Teaching Troubles

I was torn about whether I'd teach in La Prusia or not before I showed up on January 11. I quickly made up my mind when I learned that classes wouldn't start for another three or four weeks, nearly halfway through my time here. In Guatemala, sometimes it seemed like we were doing more harm than good by having new teachers coming and going, usually without inexperience in front of a classroom and choosing to stick to the "How are you?"-"I am fine" routine for the 45th time. I always wondered whether they'd be better off working on a different subject. I believe that a teacher has the responsibility not just to teach the required material, but to get his or her students to believe that they have it in them to do whatever it is they put their minds to doing. This kind of relationship takes time to build. With only four weeks of one class a week, I thought the English teaching job would be better filled by someone who planned to be hear longer than me.

This past Friday, however, Christina, a Canadian volunteer, asked me if I could help out with her 2nd grade class and, with "fuckall" (that's British for "nothing") to do in construction this week, I thought "What the hell." I met her at a picnic table on the playground/courtyard/soccer field/broken down basketball court to help her with some last minute preps. We were going to revew a bit of numbers and teach the kids some animals words, and then maybe a few "I have..." phrases with numbers and animals.

We walked and interrupted a class, unsure of whether we were actually supposed to be teaching. The teacher eagerly ushered us in and assured us it was ok. A couple seconds later, he was out the door. There were four boys whose desks were literally touching the teachers desk. The rest of the class was plastered against the wall, positioning themselves as far away from the board as possible.

It was Christina's class so I wanted to let her run the show. Having only been here for a couple weeks and with only a brief relationship with the Spanish language, she struggled to communicate with the class. My classroom Spanish got pretty good in Guatemala, so I tried to step in a bit more than I anticipated. We played a numbers game. The rules were simple: two students alternate counting numbers until one says a wrong answer. In Guatemala, it was a hit. Here, only three kids volunteered.

The lack of enthusiasm carried over into the rest of the period. Only a handful actually repeated the animal names out loud with us, and I think two actually copied them all down. After 12 minutes of trying to help them/write names down for them, we ceded the defeat and moved onto the simple phrases. We wrote a couple "I have one (insert animal)" phrases and asked them to copy them and then write there own. They looked petrified, and the ones that didn't looked bored.

I noticed one little guy, with spiked up hair sitting by himself along the back wall. I tried explaining to him what we were doing, and he told me he couldn't do it. I told him he could and walked away trying to get the others to work too. A couple minutes later, I went back to the loner in the back and saw nothing on his paper. I helped him write the first sentence and told him write another one in Spanish. His words were smushed together and he mispelled enough words that I almost didn't recognize them. I let him try to write it in English, pointing when necessary to the example sentence, his template to follow. When he finished, I asked him to put it on the board. His eyes grew in fear and he shook his head.

We had another student at the board, but I could see my buddy from the back. He was looking at me with eager eyes half sitting, half standing. He changed his mind. He ran up with his paper and put his sentence on the board and ran back to his seat. The bell rang before he could read it out loud, but he looked at me with a slight grin on his face and I could tell he felt proud of himself.

After the class, I felt torn. It felt great being with the kids, especially with the one I helped do what he didn't think he could do; it reminded me why, one day, I know I will spend my days in front of a classroom. On the other hand, these English classes were only on Fridays, and I only had three left. Would it be fair to the kids to show up for a few days and just skip town? What would they think? On the other hand, whatever encouragement and help I could give them would be better than nothing. No?

I don't have answers to these questions, but I will be showing up for class next Friday.



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