Past (Part 1 of 3)

Past.

Here's a succinct report on the few months since my last post.

The situation at school remained the same; teachers are still unmotivated and uninspiring. I kept working with the ninth thru eleventh grade teachers who are the most willing of the four teachers I work with. We met once a week to plan but somehow we only wrote a whopping four lesson plans in about 2 months. There were multiple reasons for so few lesson plans: random celebrations, meetings and holidays (most of them have to do with some event in the Bible that requires a whole day off to celebrate, even though most Colombians don't know and, for the most part, don’t care why they are not working). A note about the celebrations, most of them are birthdays, and in the most backwards of Colombian of traditions, if it’s your birthday, you bring the cake and drinks for others to partake in the celebrations.

As for the 4 lessons we did plan, we taught the crap out of them! Ill comment on the adjective Bingo lesson also known as the longest game of bingo ever. The students could win in 3 different ways, making an X, an L or filling the whole card. My counterpart was in charge of making the cards and she made it very difficult for any one to win. In most of the classes, the students were very excited about the game and not having to sit thru another grammar lesson. This excitement lasted about 3 minutes when they noticed that their cards were not being filled as quickly and easily as they anticipated. An hour into the game, the students that lay awake on the floor were asking for the game to the end and others had succumbed to the boredom and fell asleep only to be woken up by the roar of the winning team. The prize a "Detodito" bag of chips for the first two groups that finished.

For those who are not familiar with the awesomeness of the this salty treat, its the trifecta of chips. It includes potato chips, plantain chips and pork rinds along with some type of artificial flavor (Chicken, Criollo or lime). (UPDATE: A new Detodito 4 has arrived on the coast, it now includes arepas! Heads are exploding everywhere)

Back to the bingo, as far as the effectiveness of the game as a learning tool, it’s hard to tell. It was supposed to be a listening game, however, since many of the students are not used to my accent they could not discern the words so we started writing the words on the board which did help to move the game along but the students didn’t listen as attentively. We played the game with all the 10th and 11th grade classes by the end of week I could barely speak but it was worth it.

            We had two big events at the school, Grammar Jeopardy and the English Song festival. Both events allowed me to wear my bow tie, which in itself is reason enough to host it and channel my inner Alex Trebek, a browner version.

Eight to ten students in each grade attended grammar Jeopardy but only is six of them participated in the actual game; the others served as the audience. The game is self-explanatory to those familiar with the TV show, except that the students were in groups that consisted of one student from each grade. There were really no categories either, instead the each teacher created five questions for each grade to try to make it "fair". Also, the answers were not in form of a question, I point I tried to explain to the teachers, albeit to no avail. Some questions required whole group participation and others the quickest to the buzzer.

Each person in the winning group received a certificate. After Jeopardy all students participated in an exam tailored to their grades. The student with the highest score from each grade received a Spanish to English dictionary.

The English song festival is of the biggest events of the school, it’s the ninth year of the event and all students are welcomed to participate, which meant that the teachers "volunteered" students to participate. Most of the students that participated this year sang songs chosen by their teachers, these included classics like Celine Dion's "My heart will go on", Evanesce's "My Immortal", Jason Mraz "I'm yours" and Alicia Keys' "No one" (unfortunately the student decided not to sing it at the last moment). In addition, to new classis like Michel Telo's "Oh, if I catch you"(aka the Justin Bieber of Brazil), Miley Cyrus "The Climb" and Selena Gomez "I love you like a love song, baby". However, most of the songs were Christian or evangelical songs, surprisingly these songs were chosen by the students. The weeks leading up to the festival I took up residence in the library and became the singing coach, obviously speaking English is the same as being able to sing in English. I didn’t mind it since it made me feel like I was getting to know the students more and I got to hangout in the AC.I did ask the students to come by my house to t practice but I got stood up too many times so I stopped inviting the kids. The most painful part was listening Celine Dion about 30 times in these weeks (FYI: I worked at a movie theatre during the summer the movie "Titanic" was playing so I listened to the song about 20 times a day!).

As judges I invited Monica, Abby and Amanda, PC volunteers serving with me in Cartagena. The students were judged in pronunciation, audience interaction, clothing and voice. I once again donned my bow tie and mustache to host the contest along with the ninth grade teacher. Surprisingly the event started only 30 minutes late with few minor delays during the event and finished on time as well. At the end of the event the winner was an eight grader who sang Boney M's "Rivers of Babylon" and the prize was an acoustic guitar. It helped him that he sang that song last year and also sings in Spanish. He also gets to represent the school in the Cartagena wide English singing festival in October.

DeTodito now with "American" chicharron.

Jeopardy Grammar.