from my homeland pulled forth a sense of American identity that I have not felt in a long time.
I could picture the flag waving in the breeze.
At the same time, the rendition of the Chilean anthem that my students gave was stirring. I realized that my country is pretty damn cool, and so is theirs. The impromptu appearance of patriotism on both sides makes me realize how cool the world is, and how wonderful it is that we all can come from different backgrounds and still end up in the same 10x20 ft classroom talking about foods.
The world is pretty cool sometimes.
First censorship ever! Great success!
"Tia, do you know the national anthem of thhe United States? Here's Chile's..."
My sixth graders launch into a rendition of the national anthem at once, complete with drumroll effects on the desks and standing on chairs. Every one of them knows the words by heart and sings with pride, even the ones who have learning disabilites and the ones with bad attitudes.
It appears to be a clever diversion to distract me from the lesson about healthy and unhealthy foods. It partly is. But I am amazed at how united they are, how proud.
They ask me to to sing my own national anthem (and by "ask" I mean "demand repeatedly").
I start it too high. Start again.
Oh, say can you see?
By the dawn's early light
For once, their attention is intensely focused on me alone. No cell pones, no pencils being sharpened to an unholy degree, no standing up and running around the classroom.
What so proudly we hailed
At the twilight's last gleaming
Matías' eyes are glowing. "Oh yeah!! I've heard this before!"
Whose broad stripes and bright stars
Through the perilous fight
Even Vahitea (I had to gently throw a marker at to get her attention ten minutes ago) has put away her hand mirror and is staring.
O'er the ramparts we watched
Were so galantly streaming
And the rockets red glare
Benjamin is giggling at my voice's strain to reach the note and gesticulating wildly like a conductor.
The bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there
Nearly lost it right here. Struggling to swallow a slight partiotic bubble in my throat so I can sing.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave?
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Cheers from the students. A brief attempt to explain why we have the song, and why our flag is really important to us.
I've spent a lot of time effacing my American-ness this trip, and in my general life. I often try to be as culturally and liguistically neutral as possible, and more than thrice since leaving the States I've been told that I don't look or act like an American. I normally take it as a compliment. But something about singing our national anthem 6,000 miles away from my homeland pulled forth a sense of American identity that I have not felt in a long time.
I could picture the flag waving in the breeze.
At the same time, the rendition of the Chilean anthem that my students gave was stirring. I realized that my country is pretty damn cool, and so is theirs. The impromptu appearance of patriotism on both sides makes me realize how cool the world is, and how wonderful it is that we all can come from different backgrounds and still end up in the same 10x20 ft classroom talking about foods.
The world is pretty cool sometimes.
10 April 2011
Work work work work work wo...
I am slightly worried that the frustration I've felt over the last week might come out in this blog entry, but the hell with it. Reality is relative, and mine at the moment is one in which frustration is beginning to approach critical mass.
I came to Chile to work. Let's get that clear. I had no illusions that I would be coasting during my time even if I was only teaching 25 hours of class with another ten of planning outside it. I knew I would be learning a new language through immersion, which was one of the hardest things I had ever done in my life when I lived in Italy. I knew that teaching with no previous experience in pedagogy would be a challenge.
I had no idea how hard I would be expected to work here, nor how hard I would have to push myself.
At times it feels like there simply are not enough hours in the day to get everything done (or hours in the night to get some rest). I typically get up at about 7AM, quickly dress, and run downstairs to eat breakfast with minutes to spare. Coffee is a no longer an option. If I run out of time, I add some cold tap water to the mug and stand over the kitchen sink to chug it.
Then I teach from 8AM to 2:15 or later, with only the fifteen-minute breaks between classes. I am expected to keep up with 27 contact hours and 5 planning/extra-cirricular hours, not counting the hour or more of planning required every night. More than that, the teachers I work with expect me to plan and execute my lessons independently. I am less of a volunteer and more of an unpaid actual teacher...with more hours in class than they typically have.
I am also expected to be able to handle children with special needs on my own, despite my utter lack of experience in this and with lttle to no support from the school. I have a few students who have FAS, a couple with other developmental problems, some with some form of autism, and others who cannot yet read or write due to an unaddressed learning disorder.
That would already be a lot to manage, but then comes my other work. Because our house is actually a pension, the work is never-ending. I joke that I am doing an apprenticeship in hospitality during my time here, but it's not really a joke.
I wash dishes and help dry and put them away for about an hour after dinner at least five times a week...not to mention the dishes from the other three meals of the day. I often end up setting and clearing the tables for every meal but breakfast. I put out laundry to dry and iron as much as I can on weekends. I help serve dinner and lunch to our guests.
I am not alone in all of this, since there are always several of us helping...but I am not being paid to work in the hostel. I wouldn't mind earning my keep, but I actually paid the program to house me here. We have two nanas here (cross between cook, cleaning lady, and laundress), plus my host mom and sister, plus the other volunteer who is my roommate...yet we still end up working.
Today I hit my boundary of how much I am willing to work in the house. Some friends from the program came up to Natales to go to Torres del Paine and hang out for the weekend. I asked on Monday if it would be ok for them to stay here, and the answer was yes. By Friday, that answer had changed to "we'll see" and I was fully expecting to sleep on the floor of my bedroom under blankets nicked from the storeroom.
Long story short, we had space. I served tea and dinner to the guests and we all tried our hardest to help with dishes and cleaning after all meals. We had an amazing time in the park on Saturday.
Today my friends went home. At once, I thanked my host mother for allowing them to stay here. "I know it's not easy to have extra people in the house, so thank you thank you thank you." She made a scoffing sound. "Now we have to make up their room and change the sheets, and I have no nana today." She looked at me expectantly. Damnit, I thought. "I could do that..." I began.
"Don't forget to run the vacum cleaner," she interupted. And back to her tea in silence. No mention of how to clean or where to get products or sheets or the damn vacum.
So I cleaned the room, changed the sheets, ran the vacum, took out the trash, and washed the bathroom. I rolled up new towels and arranged them on the beds. When I came downstairs with the sheets from the beds, she didn't thank me. "Just leave them over there, nothing more," she said, gesturing to the laundry basket. And back to cooking in silence.
I don't want to seem ungrateful, but really? Nowhere in the contract that I signed does it say that I am required to work as a nana. I help with the dishes and cleaning out of the goodness of my heart, and also selfishly because I want to keep tension to a minimum. I wouldn't have done the room at all if I hadn't been trying to clear the air after this weekend.
I certainly don't think that I am somehow above cleaning or washing or working with my hands (because I actually enjoy manual labor sometimes...it's very calming), but I can't help but feeling like I am again being cajoled into taking some of the work from those who are actually paid to do these things. Like they are passing it off on me and expecting me to work unpaid just because I am here, whether I'm in school or at home.
I think a lot about my ancestors these days, who worked so hard teaching or cleaning or farming. I don't want to stop working as hard as I am because I want to work hard, and I want to do all I can to squeeze every last drop of experience out of these months...but I also will not work as an unpaid nana.
Next weekend I'm leaving town and it will just have to work somehow. You aren't paying me. Not my problem (until I get back and you are pissed at me).
I came to Chile to work. Let's get that clear. I had no illusions that I would be coasting during my time even if I was only teaching 25 hours of class with another ten of planning outside it. I knew I would be learning a new language through immersion, which was one of the hardest things I had ever done in my life when I lived in Italy. I knew that teaching with no previous experience in pedagogy would be a challenge.
I had no idea how hard I would be expected to work here, nor how hard I would have to push myself.
At times it feels like there simply are not enough hours in the day to get everything done (or hours in the night to get some rest). I typically get up at about 7AM, quickly dress, and run downstairs to eat breakfast with minutes to spare. Coffee is a no longer an option. If I run out of time, I add some cold tap water to the mug and stand over the kitchen sink to chug it.
Then I teach from 8AM to 2:15 or later, with only the fifteen-minute breaks between classes. I am expected to keep up with 27 contact hours and 5 planning/extra-cirricular hours, not counting the hour or more of planning required every night. More than that, the teachers I work with expect me to plan and execute my lessons independently. I am less of a volunteer and more of an unpaid actual teacher...with more hours in class than they typically have.
I am also expected to be able to handle children with special needs on my own, despite my utter lack of experience in this and with lttle to no support from the school. I have a few students who have FAS, a couple with other developmental problems, some with some form of autism, and others who cannot yet read or write due to an unaddressed learning disorder.
That would already be a lot to manage, but then comes my other work. Because our house is actually a pension, the work is never-ending. I joke that I am doing an apprenticeship in hospitality during my time here, but it's not really a joke.
I wash dishes and help dry and put them away for about an hour after dinner at least five times a week...not to mention the dishes from the other three meals of the day. I often end up setting and clearing the tables for every meal but breakfast. I put out laundry to dry and iron as much as I can on weekends. I help serve dinner and lunch to our guests.
I am not alone in all of this, since there are always several of us helping...but I am not being paid to work in the hostel. I wouldn't mind earning my keep, but I actually paid the program to house me here. We have two nanas here (cross between cook, cleaning lady, and laundress), plus my host mom and sister, plus the other volunteer who is my roommate...yet we still end up working.
Today I hit my boundary of how much I am willing to work in the house. Some friends from the program came up to Natales to go to Torres del Paine and hang out for the weekend. I asked on Monday if it would be ok for them to stay here, and the answer was yes. By Friday, that answer had changed to "we'll see" and I was fully expecting to sleep on the floor of my bedroom under blankets nicked from the storeroom.
Long story short, we had space. I served tea and dinner to the guests and we all tried our hardest to help with dishes and cleaning after all meals. We had an amazing time in the park on Saturday.
Today my friends went home. At once, I thanked my host mother for allowing them to stay here. "I know it's not easy to have extra people in the house, so thank you thank you thank you." She made a scoffing sound. "Now we have to make up their room and change the sheets, and I have no nana today." She looked at me expectantly. Damnit, I thought. "I could do that..." I began.
"Don't forget to run the vacum cleaner," she interupted. And back to her tea in silence. No mention of how to clean or where to get products or sheets or the damn vacum.
So I cleaned the room, changed the sheets, ran the vacum, took out the trash, and washed the bathroom. I rolled up new towels and arranged them on the beds. When I came downstairs with the sheets from the beds, she didn't thank me. "Just leave them over there, nothing more," she said, gesturing to the laundry basket. And back to cooking in silence.
I don't want to seem ungrateful, but really? Nowhere in the contract that I signed does it say that I am required to work as a nana. I help with the dishes and cleaning out of the goodness of my heart, and also selfishly because I want to keep tension to a minimum. I wouldn't have done the room at all if I hadn't been trying to clear the air after this weekend.
I certainly don't think that I am somehow above cleaning or washing or working with my hands (because I actually enjoy manual labor sometimes...it's very calming), but I can't help but feeling like I am again being cajoled into taking some of the work from those who are actually paid to do these things. Like they are passing it off on me and expecting me to work unpaid just because I am here, whether I'm in school or at home.
I think a lot about my ancestors these days, who worked so hard teaching or cleaning or farming. I don't want to stop working as hard as I am because I want to work hard, and I want to do all I can to squeeze every last drop of experience out of these months...but I also will not work as an unpaid nana.
Next weekend I'm leaving town and it will just have to work somehow. You aren't paying me. Not my problem (until I get back and you are pissed at me).
31 March 2011
Cult of English? Neocolonialism? Phrasebooks?
The lightbulb in my bathroom is out. I'm sitting with my back against the radiator in my room, stressing out over how one says, Lightbulb" in Spanish, and how one asks about changing it, and how one buys a lightbulb here and where. So complicated! And yet, the realization dawns on me...I know how to ask about it. I know where to buy one. And anyway I have a dictionary and as soon as I summon the will to move across my room, I will know the word.
My Spanish is improving sneakily, without me even realizing it is happening. Reading and understanding are still easier than writing and speaking, but I spend a significant portion of each day concentrating on reading Spanish and attempting to spell words correctly when I translate something for my students (My speling en Español eez aboot lyke thes, end it maykes my stoodents laff).
One of my daily attempts at constant practice of Spanish is to read the newspapers that hang in the windows of many of the stores on Baquedano street, the main drag in Puerto Natales' centro. The news in this region usually consists of a monor protest here, a school test result there, and many, many car accidents. I have made myself the promise that I will always wear my seatbelt if it is humanly possible.
As I was reading the news in the window today, a green opinion piece caught my eye. It was written by a local sociologist in tight, academic Castellano. He was angry. He was skeptical. He was writing about English in Chilean schools.
About a week ago, the Ministry of Education released the results of a standardized test for English in Chilean Schools...the SIMCE. As far as I've been told, students take the test to assess their English abilities at the end of 8th and 12th grade. All students in these grades in Chile are required to take the test, because English classes are required in all schools nationwide as part of an effort to make Chile into a bilingual country (like Germany, Holland, Sweden, or Singapore) in 15-20 years.
Out of the students who took the test last year, only 11% passed. Passed. Not with flying colors. Passed. In Puerto Natales, the numbers are a little worse. Out of 214 students who took the test, only 12 passed. None from my school, mind you.
The sociologist castigated the MINEDUC and the Chilean government for promoting English so vigorously in schools. He warned that Chile should not become a country with a Cult of English, as he (maybe correctly...never been so I don't know) assured his readers that Korea, Thailand, and Singapore have. He ripped into the MINEDUC for promoting English and not Asiatic languages like Mandarin because those are of emerging economies. Strangely, he argued that students in Puerto Natales would not see the point of speaking English because so many tourists come here with phrasebook in hand, which spells out Spanish "even to the point of how to ask for a kilo of bread."
He accused the whole initiative of promoting Neocolonialism.
Reading this after my classes, I felt extremely conflicted. On the one hand, I understand where he is coming from. He doesn't want students to lose themselves in the use of English instead of the use of their mother tongue or those of their ancestors. He doesn't want the promotion of English to take the place of other important languages and other important emerging economies. He doesn't want Anglophone culture to replace Chileno culture.
I felt like a big, fat, Gringa stomping around in my boots and squashing Chilean culture under my Anglophone feet, indoctrinating my innocent students to believe they were somehow inferior if they couldn't speak English.
As someone who holds a B.A. In Anthropology, I would like to think that I am sensitive to cultural phenomena and especially Neocolonialism and Neoimperialism. My professors drilled into our brains over and over that a balance between cultural relativism ("Eh, it's just their culture to commit infanticide...who am I to judge?") and Neocolonialism ("DO...YOU...SPEAK...ENGLISH? Why is everything is Chile so disorganized, things are so much better in the States. Yu need to change to be like us...").
My purpose here is to expose my students to what a native speaker of English sounds like, as much as possible. Just to have them be able to communicate basically at some point in their lives...probably not now, but maybe in a few years they will remember how to introduce themselves. Basta.
More than that, I disagree with the Natalino sociologist. For better or for worse English is an intercontinental lingua franca used in diplomacy, economics, education, tourism, and much more. More than 150 countries have a significant number of English speakers. And yes, the emerging economies of the world such as the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) all have their own languages, but in each of them English is often used for business or government or other things. English is just one of many languages and dialects in some countries and even if it originally came from the influence of the British Empire or expansionism on the part of culture from the United States, the language is perhaps more varied than any other because of the differences between countries, accents, individuals, and cultures.
I don't believe that speaking English and retaining one's culture are necessarily mutually exclusive. I see culture and language working together as an additive process, not one where the new must replace the old. When I learn new languages, my mind expands and I find new ways of thinking about situations, often in ways that are untranslatale from one to the other. I hold more possibilites to communicate, to share, and to think. Like any language, English may replace another to the detriment of the original (i.e. Ireland) or be more additive (i.e. Hindi, which incorporates many English words into daily speech).
Despite that, I reailze that the possibility for English to be a form of cultural capital (a la Pierre Bourdieu) is real and for the and also that those who speak it in some countries might form a culture of elitism. It is also possible to have an English Cult, and that kind of mentality is not helpful to anyone.
Am I just a cog in the English Cult Machine here in Chile? Maybe.
But more likely there are other issues than student disinterest or nonusefulness of English in the world that are getting in the way.
In chile there appear to be many more systemic problems than just English initiatives in the education system. Lack of materials, lack or resources, lack of teachers...it is not too uncommon that some students make it through 13 years of school and are barely able to read and do basic math. Many more drop out early. Barely any go to college. At last I understand why people in town keep asking me if I know how to read.
Can Chile become bilingual in 15-20 years? Maybe. And maybe I am playing some small part in the play. But I know that I can only do my best, try to learn as much as possible, and act as a cultural ambassador and not a cultural conqueror.
Awareness is the first step.
Edit: Today's newspaper showed the results of the standardized test that teachers take as well. Only 52% were able to obtain a passing grades, across all subjects and levels. Indeed, the problems with the education system in Chile are systemic and not just limited to English classes.
A related side note: I am now helping the local high school music teacher with lessons on history of music in the United States. If you want an example of Cultural Imperialism...there you go.
My Spanish is improving sneakily, without me even realizing it is happening. Reading and understanding are still easier than writing and speaking, but I spend a significant portion of each day concentrating on reading Spanish and attempting to spell words correctly when I translate something for my students (My speling en Español eez aboot lyke thes, end it maykes my stoodents laff).
One of my daily attempts at constant practice of Spanish is to read the newspapers that hang in the windows of many of the stores on Baquedano street, the main drag in Puerto Natales' centro. The news in this region usually consists of a monor protest here, a school test result there, and many, many car accidents. I have made myself the promise that I will always wear my seatbelt if it is humanly possible.
As I was reading the news in the window today, a green opinion piece caught my eye. It was written by a local sociologist in tight, academic Castellano. He was angry. He was skeptical. He was writing about English in Chilean schools.
About a week ago, the Ministry of Education released the results of a standardized test for English in Chilean Schools...the SIMCE. As far as I've been told, students take the test to assess their English abilities at the end of 8th and 12th grade. All students in these grades in Chile are required to take the test, because English classes are required in all schools nationwide as part of an effort to make Chile into a bilingual country (like Germany, Holland, Sweden, or Singapore) in 15-20 years.
Out of the students who took the test last year, only 11% passed. Passed. Not with flying colors. Passed. In Puerto Natales, the numbers are a little worse. Out of 214 students who took the test, only 12 passed. None from my school, mind you.
The sociologist castigated the MINEDUC and the Chilean government for promoting English so vigorously in schools. He warned that Chile should not become a country with a Cult of English, as he (maybe correctly...never been so I don't know) assured his readers that Korea, Thailand, and Singapore have. He ripped into the MINEDUC for promoting English and not Asiatic languages like Mandarin because those are of emerging economies. Strangely, he argued that students in Puerto Natales would not see the point of speaking English because so many tourists come here with phrasebook in hand, which spells out Spanish "even to the point of how to ask for a kilo of bread."
He accused the whole initiative of promoting Neocolonialism.
Reading this after my classes, I felt extremely conflicted. On the one hand, I understand where he is coming from. He doesn't want students to lose themselves in the use of English instead of the use of their mother tongue or those of their ancestors. He doesn't want the promotion of English to take the place of other important languages and other important emerging economies. He doesn't want Anglophone culture to replace Chileno culture.
I felt like a big, fat, Gringa stomping around in my boots and squashing Chilean culture under my Anglophone feet, indoctrinating my innocent students to believe they were somehow inferior if they couldn't speak English.
As someone who holds a B.A. In Anthropology, I would like to think that I am sensitive to cultural phenomena and especially Neocolonialism and Neoimperialism. My professors drilled into our brains over and over that a balance between cultural relativism ("Eh, it's just their culture to commit infanticide...who am I to judge?") and Neocolonialism ("DO...YOU...SPEAK...ENGLISH? Why is everything is Chile so disorganized, things are so much better in the States. Yu need to change to be like us...").
My purpose here is to expose my students to what a native speaker of English sounds like, as much as possible. Just to have them be able to communicate basically at some point in their lives...probably not now, but maybe in a few years they will remember how to introduce themselves. Basta.
More than that, I disagree with the Natalino sociologist. For better or for worse English is an intercontinental lingua franca used in diplomacy, economics, education, tourism, and much more. More than 150 countries have a significant number of English speakers. And yes, the emerging economies of the world such as the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) all have their own languages, but in each of them English is often used for business or government or other things. English is just one of many languages and dialects in some countries and even if it originally came from the influence of the British Empire or expansionism on the part of culture from the United States, the language is perhaps more varied than any other because of the differences between countries, accents, individuals, and cultures.
I don't believe that speaking English and retaining one's culture are necessarily mutually exclusive. I see culture and language working together as an additive process, not one where the new must replace the old. When I learn new languages, my mind expands and I find new ways of thinking about situations, often in ways that are untranslatale from one to the other. I hold more possibilites to communicate, to share, and to think. Like any language, English may replace another to the detriment of the original (i.e. Ireland) or be more additive (i.e. Hindi, which incorporates many English words into daily speech).
Despite that, I reailze that the possibility for English to be a form of cultural capital (a la Pierre Bourdieu) is real and for the and also that those who speak it in some countries might form a culture of elitism. It is also possible to have an English Cult, and that kind of mentality is not helpful to anyone.
Am I just a cog in the English Cult Machine here in Chile? Maybe.
But more likely there are other issues than student disinterest or nonusefulness of English in the world that are getting in the way.
In chile there appear to be many more systemic problems than just English initiatives in the education system. Lack of materials, lack or resources, lack of teachers...it is not too uncommon that some students make it through 13 years of school and are barely able to read and do basic math. Many more drop out early. Barely any go to college. At last I understand why people in town keep asking me if I know how to read.
Can Chile become bilingual in 15-20 years? Maybe. And maybe I am playing some small part in the play. But I know that I can only do my best, try to learn as much as possible, and act as a cultural ambassador and not a cultural conqueror.
Awareness is the first step.
Edit: Today's newspaper showed the results of the standardized test that teachers take as well. Only 52% were able to obtain a passing grades, across all subjects and levels. Indeed, the problems with the education system in Chile are systemic and not just limited to English classes.
A related side note: I am now helping the local high school music teacher with lessons on history of music in the United States. If you want an example of Cultural Imperialism...there you go.
15 March 2011
Tia Coleen and Total Utter Chaos
Upon walking into the Escuela Juan de Ladrilleros here in Puerto Natales, I was greeted with warmth and stares and cries of, "Hello teacher!" from the kids. The female director (? Not sure exactly what her role is really) of the school took me to literally every classroom in the hour that followed to introduce me to all of the kids in the school. It's not a gigantic school because there are only about two hundred students, but during passing period it feels like there are many thousands of them all running around and yelling in burgundy polo shirts and gray tights.
Things stood out; a mass amount of trophies crowd every available shelf in the lounges and teachers' room. Some classrooms are beautifully decorated and offer the students a lot, but the decoration and effort of the part of the teachers wanes in a decrescendo that leaves the oldest ones with nothing on the walls and almost no discipline. The teachers sit in the teachers lounge and gossip openly about students with the door open. The sunlight in the morning is gorgeous. The windows of the English classroom are broken. Every room has a projector, but no way to connect a computer.
After the tour, we sat down to try to decide where I would teach and when, and with which grade levels. According to the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) I am supposed to teach only 5th through 8th grade, but there aren't enough classes to complete my needed hours. 25 hours of class time is more than most of the salaried teachers work at the school, and to add another 10 of planning and extra-curriculars is very difficult.
So I'm teaching basically ALL levels, Kindergarten to 8th grade. Where each class goes changes every day and every 45 to 90 minutes, seemingly at random. Class starts at 8AM and ends around 1:30-2:15 PM. An argument broke out over where I should teach, and when, and with whom, and why English is important. In rapid Chileno Spanish (which is nearly incomprehensible, even though understanding is usually what I excel at), the teachers and assistant director decided my fate almost without consulting me.
I need to buy some pencils to schedule with here, since everything constantly changes.
The orientation last week told all of us volunteers that there would be an orientation in our regions and in our schools, and that the remaining questions we had could be answered once we got here and met all together with the regional director. We would observe classes but not teach until the following week, once we had time to plan with our head teachers and to learn the rules of our schools. And they would give us materials for classes, the books, and other things we might need. We would plan what to teach with our head teachers for at least four hours a week. We could even choose between two models of teaching: independent and flexible.
HAH! More like the fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-with-no-support model. The switch that had been at Barely Controlled Chaos ever since I arrived in Chile instantly flipped to Absolute Chaos yesterday when I was expected to teach (off the cuff) classroom instructions to one of the fifth grade classes.
Complete And Utter Chaos would come today when my head teacher decided not to come back from his lunch break and the director asked me to substitute with no preparation or lesson plan or materials. I don't even have the English curriculum books for the different levels. Nevermind the fact that the MINEDUC specifically told us that we were not to substitute or be in charge of a whole class alone. For three HOURS. I tried for an hour and managed to get the students to make nametags, to have them show me where the USA and Chile are, and to thoroughly confuse them because we could not communicate.
The other teachers I work with make me angry at adults. They gossip, they shirk their duties, they read out scores of students and poke fun at those who aren't doing as well...worst of all they blame everything on the children. The head English teacher esentially said to me by way of introduction, "We teachers always do the lessons so that they are easiest for us, so we don't really care if the students understand."
Excuse me? We are not on the same page...not even in the same book. The defeatist attitude that permeates the school might come from dissatisfaction with the work, from a lack of materials and resources, from a misunderstanding of what education is and why it is imperative that all children have access to it. It is a public school in a developing country, after all. But they also have this attitude that I should just magically know all the rules of the school, speak impeccable Chileno, and be aware of all Chilean cultural norms. Telepathically. By osmosis. Somehow.
But the children. The children! They make all the Utter Chaos, all the hostility, all the terror at teaching sans plan worth it. They are adorable, every last one. They call me Tia Coleen (Aunty Coleen) and they all ask questions and want to show off that they understand. They kiss me on the cheek one by one after class and say, "bye bye!!" They give me gifts of candy and cookies and wave at me in the halls. Not one of them is a problem or a bad student by their own fault. Their teachers are failing them, and I know we can do better.
Especially after today, I've decided not to do anything the way the other teachers do. If I overstep boundaries, I will plead Gringa (Stupid Foreign Girl). I don't really care if the other teachers or the administrators are unsupportive or don't like me or lack the resources to do anything more than they are. Paper is cheap. Markers, too. I will make collages and rules and colorful things, and I will not give in to the defeatism. I will not gossip about my students. I will speak English to them and the exposure will be enough.
I will be the best English Teacher I can be.
Edit: I've alao aged five years in two days. I look like a teacher now.
Things stood out; a mass amount of trophies crowd every available shelf in the lounges and teachers' room. Some classrooms are beautifully decorated and offer the students a lot, but the decoration and effort of the part of the teachers wanes in a decrescendo that leaves the oldest ones with nothing on the walls and almost no discipline. The teachers sit in the teachers lounge and gossip openly about students with the door open. The sunlight in the morning is gorgeous. The windows of the English classroom are broken. Every room has a projector, but no way to connect a computer.
After the tour, we sat down to try to decide where I would teach and when, and with which grade levels. According to the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) I am supposed to teach only 5th through 8th grade, but there aren't enough classes to complete my needed hours. 25 hours of class time is more than most of the salaried teachers work at the school, and to add another 10 of planning and extra-curriculars is very difficult.
So I'm teaching basically ALL levels, Kindergarten to 8th grade. Where each class goes changes every day and every 45 to 90 minutes, seemingly at random. Class starts at 8AM and ends around 1:30-2:15 PM. An argument broke out over where I should teach, and when, and with whom, and why English is important. In rapid Chileno Spanish (which is nearly incomprehensible, even though understanding is usually what I excel at), the teachers and assistant director decided my fate almost without consulting me.
I need to buy some pencils to schedule with here, since everything constantly changes.
The orientation last week told all of us volunteers that there would be an orientation in our regions and in our schools, and that the remaining questions we had could be answered once we got here and met all together with the regional director. We would observe classes but not teach until the following week, once we had time to plan with our head teachers and to learn the rules of our schools. And they would give us materials for classes, the books, and other things we might need. We would plan what to teach with our head teachers for at least four hours a week. We could even choose between two models of teaching: independent and flexible.
HAH! More like the fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-with-no-support model. The switch that had been at Barely Controlled Chaos ever since I arrived in Chile instantly flipped to Absolute Chaos yesterday when I was expected to teach (off the cuff) classroom instructions to one of the fifth grade classes.
Complete And Utter Chaos would come today when my head teacher decided not to come back from his lunch break and the director asked me to substitute with no preparation or lesson plan or materials. I don't even have the English curriculum books for the different levels. Nevermind the fact that the MINEDUC specifically told us that we were not to substitute or be in charge of a whole class alone. For three HOURS. I tried for an hour and managed to get the students to make nametags, to have them show me where the USA and Chile are, and to thoroughly confuse them because we could not communicate.
The other teachers I work with make me angry at adults. They gossip, they shirk their duties, they read out scores of students and poke fun at those who aren't doing as well...worst of all they blame everything on the children. The head English teacher esentially said to me by way of introduction, "We teachers always do the lessons so that they are easiest for us, so we don't really care if the students understand."
Excuse me? We are not on the same page...not even in the same book. The defeatist attitude that permeates the school might come from dissatisfaction with the work, from a lack of materials and resources, from a misunderstanding of what education is and why it is imperative that all children have access to it. It is a public school in a developing country, after all. But they also have this attitude that I should just magically know all the rules of the school, speak impeccable Chileno, and be aware of all Chilean cultural norms. Telepathically. By osmosis. Somehow.
But the children. The children! They make all the Utter Chaos, all the hostility, all the terror at teaching sans plan worth it. They are adorable, every last one. They call me Tia Coleen (Aunty Coleen) and they all ask questions and want to show off that they understand. They kiss me on the cheek one by one after class and say, "bye bye!!" They give me gifts of candy and cookies and wave at me in the halls. Not one of them is a problem or a bad student by their own fault. Their teachers are failing them, and I know we can do better.
Especially after today, I've decided not to do anything the way the other teachers do. If I overstep boundaries, I will plead Gringa (Stupid Foreign Girl). I don't really care if the other teachers or the administrators are unsupportive or don't like me or lack the resources to do anything more than they are. Paper is cheap. Markers, too. I will make collages and rules and colorful things, and I will not give in to the defeatism. I will not gossip about my students. I will speak English to them and the exposure will be enough.
I will be the best English Teacher I can be.
Edit: I've alao aged five years in two days. I look like a teacher now.
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