Kasper in Colombia: Past (Part 2 of 3)

Soon after the song festival all the Cartagena volunteers along with their English counterparts met for a three-day English teaching workshop. All four of my teachers attended the event in which we worked on material design, project based learning and ESL games. In addition to this the event served as a reintroduction to the Peace Corps Colombia project, the role of the volunteers at schools and the role of the teachers. As with most PC events that are attended by our teachers there was a lot of time wasted waiting for teachers to stop talking and pay attention. It also didn’t help that most of the English teachers opted to speak Spanish for most of the workshop, mainly because most of them are not comfortable speaking English or don’t know enough. The latter is the case of most of the primary school teachers who do not know how to speak, write or teach English but do so anyway. At the moment the Ministry of Education does not require primary school teachers to teach English but since schools are free to do what they want, primary school teachers are told to do so by their principals.

During the workshop we had a space where teachers and volunteers had the opportunity to share their opinions on the experience of having to collaborate with a volunteer. I was feeling nervous about what my teachers were going to say mostly because in my eyes we were failing at co-planning and co-teaching. We hadn’t written a single lesson plan in over two months let alone co-taught mainly because their idea of co-teaching is letting me teach for an hour or pronounce words and phrases. While I do this they grade the students notebooks and/or walk out of the room. I’m not sure how to feel about this since I'm supposed to be introducing co-teaching to them. At times I feel like I haven’t done my job seeing that we are not co-teaching or co-planning. I can count in one hand the lesson plans I have written with teachers. The teachers don’t know what co-teaching looks like thus they only "use" me to pronounce words or lead games and events. On the other hand the teachers have more on their plate than I do, grading notebooks, teaching and preparing for seven classes, teaching at more than one school, kids, husbands, houses to take care of, and a myriad of administrative paper work. All of this doesn’t excuse their lack of motivation and enthusiasm when it comes to working with the students and me. I haven’t been as assertive as I could be mostly because I wanted to process to be fluid, to arise from the teachers with me just serving as a guide or facilitator. However, this has not been the case and I feel a lot of the responsibility falls on me for not being expecting more.

When the time came for my teachers to share their opinion on how we were doing, they reported that we were making progress; the kids are enjoying my lessons and improving their English. Quite a diplomatic answer and one I wasn’t ready for but welcomed with a smile. I didn’t say anything bad about them either, I mentioned that we weren’t making as much progress as I wanted and laid most of the blame on the countless obligations that the teachers have outside of the classroom (see above).

It was by far the most helpful workshop for my teachers so far, not because they learned about what makes a professional group or how to make materials for class but because they heard how the other English teachers were working (or not working) with their volunteers. They got to reflect on their experiences with me, how much we have accomplished and how much more work we still have left to do.

The weekend after the workshop, I traveled to Barranquilla to meet the new volunteers and to do a presentation with another Cartagena volunteer, about the Colombian education system on the coast. We showed a video we filmed during the teacher's workshop the week before with our counterparts and Cartagena volunteers answering questions like: What is a "costeño" word or phrase the trainees should know? What is a daily change you face at school? And how many "puentes" or holidays are there in the school year? (Link to the video below)

During the presentation we spoke about the structure of the school system at the district, city and school levels. Furthermore, we described the main functions of the people they will deal with daily at school, tips on how to deal with the inconsistent work schedule and answered questions related to teaching. The workshops went over the time allotted to them; the trainees had many questions about the school, the community, the teachers and everything else that we experience as volunteers. It made me think about my own fears and concerns I had during training and how they weren’t answered during training. I enjoyed my time during training, being with all the volunteers, sharing our anxieties, debating over the best city on the coast and how will deal with the stress of service. A time when I was less cynical about the Peace Corps TEFL project in Colombia, the Costeños and my own goals.

Video for trainees: http://youtu.be/mmhrN8hjo_A

Bloopers: http://youtu.be/deFfdx6Grjo