Kasper in Colombia: First day of school!

“Profe! Profe!” or “Teacher, Teacher!” That's how the students have begun to call me, inside and outside of school. Today was the first day of school and like many things in Colombia, it wasn't like any first day of school I’ve been to. I showed up at school as 6:45 am and headed directly to the teacher’s lounge to wait for further instructions from my main counterpart. Other teachers began to show up afterwards and sat down to eat their breakfast. Although school is starts at 6:45, the teachers arrive at that time to eat breakfast at school; the ladies that clean the school bring food and coffee from their houses to sell to the teachers. At around 7:30 all the secondary school students, grades 6 thru 11 (Colombian public schools go thru 11^th grade) around 1000 kids, congregated in the auditorium. Most of them sat on the floor, the teachers and sat in the front of the room near the stage. We started with a prayer and then the assistant principal welcomed the students. The secondary school coordinator announced the schedule for the week, each day 2 grades will come for orientation, Tuesday 6-7, Wednesday 8-9, Thursday 10-11 and Friday all the new students. I’m not sure what orientation entails but they will only be in school for about 2 hours.

The administrative staff was introduced then I introduced my self to the students. It was a very exciting and nerve wrecking time. I waited for the students to quiet down before I started speaking but they just seemed to get louder. The assistant principal had to intervene twice before I started. I finally just started talking, I welcomed the students, told the students my name, where I was from and what type of job I will be doing as a volunteer. Then I repeated it in Spanish. Afterwards, one English teacher told me later that the students would quiet down once I start talking and that they were pretty quiet for me. I need to remember that they are not US students they are working under different cultural norms and procedures. After all the teachers were introduced some the students cheered and clapped for, some not so much. Shortly after the students went home around 9 am but many loitered around school, saying hello to friends and old teachers. There were also students that introduced themselves to me and used the little English they knew. It was a great feeling to know the students want to learn English and are not afraid to use it. I spoke to my main counterpart, Catalina, about the classroom management information I emailed all the English teachers last week but she didn't get a chance to read it over the weekend. So we printed them out for all the teachers to have and I reviewed it with her. Tomorrow, I will try to talk to the all the teachers about the importance of classroom management and come up with one or two procedures we can introduce to their classrooms. Some of the procedures I’m used to working with are based on teachers having their own classroom but at this school the teachers move from classroom to classroom. Each class stays in an assigned a classroom from 7 am to 12:30 pm, the whole year. The English classes last two hours and from what I heard, there are no breaks. I’m going to suggest a break in-between so students can move around and relax for a few minutes. I can’t imagine sitting in a classroom with one fan and 20-year-old desks for 2 hours.

The rest of the day was very non-eventful until dinner time when I stuffed my self by eating what Colombians call a “Bandeja Paisa”, its typically eaten in the interior of the country. It includes ground beef, fried pork, red beans, rice, friend plantain, a fried egg and avocado. Its tan delicioso!