March highlights

I observed until the last week of February, at that time I sat down with the English coordinator and we agreed that I would work with the 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grades for the first trimester. My main goal as a Peace Corp volunteer is to train teachers through co-planning and co-teaching. I truly believed in letting the teachers make the decisions and I didn’t want to tell them what to do. I wanted to present to them the information and make decisions together.  With this in mind, I sat down once a week with each teacher and talka bout  “lesson” plan for each grade.  It was not easy to find a time to meet with the 6^th grade teacher since she only has one hour to meet during the week and she uses this hour to plan for other classes she teaches at another school. It also happens that this the same hour that all English teachers have open to meet and discuss English projects. The 7^th and 8^th grade teacher has more time during the week to meet but she is the least enthusiastic and most demanding of the two.

During the planning sessions, I started by asking what was the topic and what activities they had planned, afterwards I offered activities and asked the teacher to choose one. We weren’t writing anything down an actual lesson plan because I wanted to take it slow and not inundate teachers with a lesson plan, yet.

However, this proved to be ineffective during the actual co-teaching because we didn’t discuss how it would actually was going to work in the classroom. The 6^th grade teacher is more open to different activities during the co planning but in the classroom, I didn’t know what she was going to do. She would change the subject of the class and start reviewing a topic that I wasn’t prepared for or completely take over the activity I was supposed to lead.  The 7^th and 8^th grades proved to be even more difficult since the teacher wanted me to be just to pronunciation help or read out loud words on the board and ask kids to repeat after me. Even though I suggested we play a game, she wasn’t really enthusiastic about anything. I really didn’t want to force anything on them, which led me to get frustrated, and not wanting to be in class. I didn’t want to be the outsider, the gringo (even though I was born in Nicaragua and I don’t look white, I’m a gringo here) or the American that starts making them do things they don’t want to. Even though, the things that I was suggesting like games, assigned seating and class procedures, would make the classes more efficient hence students would actually learn more. I kept going along with what the teachers wanted to do in the classroom and suggesting small changes like asking the kids to read, come to the board, or offer the student options instead of letting them make the decisions. The teachers and I reworked the schedule so that I could be in all classes at least one hour a week. I wasn’t too thrilled about the idea because I felt we couldn’t have continuity during the lesson but the majority overruled me.

At some point in May, two of my bosses came to visit the school, meet with the teachers and me. It was great having them there, they cleared up a lot of the misconceptions the teachers and principal had about me. They were still hung-up on the previous volunteer, who was a superstar and could do no wrong. They kept comparing me and thinking that I had the same ideas and expectations. The teachers and the principal put in their two cents about how they thought I was doing professionally and personally. In Colombia, school is also a social environment; people know what is going on in everyone’s life and I wasn’t “making my self known”. Never mind that they could make things easier for me if they tell want I should be doing instead they just let me figure it out but when I don’t then I’m doing something wrong.  After the meeting, I thought we were all on the same page:

I am my own person, I have specific Peace Corp objectives as well as my own, patience is a must, I’m going to be here for two years and there must be better communication between everyone. The “high” that I had from the meeting quickly dissipated, two days later we were back into our regular roles. The principal and coordinators were definitely friendlier and I made it a point to come into the teacher’s lounge and say hi to everyone. In the classrooms, things were the same but I kept at it and the students made it all worthwhile. The kid’s just want something different, they are bored of “Look, listen and repeat!” 

In the community things were going well, I received a basketball from my brother and asked some kids in town if they wanted to play. There were six of us when we began to walk to the court and by the time the game started we had full court game going. It was amazing! People just saw the ball and wanted to play. We played a couple of times but I got sick with a cold and had to travel to Barranquilla for a volunteer reconnect or In-service training (IST). It was a great week, it felt amazing being back with all the volunteers; although, we were down one volunteer. To be honest, I can’t say I learned much besides the fact most of us were struggling in our schools and our communities. Made me feel better, knowing that there is still hope and things will get better.  We had meetings about funding projects, Volunteer support and Volunteer Action Committee (co-president!).