Friday, November 25, 2005
Esperando en el parque
The other day I was waiting to meet Rocio in the plaza in front of the cathedral. She was about half an hour late, but it was OK, because there were hundreds of sparrows flying around in undulating groups, and I watched their formations in the sky overhead, and the way their swarms wound around the walls of the cathedral. The sun was setting behind the cathedral, and there was a thin layer of pink cloud on the blue sky. A cocker spaniel puppy tethered to the next bench watched the birds and barked at them. The puppy and I seemed to be the only ones enthralled; everyone else was probably used to it. I wanted to say, “But you see, this doesn’t happen everywhere.” It was easily one of the most beautiful things I have seen in Arandas so far.
By the time Fátima and Rocio arrived, the sky was darker and most of the birds were roosting noisily in the squarely trimmed trees. The students at the escuela urbana across the street were let out and immediately began playing in the plaza, kicking soccer balls or hitting a volleyball back and forth or else just racing from the stage at the opposite end to the fountain in front of the cathedral. A man walked around with a bag of chicharrones (sheets of pork rind) in one hand and salsa in the other, and another man stood at a lit cart selling garbanzos (not chick peas but a green bean in a shell – mmm, delish). I wanted to have some, of course, but couldn’t because I’m being careful about what I’m eating. Qué lástima!
Other beautiful things I have encountered in Arandas: the sound of horses’ feet clopping on the street outside my apartment. (I know I talk about this a lot but I continue to be amazed that horses do not seem to be an uncommon form of transportation here. I do not, however, see horses tied up outside saloons like in the westerns, indicating that the riders may not actually be using them as I use the bus, but just going out for a ride.) What else? The cathedral, of course, even though it’s back isn’t finished, and the fountain. The fact that down my street there are often guys (and today a girl) practicing lasso tricks in front of shops. The red dirt, even though it gets all over the cuffs of my pants and I have to scrub a lot when I’m washing my clothes on the roof. The way most people want to help me once they meet me. The way the second-graders scramble to sit on the floor when it’s time to read the story “Cherry Pies and Lullabies.” (I would scramble too for a story about cherry pies….) The flowers my students occasionally bring me, or the pictures they draw for me. One student drew me a picture that said, not well spelled, “Eres mi mejor miss” (meaning “You are my best teacher”)….
But it’s probably because of all the problems with my teaching that these offerings seem exquisite. I proudly put this picture up on my refrigerator, because I need the motivation and encouragement it provides, but at the same time I said, half-jokingly, to Rocio, “It’s because he doesn’t know me well.” She said, “He knows you well enough; it’s just that he doesn’t know you when you’re angry.”
And there it is – the dark cloud over my beautiful blue Arandas sky. I have a bad temper, and it’s shown itself a few times at school.
Could there be anything I hate more than getting angry at people who don’t deserve it? I want to crawl into a hole afterwards. Sometimes I crawl into my bed for a much-needed nap, which recharges me with energy to try to solve the discipline problems I face in my classrooms. I made a student questionnaire and bravely asked what they think of the class, whether they feel respected by me, what suggestions they might have for me. Maybe I am too concerned with what they think, though what they think is important for the development of my teaching. The results were encouraging – they have interest in learning the language, and most of the suggestions were to play more games (of course). But one suggestion really struck me, and it said something like, “Not to be annoyed when we don’t understand.”
Oh, pobrecitos!
I read in a Jon Kabat-Zinn book that parenting is like an 18-year-long retreat, meaning it tries your patience and takes a great deal of effort to remain calm and at peace with yourself and with others. Well, teaching kids must be similar. I feel so challenged and often discouraged in dealing with them, but I know that I have a lot to learn, and beating myself up over it isn’t going to help them very much anyway.
If I keep things in perspective, I know that the discipline problems come from disinterest in the activities I’m providing, and that I have to make adjustments or change to another activity altogether. What’s causing the disinterest? At the beginning, there was some resistance to the way I was doing things – trying to get them to communicate and talk to each other in English, to which they were clearly not accustomed. I think normally in English class they would just read and do exercises in their books. So I went to their books, familiar terrain I hoped would soothe them. But in my primary classes, the materials are not at their level. For example, in my fourth and fifth-grade class, one kid is bilingual and gets bored easily, while others don’t understand anything I say (even after three weeks) and also get bored easily. They won’t read the selection because they can’t. They won’t do the worksheet because they can’t understand it. This is mainly the same story for all my classes. I am grateful for my last class of second-graders, though, because most of them have had English classes for a while now so the materials are not completely above them, and they show a joy of reading and an enthusiasm for learning that I often miss dearly in other classes.
Thankfully I take up solutions offered in my rescue. I am fortunate enough to have a caring and devoted principal to supervise and help me. I broke down in her office the other day, because I had been severe with a couple of my classes (“No Spanish!” “Sit down!” “Is something funny? Do you want another demerit?”) and totally incompetent in another (a kindergarten class in which one boy said as soon as I walked in, “Oh no, I hate English class; it’s so boring,” and three boys made running escapes out of the classroom while I was trying to teach them to say which fruits they liked).
At last we are going to lower the level of the materials (something we tried to avoid because of the exorbitant cost of the materials to the parents), and we are going to separate students by English level rather than by grade. I will also have my own classroom to which the students come for class, rather than me being the traveling English teacher visiting all the classrooms. In a teachers’ meeting yesterday, the principal made sure that all the teachers were aware of glaring discipline problems (for me but also for the other traveling teachers, of music and P.E.), and the students got a talking to that really had them behaving much better today.
Should I have pushed for these changes earlier, rather than trying in vain to work with materials that were frustrating and discouraging for the students? There’s no point in asking this; next time I’ll know what to do.
So the saga of Jeanne the Struggling EFL Teacher continues…. Will the discipline problems subside with the change of material? Probably not as much as I’d like, but how exciting it is to imagine some of my students understanding a story on their own and wanting to continue reading it….
By the time Fátima and Rocio arrived, the sky was darker and most of the birds were roosting noisily in the squarely trimmed trees. The students at the escuela urbana across the street were let out and immediately began playing in the plaza, kicking soccer balls or hitting a volleyball back and forth or else just racing from the stage at the opposite end to the fountain in front of the cathedral. A man walked around with a bag of chicharrones (sheets of pork rind) in one hand and salsa in the other, and another man stood at a lit cart selling garbanzos (not chick peas but a green bean in a shell – mmm, delish). I wanted to have some, of course, but couldn’t because I’m being careful about what I’m eating. Qué lástima!
Other beautiful things I have encountered in Arandas: the sound of horses’ feet clopping on the street outside my apartment. (I know I talk about this a lot but I continue to be amazed that horses do not seem to be an uncommon form of transportation here. I do not, however, see horses tied up outside saloons like in the westerns, indicating that the riders may not actually be using them as I use the bus, but just going out for a ride.) What else? The cathedral, of course, even though it’s back isn’t finished, and the fountain. The fact that down my street there are often guys (and today a girl) practicing lasso tricks in front of shops. The red dirt, even though it gets all over the cuffs of my pants and I have to scrub a lot when I’m washing my clothes on the roof. The way most people want to help me once they meet me. The way the second-graders scramble to sit on the floor when it’s time to read the story “Cherry Pies and Lullabies.” (I would scramble too for a story about cherry pies….) The flowers my students occasionally bring me, or the pictures they draw for me. One student drew me a picture that said, not well spelled, “Eres mi mejor miss” (meaning “You are my best teacher”)….
But it’s probably because of all the problems with my teaching that these offerings seem exquisite. I proudly put this picture up on my refrigerator, because I need the motivation and encouragement it provides, but at the same time I said, half-jokingly, to Rocio, “It’s because he doesn’t know me well.” She said, “He knows you well enough; it’s just that he doesn’t know you when you’re angry.”
And there it is – the dark cloud over my beautiful blue Arandas sky. I have a bad temper, and it’s shown itself a few times at school.
Could there be anything I hate more than getting angry at people who don’t deserve it? I want to crawl into a hole afterwards. Sometimes I crawl into my bed for a much-needed nap, which recharges me with energy to try to solve the discipline problems I face in my classrooms. I made a student questionnaire and bravely asked what they think of the class, whether they feel respected by me, what suggestions they might have for me. Maybe I am too concerned with what they think, though what they think is important for the development of my teaching. The results were encouraging – they have interest in learning the language, and most of the suggestions were to play more games (of course). But one suggestion really struck me, and it said something like, “Not to be annoyed when we don’t understand.”
Oh, pobrecitos!
I read in a Jon Kabat-Zinn book that parenting is like an 18-year-long retreat, meaning it tries your patience and takes a great deal of effort to remain calm and at peace with yourself and with others. Well, teaching kids must be similar. I feel so challenged and often discouraged in dealing with them, but I know that I have a lot to learn, and beating myself up over it isn’t going to help them very much anyway.
If I keep things in perspective, I know that the discipline problems come from disinterest in the activities I’m providing, and that I have to make adjustments or change to another activity altogether. What’s causing the disinterest? At the beginning, there was some resistance to the way I was doing things – trying to get them to communicate and talk to each other in English, to which they were clearly not accustomed. I think normally in English class they would just read and do exercises in their books. So I went to their books, familiar terrain I hoped would soothe them. But in my primary classes, the materials are not at their level. For example, in my fourth and fifth-grade class, one kid is bilingual and gets bored easily, while others don’t understand anything I say (even after three weeks) and also get bored easily. They won’t read the selection because they can’t. They won’t do the worksheet because they can’t understand it. This is mainly the same story for all my classes. I am grateful for my last class of second-graders, though, because most of them have had English classes for a while now so the materials are not completely above them, and they show a joy of reading and an enthusiasm for learning that I often miss dearly in other classes.
Thankfully I take up solutions offered in my rescue. I am fortunate enough to have a caring and devoted principal to supervise and help me. I broke down in her office the other day, because I had been severe with a couple of my classes (“No Spanish!” “Sit down!” “Is something funny? Do you want another demerit?”) and totally incompetent in another (a kindergarten class in which one boy said as soon as I walked in, “Oh no, I hate English class; it’s so boring,” and three boys made running escapes out of the classroom while I was trying to teach them to say which fruits they liked).
At last we are going to lower the level of the materials (something we tried to avoid because of the exorbitant cost of the materials to the parents), and we are going to separate students by English level rather than by grade. I will also have my own classroom to which the students come for class, rather than me being the traveling English teacher visiting all the classrooms. In a teachers’ meeting yesterday, the principal made sure that all the teachers were aware of glaring discipline problems (for me but also for the other traveling teachers, of music and P.E.), and the students got a talking to that really had them behaving much better today.
Should I have pushed for these changes earlier, rather than trying in vain to work with materials that were frustrating and discouraging for the students? There’s no point in asking this; next time I’ll know what to do.
So the saga of Jeanne the Struggling EFL Teacher continues…. Will the discipline problems subside with the change of material? Probably not as much as I’d like, but how exciting it is to imagine some of my students understanding a story on their own and wanting to continue reading it….
