Friday, June 30, 2006

 

Can I go home early? And where are those stupid scissors?

Well, Mexico lost to Argentina last Saturday 2-1, but they gave Argentina a very hard time and I’m proud of them. Even though I’m not really in any place to be proud of them; it’s not like I’m Mexican or they’re my fellow anything.

I hate amoebas. I am still not back to normal. Every time I think it’s OK to eat riskier foods (like fruits and vegetables and sauces), it turns out that it’s not OK. So I’ve been eating rice and toast and bananas and well-cooked meats and wondering if I shouldn’t just take a one-day cleanse of a liquid diet again. But oh, no, the hunger… I don’t think I could stand it.

Sorry, it’s such a cliché (not to mention disgusting) to be talking about my gastrointestinal issues in Mexico, but this has seriously been my life for the last week and a half. When will it end??? I need to enjoy my last week and a half in Mexico and eat lots and lots of yummy tacos before I go back to Americanized-taco-land! But maybe I should stay away from the tacos here anyway, before I go back to live without health insurance. (OK, I should probably get health insurance for the summer, at least before I get the Teachers College insurance.)

I entertained the idea of changing my flight to an earlier date. I finally told the principal that I am not coming back for the next school year, and only because she asked me. She asked me what day I was leaving (July 11), and she said that my apartment is paid until July 8, and that I could live in the school for my last few days after that. Yuck. Double yuck because the cursos diplomados will be all weekend and I would have to go because I’d be living there. I said I would prefer to stay in my apartment, so she said she would ask the landlady if it would be OK for me to stay another few days.

Then I found out that the last day for the students at the school is Monday, July 3, while the official last day is Friday, July 7. The teachers will have meetings all week until the 7th. I thought, well maybe I could just leave early. Maybe I could travel, go to the beach, or stay in my old posada in Guadalajara before I leave, since I’m flying out of there anyway. But that would be expensive. And it would be just as expensive (if not cheaper) to just change the ticket and go home earlier.

I asked for permission to leave early, and the principal told me that the superintendent or whatever she is will be having a meeting with us on July 7, and she would like me to be there. It works out all right for me to stay, though, because the landlady said I could stay in my apartment longer (without my having to pay) and then I’ll have more time to get all my stuff done before leaving.

This week was the last week of normal classes. I didn’t even know until a few days ago—but that’s normal for this school. I finished giving the final exams and then decided to only do fun stuff with the kids from now on. I had them do listening exercises with the songs “Stand By Me” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” They loved the songs, and I was surprised when they didn’t know who the Beatles were, or had never heard “Stand By Me” before. But then, it’s Mexico, and then again, those songs are like forty years old! I also taught them “The Hokey Pokey,” and we’ve been playing my old first-grade favorite game, “What Time Is It, Mr. Wolf?” It’s a riot. The kids ask me to play it with them during recess (which I never do, on principle, because it’s my break time, too, and anyway I usually have to do some last-minute planning then because I’m such a lazy bum).

This week the kindergarten had these things called “public classes,” where the teachers had to conduct a one-and-a-half-hour class with the students in front of the parents, to finish the school year. I had to give ten-minute English lessons to each class. Basically that just meant reviewing some of the stuff they have learned. It was actually the first time the principal observed me teaching a class, and she said afterward, rather surprised, “That was very good! You DO know how to teach!” Of course she was saying this in response to my breakdown a couple weeks before, when I had said I wasn’t fit to teach this group of children, and she had said that my “problem” was my lack of emotional control and that the children were not the problem at all. And I was thinking, how come this woman never observed me once before? How could she come to the conclusions that she came to without ever once seeing me teach?

It was positive reinforcement, however, and I have been feeling much better about teaching.

Yesterday we had a meeting, and the principal very seriously told us that if we did not return all of the missing craft scissors from her office then she would not pay us. How cruel! Every few days before the quincena (the biweekly payday), none of us teachers ever has money. OK, sometimes I have some if I have saved well, but I get paid more than most of the teachers at the school. This week, however, I was left with about twenty pesos (about two dollars), because I had had to spend money on medicine for my amoebas. Today was payday, and I did get paid, even though the scissors were not returned, but we were all scared of the possibility of a money-less weekend.

This whole scissors fiasco has been ridiculous. The principal kept saying that she has been looking for her missing craft scissors (they cut paper in funky designs) for three weeks, and she complained that nobody said anything to her even though everyone knew where the container had been the entire time (in the classroom of one of the kindergarten classes). Well, hardly any of us knew that she had been looking for the stupid scissors. I had certainly never heard her ask for them once. She said that she had told us all that she was going to keep them in the office, and that if we needed them we would have to ask her for them. But someone had gone and taken them out of the office, and they ended up in a classroom. The teachers in that classroom denied having taken them; they insisted that they had showed up one day and the scissors were just sitting there. There they sat for three weeks. Never in this time did we hear the principal asking the teachers for the scissors.

And now she was threatening us that she would not pay us if the rest of the scissors did not appear. So we spent about twenty minutes talking about who saw the scissors where and accusing each other of taking them. It’s laughable.

This weekend I have nothing planned except chores and beginning to pack. I don’t think I’ll even go to my swimming class, because I’m still not at my optimum health-wise. (That pool is also kind of sketchy; it doesn’t look all that clean to me.) Monday is the last class for the primary grades. I’m sad I won’t be seeing them anymore after that. I complain about them a lot, but I love those kids.

I’ve been looking over other English curriculum materials to plan for next year, because it’s ridiculous the books they have now, which are designed for reading classes in elementary schools in the States. I am truly sad I won’t be here to teach them English next year, because we’re going to get them these nice EFL books that will teach them the basics, and they’ll actually be able to speak more, I think. There are even fun CD-ROMs to use. In the kindergarten classes this year, the students had no English materials except those that I could scrounge up, draw, or photocopy, and now they are going to have their very own books. I believe that choosing these books will be the single greatest thing I have done for these kids the entire time I’ve been here, after having seen the damage done with the books (or lack of books) I’ve been forced to work with these past few months.

I think I’m quite arrogant for being a little sad that the kids will think they have better English teachers next year, when part of the problem I had with the students this year was bad planning on the part of previous teachers and the ignorance of the administration. But of course, I could’ve done a lot of other things a lot better all year long, so it’s not as if the blame is all on inappropriate books. I chose to try to work with these books; I could’ve insisted on changing the material if I wanted, even if the school and the parents would’ve objected.

In the end, I’m not sure what my self-evaluation for this year would be. I’m leaning toward being easy on myself for the moment. But it pretty much summed it up when I explained why I was not coming back next year, when asked by the school’s owner. I had said, “To avoid doing any more damage to these kids than I have already done.” We all laughed, but every funny joke is funny because there is some truth in it. Because there were times I could not or would not compose myself instead of blowing up at them; there were times I simply did not know how to keep order in my class and resorted to temper tantrums.

Instead of getting depressed about this, which is pretty easy, I do now, with hindsight, see that I have learned and have grown a lot this year as a teacher (even though most times I felt like I was regressing). I have more experience working with children now, and I know more what NOT to do. And I know that I need a lot more experience and guidance to be the kind of teacher I want to be, and that getting a master’s degree in education won’t solve these problems, but that I’ll have to keep struggling my entire life to do this very difficult work. I may not have been a great teacher this year, but I loved my students and I wanted them to learn. Maybe this is an OK start.

Friday, June 23, 2006

 

me

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Thursday, June 22, 2006

 

Return of the amoebas

It’s definitely amoebas again. I went to the doctor yesterday and we did the tests and I got a prescription for antibiotics.

It wasn’t as bad as the first time I got the amoebas here, so I thought I could handle real food, as long as everything was cooked. The jell-o I had made yesterday was disgusting, so I didn’t eat it. Instead I made albondigas (meatballs in soup), which didn’t turn out quite as well as when Rocio makes it. Now things are worse. I couldn’t sleep well because I kept having to get up to go to the bathroom all night.

At six in the morning someone was setting off a cannon. I wonder what festival day it is today. It sounded as if the cannon was in front of my apartment building.

Now I’ve called in sick and am drinking my suero oral (which translates as oral serum, like a drip you drink) and eating the yucky gelatin I made. I vow to drink chamomile tea all day and eat all the gelatin instead of trying to eat normal food.

I found out that Mexico does advance to the next round in the World Cup because Iran and Angola tied yesterday. That means Mexico has more points than they do. I am really learning a lot about World Cup soccer.

I’m writing a lot in this blog because I’ve nothing else to do, now that I can’t go to work or give afternoon classes or go to Hawaiian dance class.

I’ve been applying to jobs in New York but of course it’s too early for that. I’ve also been applying to editorial jobs in Columbus for the summer, at McGraw-Hill. I didn’t think I’d get any response, but someone emailed me the other day, trying to set up an interview with me. While my return to Columbus will be too late for the position, they still want me to come in for an interview when I get back because other positions will be opening up. I feel bad because I have basically omitted the important information that I will be going to school in the fall, and I probably can’t be considered for those positions anyway. I think when I get back I will tell him that I’ve decided to go to school in the fall and therefore can only do a temporary job for the summer.

I was thinking though that maybe I should defer my admission to Teachers College for a year so that I can work and save money for school. I could get a job at McGraw-Hill editing SRA stuff. After some worrying about this, I decided that I probably should avoid spending a year working at a job that is not on the career path that I’ve decided on. It’d only be aggravating.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

 

Ay ay ay ay, canta no llores….

I think I have amoebas again. What a way to close out my stay in Mexico. This way, however, I get to stay at home and watch the Mexico-Portugal game. Not that it’s going well. There are about ten minutes left in the game and Portugal is ahead by one goal.

I was really annoyed yesterday when I got to school and found out that the Mini-olympiad was today and not yesterday. I didn’t have any classes planned. The principal said to me, “Of course it’s on Wednesday; that’s what is marked on the calendar.” As if she had never told us at the meeting last week that it would be Tuesday rather than Wednesday because of the Mexico game. Then she was laughing because the P.E. teacher was at the Unidad where the Olympiad was supposed to be, like it was his fault that he thought it was Tuesday as well. Whatever—none of this comes as a surprise to me. The principal always blames other people when things are her fault. I shouldn’t get annoyed at that kind of stuff anymore.

Oh my god three minutes of additional time in the game.

Portugal 2, Mexico 1. Oh well…. It was fun while it lasted.

I should probably go to the doctor to get some antibiotics for the amoebas. I’ll have to eat jell-o all day and make the exams.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

 

My last visit to Guadalajara?

Went to Guadalajara on Saturday with Rocío.

We stayed with my friend Amanda in her crazy apartment ruled over by a crazy landlady. We were going to see the Panteón Belén, which gives night tours, but I found out that there are no night tours except on Wednesdays through Fridays, and we were too late arriving to make the day tours. We had lunch at El Fénix, the outdoor place in the plaza of the cathedral Expiatorio, where we had always gone when I was staying in Guadalajara in September and October. Then we had my favorite raspados (shaved ice with fruit or other toppings) nearby. Unfortunately for Amanda, she got lots of bee parts in hers. We had the same toppings, so I might have consumed some bee parts as well without knowing it.

Rocío and I went out dancing with Amanda, her roommate Melanie, and former ITTO companion Kit, at a fresa club called Klio. After waiting a little bit at the entrance, we got in, presumably because we were four women and one guy (a desirable ratio at these clubs). Entry for women was free before 3 a.m. Entry for men was 220 pesos (about US$20). We split Kit’s entry fee. With his 220 pesos, we each got ten tickets for drinks, so we didn’t have to pay anymore like we thought we had to. (Normally at these fancy clubs, you have to buy an overpriced bottle of liquor in order to sit at a table.) With ten drinks each as well, we were pretty liquored up. I of course did not order all ten drinks allotted me, because if I had drunk that much I’d have ended up on the floor unconscious.

After sitting around a while, the dancing began, and Rocío and I danced almost the entire time we were there. Part of this was because there was no more space to sit at our tiny little table. Rocío and danced through lots of punchis-punchis (electronica) and later some reggaeton and hip-hop and even cumbia. It was a lot of fun. We all ended up dancing on the seats near our table, because there was more space there than on the dance floor. I got tired at around 3 am. They had started playing more punchis-punchis, and I was not getting into it. Rocío didn’t stop dancing. All of us were tired and we had to ask Rocío if it was OK to leave. We left at 3:30. We got in a taxi, and as we were hungry for tacos, the driver took us to a nice place by the Olympic fountain. We scarfed down tacos with lots of onion and then went home to sleep.

I left at about 1 on Sunday to get back to Arandas. Rocío and Amanda went to the airport; Rocío to pick up her boyfriend and Amanda to pick up her parents. All in all, it was a very successful trip to Guadalajara for me. I hope it wasn’t too boring for Rocío, though, because she doesn’t speak English and Amanda and Melanie were speaking a lot of English, even though most of the time we tried to keep the conversation in Spanish whenever Rocío was around.

I was happy to get on the afternoon direct first-class bus to Arandas, cutting travel time down a lot. I was the only passenger. I tried to sleep most of the way, since I hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before.

Once home, I slept some more, and then I went to a birthday party at a ranch. It was the birthday of one of the students in my swimming class. I was kind of regretting going at first, because everyone was joking around and I wasn’t understanding most of it, and I hardly knew any of the people there. I was also groggy and tired, but after a while it was OK. At the ranch, we ate snacks and birthday cake and drank beer, then played ping-pong and pool and cards. By the end, I was kind of sad that we had to leave, even though it was already 11:30. On the drive home, it started to rain like crazy. By the time they dropped me off, the streets around my apartment building were like rivers. It didn’t flood like it did in other parts of Mexico, as I saw on the news tonight, but it was a great deal of water nevertheless.

I was hoping in the morning that perhaps everything was flooded, so I wouldn’t have to go to work. But everything was fine, so I went to work.

After lunch I napped more and then I went swimming. I haven’t been doing yoga at all for days, and I’ve been wearing stupid shoes, so all the muscles in my legs feel tight. Of course instead of doing yoga once I got home from swimming to relax and stretch my tense body, I watched my telenovelas and ate dinner and now I’m writing my blog entry. Tomorrow the students have their Olympiad thingie so I don’t have to give class, and we get out early. I’m hoping to have time to do some yoga as well as do some lesson plans before my afternoon classes start at 3. I leave my work later and later as time goes on. I am really ready to go home.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

 

If children get on my nerves, should I stop trying to be their teacher?

Today Mexico played Angola in their second game of the World Cup. They tied 0-0. They played a game reminiscent of so many Chivas games Julia and I have been to; this means that they were playing pretty badly and barely got by with a tie. However, Angola has an excellent goalie, so the blame is not all on the seleccionistas, of course. But true to the spirit of spectator sports, I criticize my favorite team the most viciously.

Rocio and I went to the principal’s house to watch the game with the principal and the owner of the school. We ate potato chips with lime and chili sauce and drank tequila with squirt. After the game, we ate a wonderful chicken dish the principal made. We laughed and talked a lot. Things are not so bad with the school administration after all, but like so many things I’ve learned about Mexican culture while living here this year, much of what we experience is only the surface.

I say this because appearances are often misleading. I came to this school thinking it was a wonderful family of teachers with a very caring principal. On the surface, for the most part, this is true. But behind this façade there is rancor and resentment and a lot of backstabbing. Now that I’ve gotten to know many of the teachers and have spent some time alone with them, I have heard countless stories of betrayal and wrongdoing, only a few of which I understand completely, of course. But there are teachers who don’t speak to each other and speak badly of each other behind their backs. Most of the problems probably come from misunderstandings, but I believe that the root of the problem is that the principal offends the teachers every chance she gets, blaming them for whatever goes wrong, and often comparing them with each other in her criticisms. This often sets the teachers against each other. I didn’t notice this underlying current of discontent for a very long time, in part because I’m clueless most of the time, but also because everyone is so very cordial with each other when they have to interact.

I suppose this is the nature of all workplaces, not just in Mexico. It’s called professionalism. Something I don’t understand yet.

It’s not like my school is a representative of what Mexican schools are like. I have heard several teachers say already that in all their years of teaching, they have never had such a mean principal as Maestra Paty. So I guess my school is only representative of a badly managed private Catholic school.

Speaking of Catholicism, this week nine of our students had their first communion together, organized by the school. This meant that the catechism teacher and Rocio had to work overtime a lot in preparation. The mass was held Thursday, the day of Corpus Cristi. Everything went well, even when the chorus that the parents had hired didn’t show up and all the teachers had to sing without notice. Now that I have been included in the chorus during many services, I know many of the songs. One of the mothers later remarked to me how wonderful it was that I was singing along and everything, that they’ll make a Catholic of me in no time at all. The catechism teacher says she will prepare me for my baptism and confirmation and first communion if I want. It’s a little funny how much everyone wants me to become Catholic.

After the mass, the students doing their first communion all had big parties. Rocio and I went to a big one that was thrown for three of them, at the villa of the Charro tequila distillery. We went with Arnulfo the music teacher and two of the primary teachers. Later Aracely showed up. It was kind of boring for me, as we just sat there most of the time drinking tequila with squirt and talking and me not understanding a lot. There was no dancing, either. I did learn a new word, though—“popi”—which I believe describes people as something like “preppy” or “shi-shi” or, better yet, the English term “Sloanes” (after the rich people who live at Sloane Square in London). As the teachers at this very proper function, we were not exactly in our element. Many of the childrens’ mothers, however, were very nice to us, and we ended up sitting with a few who are on the board of directors of the school.

I couldn’t wait to leave, and when we finally left I was glad that I would be able to get home in time for my telenovelas. I missed something, though, because we ended up at another party—the one at the principal’s house held for her two nephews. I suppose we were obligated to go. We sat there for what seemed like ages. I was growing impatient with sleepiness and boredom, and I was missing the two soaps that I usually watch.

Something must be wrong when you’d rather be at home by yourself watching soap operas instead of being out at a party.

But these aren’t the kinds of parties I like to attend. There are children running around everywhere and you have to watch the young ones, and even if it’s enjoyable while you’re doing it, it’s damned exhausting. (In fact, the most enjoyable part of the party was taking some three-year-olds to play on the playground equipment and spinning them around in a revolving cage, and then helping a toddler pull a toy on wheels, because then I didn’t have to be bored sitting at the table trying to look like I was having fun.) Then it’s frankly not very fun if after several hours of this you have to try having a conversation with children running and screaming all around you.

Maybe this sounds bad coming from someone who plans to become an elementary school teacher. But that is my work—I don’t want to have to do it the entire day, during my free time when I’m at a party trying to have fun. It’s times like these when I know I am definitely, definitely not ready for motherhood. Not that I’ve been considering it or anything, but I sit at these parties wondering at the lives of these mothers, because they’re so different from mine, and because I’ve never hung out with so many mothers before in my life. I love their children; many of them are precious little creatures who are a lot of fun—and those who are not precious and fun creatures, well, I still love them unconditionally as their teacher. But I just simply cannot imagine being around them all the time. What amazing people our parents are for putting up with us!

Tomorrow Rocio and I are going to Guadalajara. That is more my style—we’re going to go dancing, and perhaps to the fiestas in the ceramic-making suburb Tlaquepaque. It may very well be my last hurrah in Guadalajara during this Mexico year.

It’s kind of sad. I only have three more weeks left of school….

I lie awake late at night trying to sleep, but instead I’m thinking about all the things I have to do before leaving Mexico. I have to give the students their final exams in English next week, and I have to try to prepare them well, and I despair when I think of how little I have taught them in these seven to eight months. I have to try to sell my furniture and refrigerator, and I worry about how I’m going to have time to go on a Tuesday or Thursday morning to the phone company (because those are the only times it is open here) in order to transfer the line to my friend, and how I’m going to get much of the money back for my furniture since I am selling it to coworkers whom I don’t want to charge a lot because most of them make very little money. I worry about packing, about how I’m going to fit all the stuff I want to fit in my bags. I worry about what I’m going to do once I get back to Columbus, finding a job for just a month and a half and then moving to New York before September, and then finding a job and a cheap but nice apartment (impossible?) in New York. I worry about talking to the principal about my leaving. I worry about leaving the school on a bad note, because the last weekend before I leave (after the school year is officially over, I might add), I’m supposed to attend the 18-hour-per-weekend cursos diplomados, and I have absolutely no intention of attending them.

None of these things get resolved by worrying about them, but I can’t seem to stop worrying even when I’m exhausted. For the immediate future however, I will try to concentrate on having fun on my last weekend in Guadalajara.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

 

Chiquiti-bum-a-la-bim-bom-ba… Mexico, Mexico, rah rah rah!

Big news of the day: Mexico beat Iran 3-1 in their first game of the World Cup. Two goals were made by Omar Bravo (of the Chivas), and the goalkeeper, Oswaldo Sanchez (also of the Chivas), as always played well, even though his father passed away a few days ago. I watched the game while I swept and mopped my apartment, and then afterwards I did my laundry on the roof. I am very proud of myself for having finished my weekend chores so early!

Update about work troubles: Friday when I got to work, the principal and I greeted each other with a hug, and I apologized for my mal comportamiento the day before, and everything was OK.

I still struggled with my classes that day, but I didn’t shout or have a nervous breakdown, and we got out early again. I went to the pool to practice swimming—I am very out of shape so a few laps have me panting poolside. I was proud of myself for completing about seven laps of the crawl and ten of the backstroke, however much water got up my nose and however many breaks I took in between. I went grocery shopping at the big store near the pool. I came home to eat lunch and watch telenovelas without having anything pressing to do for the next day.

Saturday morning I went to my swimming class, and everyone was impressed with my progress. I will keep going to practice one day during the week, because I can’t seem to perform as well with people watching me.

After swim class, I went to get my hair cut. I have a very bad habit of splitting and breaking off my thousands of split ends, especially when I am bored, so I decided it was time for a change of hairstyle. It’s short, short, short! At the end, there was a big mound of hair behind my chair, and everyone in the salon was joking about using it for extensions. I am still not used to the haircut, but this morning I thought it looked all right. Anyway, it grows fast, and it will be healthier now.

It’s funny how men are not as into short hair. I have noticed that I get fewer whistles and comments while walking on the street.

Rocio and I went to the movies last night. We watched X-Men 3, which I have been dying to see. I was disappointed that it wasn’t subtitled but dubbed, but it’s not like the movie has dialogue that is difficult to understand. Afterwards we played pool and had micheladas and popcorn there. We hadn’t been there in months, and it was lots of fun.

Rocio and I are excited because we are going to Guadalajara this coming weekend. Her boyfriend is coming from Chicago to Arandas for the summer, so she is going to pick him up at the airport on Sunday. She and I will spend Saturday in the city, however, probably wandering around the center and going dancing at night. We are also thinking of going on the cemetery tour that Julia and I never got to go on. I’m happy to be spending another fun weekend with friends in Guadalajara before leaving Mexico.

I have been going to Hawaiian dance classes three days a week. The fourth-grade teacher has studied Hawaiian dance for years, and she gives cheap classes in her apartment now. (I am also going to give her English classes as an exchange.) It’s a lot of fun, but an intense workout. All the exercise I’ve been doing is making me feel really good. I will try to keep it up even while I’m in school and working in the fall. I spent an evening online looking at all the activities and facilities available at Teachers College, and I am so excited because there is a pool and a kung fu club. The kung fu club practices Wing Chun, which I studied in Taipei, so I think I have to go. I bet somewhere in New York I can also keep up Hawaiian dance….

Thursday, June 08, 2006

 

Trying to get fired

I don’t think I could be any more on the principal’s bad side than I made myself today.

This morning the third through fifth grades had to take a standardized test, and we got out of school early. I only had to give classes to the first and second grades and one kindergarten class. I went into the second grade class first. I tried to have them act out the story we’ve been reading. It’s about a coyote and an armadillo who have five mules. As I should have guessed, the students couldn’t do it without playing and talking, so I should have just forgotten about trying to get them to read and listen to the story at the same time.

To make a long story short, I just didn’t know what to do, and I broke down. Normally in that situation I would’ve just gotten angry and yelled at them for a while. But I have been trying very hard not to blow up like that anymore, especially after yesterday afternoon.

Yesterday was fine up until school was out. I was walking from the classroom to the office area where we have to sign in and out, and one of the third graders who is always playing and getting into trouble was walking by me and started shouting very loudly, practically right at me. The school has been trying to keep order among the students while they are waiting for their parents to pick them up, so we have been trying to stop them from running around and playing after school. I have also had a lot of trouble with this student, and I was fed up. I yelled at him, asking why he was shouting like that, and he just ignored me, which is the usual reaction they have, especially outside of English class. This has been bothering me a lot. When they’re supposed to be quiet, like during the flag ceremony, or when we’re in mass, I tell them to stop talking, be quiet, or stop playing, and they just look at me and turn around and keep doing whatever it is they’re not supposed to be doing. So I lost it. I grabbed him and took him to the office. His sister was at the door waiting to pick him up, and he said while laughing, “I’m going home now,” trying to get away from me. I stopped him again and said, “No, you’re not.” I took him into the office, but the principal wasn’t there, so I yelled at him some more. He started to cry. The director of the kindergarten came in and talked to him. I left.

I felt terrible. I suppose that’s why I cried in school today, not because my second graders couldn’t act like mules in an orderly way. So today when they weren’t listening to me, I just lectured them a while, and then I started to cry. I just felt so tired of saying the same things over and over again with absolutely no results, like I’m talking to a wall. I talk to them in Spanish a lot now, so it’s not like they don’t understand me. They just don’t listen to me, as if I’m not really their teacher. Well, who can blame them? I only have them for forty-five minutes per day.

Part of me thought maybe this would work. Maybe they would take me seriously if they saw how it makes me feel not to be listened to.

The owner of the school had kept coming into my class and, in my opinion, interfering in my class. While I was lecturing them, telling them that we were not going to play anymore if they kept behaving this way, she came in and told me to take it easy. I told her that they don’t listen to me, and she made a joke, “Just spank them.” Soon after that, I cried, and she saw me.

I went into the bathroom for a long time to regain composure. I came out thinking I had control of myself, but if I cry at all, my eyes get extremely red and swollen, and even if I’m not crying, it looks like I am. Everyone was asking me why I was crying. The teachers all came because it was breakfast time, and they asked me what was wrong and I started crying again. They told me to go home and rest. They tried to comfort me, telling me that I am a good teacher and not to get upset, and that they know exactly how I felt. The second-grade teacher then called all her students to come back to the classroom to write a hundred times that they will respect all of their teachers or something like that, which was not what I wanted at all.

Then the last thing I wanted to happen happened. The principal came and told me to go to the office. I followed her to the office where she was not comforting at all. She tried, to her credit, but if you’ve been reading this blog you know already that she has talked to others about my “problem of getting sentimental,” and she doesn’t believe that I actually feel bad when I cry. I told her I just couldn’t take it anymore, that the students never listen to me. She started lecturing me. At first she was condescending and said, “You must understand that this is a foreign language and that it’s very difficult for the students to learn it.” I knew that she had talked to the owner, because one of the second graders had complained in the owner’s presence, “It’s because we don’t know much English,” to which I had replied, “Do you have to know a lot of English to act out the part of the mule who doesn’t talk?” She thought I was upset because they weren’t learning English. Well, OK, that too.

Then the principal said to me that my problem is that I am a perfectionist and that I expect too much from myself and from the students. I agreed with that partially, though I think I have actually lowered my expectations of the students too much. I explained that I don’t have the experience or knowledge to deal with discipline problems in young students. She said to me, “Why didn’t you tell me you were having problems disciplining the students?” I told her it was tolerable before, but for some reason over the past couple of days it hasn’t been. She said I should’ve talked to her before getting into this state, and that I should never, ever let the students see me cry or get upset. She said she never wants to see me like this again. I said, “How am I supposed to know that I should never do that? No one has ever told me. I don’t have the training to teach these students.”

She said, “All you have to do is talk to us and we can work together to find the strategies to work with them. But you have to talk to me.” This bothered me—I felt that she was implying it was my fault for getting upset, that I got myself upset because I hadn’t talked to her. Then I lost it, because she said to me, “You need to discover their learning styles.”

The cursos diplomados that we have been forced to attend are about learning styles. Yes, the learning styles of the students are important. But this mention of learning styles infuriated me, not only because it brought up fiasco of the cursos diplomados, but also because it assumes I don’t take learning styles into account and for this reason I have discipline problems.

I said, “The problem is that these materials are too difficult for the students. They can’t learn English using these books. I’ve been thinking about it recently and wondering whether we shouldn’t get different books, because it’s going to continue this way with these books.” She said, “OK, fine, we’ll order different books, but there’s no reason for you to get upset like this.”

She asked me why I don’t go to the cursos diplomados if I don’t have the training to teach children. (I hadn’t gone to the last ones after the terrible Friday of the Chinese named “Chin Fan-fun.” See my last entry if you don’t know what I’m talking about.) I said I don’t understand them because my Spanish is not good enough, and this is partially true. Then she said, “Rocio is not a teacher either, and how come she can handle the students and you can’t?”

Well, I can’t remember how things progressed, but pretty soon I was yelling at her that I don’t want to stay at this school. I can’t remember if this was before or after she said to me that the students are not the problem and that I was exaggerating the problem. She said that there are some misbehaved students but that most of the students do listen to me. (How would she know if she hardly ever sees me in class?) She told me that the problem is with me, that I get upset too easily, and that I do the same thing with the students. I told her, well for this reason I don’t think I should be their teacher anymore.

Finally I told her that I don’t like being scolded. She said, when have I scolded you? I told her, today, and about the cursos diplomados. She said she was scolding me to help me. She said that she not only scolded me but others who didn’t go to the cursos diplomados, and that this was her responsibility as the principal. This began a long argument about the cursos diplomados. I told her that it’s unjust to require the teachers to go to a course that lasts the entire weekend about once a month, that nobody wants to go because the weekend is personal time. She replied that we have many paid vacations and that it’s not too much to ask us to give up a few weekends. She said, “I have never deducted your pay for all the days that you have been absent from school.” I told her it is not in my contract to work on the weekends. She said that it is a required part of the job. I told her it is not a required part of my job.

I had already told her that I was not in the right state to talk about this with her, and she had forced me to sit down and discuss this with her, telling me to sit down. She had told me that I was taking an attitude with her that was wrong. I had said, fine, I’ll leave. And she had told me to sit down. Finally she said, “You are not in the right condition to talk about this right now. And I can tell you a million things, but you are against me, and I don’t understand why. Finish the school year, and I will continue to treat you with respect. If you cannot treat me with respect anymore, at least treat this institution with respect.” And I continued giving her dirty looks, and we got up and I walked out of the school without saying anything.

I think I was hoping for her to fire me. I don’t really want to stay here. I’d prefer to go home. In a way, I was being self-destructive. I wanted to curl up and die. The consequences of being a bitch to the principal are going to be ugly. But the worst consequences of losing my temper with anyone—with my students, with my boss, with the three-year-old daughter of a friend, with anybody—are that it makes me feel like I’m a terrible, terrible, terrible person.

I came home and took a nap. I woke up an hour later with the same big headache I’d been experiencing since the morning. Two of the teachers came over to see how I was doing. They were completely on my side. They swear up and down that I am good teacher. One of them said, “I’d like to see the principal teach a class at this school for one day and see if she has any success disciplining them.” Ceci said that she has been scolded by the principal very badly as well, that she has also been told that she has a character problem and that she takes the wrong attitude with the principal. They agreed that the principal doesn’t understand how difficult it is to work with these students and that she doesn’t know how to treat her employees.

The other two teachers wrote me text messages to see how I was doing. All of this made me feel better. Perhaps I should have talked to them first to see what I should do to teach better, but I had been talking to the principal about this for the first two months of school, and that hadn’t really helped much, so I hadn’t really considered it. Now it is clear that in the future I should talk more with my colleagues, and not necessarily with a supervisor in whom I’ve lost trust. If I don’t learn anything about how to teach, I will at least feel better about myself knowing that I am not the only one who feels so terrible.

I don’t know what I’m going to do. I think I should probably apologize to the principal, just so that these last few weeks are bearable, but I don’t know what I’d say. It might start another argument. However I feel in the right, it is probably the right thing to do.

Friday, June 02, 2006

 

I don’t think my eyes look like that, nor do I talk like that

I spent a lot of time wondering how I could get out of the cursos diplomados this weekend. In principle, I would’ve liked to just say, when asked why I didn’t show up, “I just didn’t want to go.” I used this method of telling the blatant truth in a defiant way last time, when asked why I had evaluated the course as poor, and it didn’t turn out well. In one sense, it did, because I defied her authority in front of everyone (just as she scolded me in front of everyone). Some people have mentioned to me that they felt great when I did it, because they would’ve liked to say the same sort of thing to her—that the truth is that the courses are boring and I didn’t want to go. But when I did that the principal was angry with me for a couple days, and I with her.

After some thought and good advice from Luis, this defiant attitude seemed less and less feasible. She’s not the type of person to be dealt with easily. Having an excuse would be better. But I couldn’t think of anything good. If I said I was sick, she’d try to take me to the doctor. Rocio suggested that I just tell her that I still have medicine leftover from my last cold, so that I wouldn’t have to go to the doctor with her. But it was difficult to pretend to be sick.

So I went today, along with all the other teachers who said they wouldn’t go. It wasn’t easy to get out of the courses today, seeing as we were all at work only a couple hours before the courses started. We ate lunch in my apartment and we showed up half an hour late.

I don’t plan to go tomorrow, though, and neither do a few others, but who knows what will happen. We might all chicken out. But I am planning not to go. I don’t look like I have a cold, so I’ll just say I have a migraine. I haven’t had a migraine in years, but it’s better than saying I have a stomachache, because she could take me to the doctor for that, too.

It’s lucky for me that I can use another excuse that was provided today in the classes themselves. If she doesn’t think I really have a migraine, then I can just say that I was offended by the instructor’s activities. For the first, he started out by asking if we wanted to learn Chinese, because he was going to teach us some Chinese. Some of the teachers pointed at me, and he said, “Oh, she knows Chinese?” They said, “She can teach Chinese!” But he decided to go ahead with his stupid exercise of “teaching us Chinese” anyway.

We had to stand around in a circle and repeat after him in order to learn a song. The song went like this:

“Yo soy el chino Chin Fan-fun,
Que vino de la China,
Tiqui-tiqui-tiqui-tiqui-tiqui-tiqui-fu
Tiqui-tiqui-tiqui-tiqui-tiqui-tiqui-fa”

The first two lines translate as: “I am the Chinese Chin Fan-fun, who comes from China.” There were also actions to go along with each line. First line: use fingers to pull back the corners of your eyes (in order to emulate Asian facial features as they are understood here). Second line: wave your hand to indicate that China is far away. Third and fourth lines: hop around like an idiot while turning around in circles.

I was not amused. I did not sing along or do the actions. Everyone else did. I spent the next few minutes contemplating how I am to teach the students not to pull the corners of their eyes to pretend to be Asian, when all their teachers and their principal do it too. How do I convince them that in the United States, Mexicans face similar types of racism as this?

The principal got my attention after the activity and from her seat asked me if I liked the song, and I shook my head no, and she said, “But it was good!” and I shook my head again.

The next activity he did was to have us make two circles, one inside the other. After dancing around and singing another ridiculous song (but not racist this time), the people in the outside circle were to spank the people in the inside circle. Only half of the people did it, but I was still spanked quite hard. Then the people in the inside circle were to go around kneeing the people in the outside circle behind their left knees. I did this without thinking; I was only thinking of getting revenge at the people who spanked me hard. Only later did I realize it was stupid to participate in that, because some people might have knee problems, like Rocio does. Later she told me that it hurt her knee.

So I have another excuse: I was offended by the instructor’s stupid activities, one racist and the other a form of sexual harassment as well dangerous for those with injuries.

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