A Day in the Life

The past few posts have all been about trips I’ve taken out of site. When looking from an outsider’s perspective, it dawned on me that, to some, it might seem like I’m not doing much work. Well, there’s an ounce of truth to that, but it doesn’t owe to a lack of effort on my part. Let me give you an idea of what a day is like. Of course, no day is typical, but this is a breakdown of a recent day.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

???: Roosters crowing, but it’s not light out yet.

5:45am: Begrudgingly get out of bed. Set a pot of water to boil. I mix a pot of hot water with water from the outdoor bucket to make it bearable. Start making oatmeal. (Never used to be an oatmeal person.) Both burners of the electric stove are on, so the lights flicker. Whenever I leave the room, I turn the lights off immediately to conserve energy. The lights have shorted out on me before.

6:10am: Eat breakfast while watching an episode of The Boondocks, ripped from the Internet.

6:30am: Shower/bath. Carry a bucket of lukewarm water, totuma, soap, shampoo, and shaving tools. Today I shave, which is no fun. Rarely turns out well without a mirror. I can see my breath. Chilly.

6:45am: Get dressed. I'm feeling lazy, so instead of doing the dishes, I just pour water on them and save the work for later.

7:00am: Walk to school. Five-minute walk on the gravel road, slightly uphill. On the way I see chickens, horse droppings, and kids in their uniforms. The older ones clutch the hands of the younger ones.

7:05am: Arrive at school. The bus that brings the teachers from Santiago (the nearest city, an hour away) beats me here. I always try to get here before the teachers. Drop off my empty gallon jugs and say “Buenos días, etc.” to my former host mom, who works at the school kiosk.

7:10-7:50am: 7th grade English with Teacher Four-Foot-Nothing?
Nope. I ask her what she’s doing today. “We’re just figuring out grades and then we’ll discuss next week’s school anniversary activities.” The first week of school is dedicated to tying up loose ends from the previous trimester. A week is lost. If I were to go to a more “normal” class with this teacher, her instruction would go for approximately 10 of the 40 minutes. Then, feeling obligated to fill the time, I would get up and explain the same material in more detail with several examples. I would try engage the students to answer questions in chorus or come up and write on the board. Anything to get them awake. But not today.

7:50-8:30am: Teacher Class for high school English teachers
My initial plan for the class: reinforcement to help improve their English, and a chance for me to offer suggestions for methods and activities, and collaborate with them.
What happened: Teacher Not-Really-Blonde, assertive, dominates the conversation. Talks about how my presence in the classroom is off-putting to students and teachers. Mentions how I get visibly upset when instruction often gets preempted by school activities: band practice for the upcoming Independence Day parades, students poking their heads in selling raffle tickets, movie showings, assemblies, etc. Admits that the way things are done her aren’t the best, but that nothing will change. Same teacher then changes discussion to plans for the 3rd trimester (Holidays in the US). But before the big project, she wants to teach phrases to express emotions like "Wow" and "Ouch." This when the students can’t form simple sentences or read their own homework. Argue with her about that. We agree to phase me out of work in the classroom and work together during two of their free periods every week. Guess that means I don’t have to go to their classes anymore.

9:10am: Return to Elementary school. Go to boy’s bathroom, brand new, which had been locked for the whole past trimester because some kids supposedly threw gum in a urinal. Punishment didn’t match the crime, which infuriates me. Brand new bathrooms with all the necessary amenities locked and inaccessible forces the kids to use disgusting, poorly-kept latrines and discourages them from washing their hands (which, in all honesty, would only consist of splashing water on them anyway). Natural selection compels me to squash a beetle struggling on its back. Those huge bugs are annoying and stupid.

9:20am: Sitting in on 4th grade English with Teacher Meany Pants. He’s giving a dictation quiz of numbers 1-100. (Think about it: 9 year-olds forced to memorize the non-intuitive spelling of words in a foreign language. What were you doing in 4th grade Spanish, if it was even offered to you?) Yesterday, in order to fill dead time during which he was organizing portfolios with all the grades of the previous trimester, I reviewed spelling of numbers. If I hadn’t done that, the only instruction the kids would’ve gotten would have been staring at the book, which, by the way, only goes up to 50. Since the instruction is so flippant and doesn’t really build from one year to another, this is essentially new to them, especially spelling.

9:30am: Meany Pants yells while writing answers. Goes through it all at lightning speed, never giving students an opportunity to realize their mistakes or correct them on their own quizzes or on the board, which the kids would have loved. Then repeats over and over how easy it should be for them.
Students exchange papers and correct each other’s quizzes. However, since half of it is written, and since the kids often copy wrong or don’t pay close attention, they don’t catch all the mistakes. Writing is too often the focus of English class, but since their native language is Spanish, and since they don’t have the basic tools for understanding phonetics and the combination of letters and the sounds they make, you get answers like this:
1: uan
9: nain
54: fivti-for

9:45am: Quote from Meany Pants: “Debes morirte…así habrá más espacio en el salón,” which translates to “You should just die…that way there’d be more room in the class.” Meany Pants says things like this a lot, and delivers lines like that in such a loud, stern voice that students and I are unable to tell if he’s joking.

10:00am: In a period of five minutes, Meany Pants makes racist jokes about both Indigenous and Chinese people. Do I say something? I have before, and it doesn't stop him from saying it in class.

10:05am: Meany Pants finally breaks down differences in spelling. Thankfully I’m there to catch small mistakes in spelling and pronunciation.

10:06am: Teacher’s cell phone rings. Amazingly, he doesn’t pick it up this time. Another identical quiz on Tuesday. Test Wednesday on same material.

10:20am: RECESS. The search for a snack begins. Edwin, the custodian, cuts the grass with a weed whacker.

Snack:
-Crackers and American cheese mini-sandwiches: $0.30
-Empanada from the lady who walks around the school at recess: $0.25

Give out gum sent in a recent package (thanks Mrs. Fenske!). Kids crowd me. I have them form a line, and after I give them a piece, I have them say thank you in English. If I hadn’t told them to, they would have said nothing at all.

10:40 am: Teachers and students drag their feet at the end of recess and I’m done trying to get them on task. I hide out in the computer lab (air-conditioned, under-utilized) and read.

11:30am: Meany Pants sends student to find me, although, according to the schedule, he and I don’t have class together. 6th grade: Dictation on school supplies, a topic from last trimester. In fact, a repetition of an old test.

11:45am: Review of Numbers 1-100. Teachers tries to get me to do the review again. I tell him that I’ve already done it twice and showed him what to do and that he should try it this time. Disagreement.
His thought process: This lazy kid doesn’t want to do any work. He did it before. Can’t he just do it again?
My thought process: I’m here trying to improve the teachers’ methods. Theoretically, when I do something in class, I try and model everything, and then give the teacher an opportunity to do the lesson/review themselves.

Teacher pairs kids up and opens books. Students point to each number and look at word, then repeat after teacher. Listen and repeat. Supposedly, this is meant to teach spelling, seeing as how the next quiz is dictation.

12:00pm: Teacher takes time to explain differences between several sets of sounds:
-v sound and f sound
-Voiced and voiceless th
-Reduction of t in words like twenty
Might be over the kids heads a bit, but at least he's doing something relevant.

12:15pm: Gather gallon jugs, filled with boiled water now cool, go back home.

12:20pm: Quickly eat lunch of peanut butter sandwiches on bread (not toasted since electricity is currently out). Then go across the street to host mom’s house to do laundry. Separate, throw in washer for two 15-minute cycles, wring out each article of clothing, transfer to large bowl to rinse, dunk clothes in and pull out over and over, wring out again, transfer to centrifuge quick-dryer, put up on line to dry.

2:45pm: Finish clothes, go back home, and sit down to check e-mail. First time in a while that I didn’t plop down on the chair in front of the computer as soon as I got home. Search for free online Chinese lessons, since I feel a pang of regret about having given it up. Research my tentative future plan: Peace Corps Fellows Masters in Education program at Columbia University. This would lead to becoming a teacher in New York for a minimum of 3 years.

5:00pm: Go to the store to buy replacement soap, since I used up all my host mom’s soap (a package that I technical bought, but still). Meet two students on the road. They ask to race me. I agree. We start running. My flip-flop thong pops out and the whole thing flies off while I’m running. I keep from tripping, but lose. They ask if I want to play with them over by the basketball court, where the kids play soccer. I say yes. Go to the store, buy the laundry soap, and head home. Go get my basketball and go back to the court, which is filled with kids playing. Kids and I play a bastardized form of basketball for a while. Kids range in age from 5 to 9, boys and girls, all more or less adorable.

6:45pm: Go home since it’s getting dark. Make dinner (heat up previously prepared lentils and cook two eggs). Eat dinner while watching ripped stand-up comedy videos of Eddie Murphy. Yay technology.

7:45pm: Throw dishes in the large bowl, my makeshift sink, and bring the clothes back inside, in fear that it might rain at night. Some of the clothes are still a bit wet, so I’ll have to hang them up again tomorrow morning.

8:10pm: Vitamins. Dental hygiene. More videos and time-wasting.

9:15pm: Bed time. Slip under mosquito net into my foam mattress bed, which bows in the middle. I lie down closer to the edge of the bed and curse the roosters in advance.

So, nearly all my frustrations are centered around school and the culture surrounding education. Serious problems are pervasive. I'm starting to realize that I can't do everything I want to do. Sadly, I base my feeling of accomplishment on how much I can change and improve the way things are done around here, especially since my project is called Teaching English. In all honesty though, that's only one facet of my purpose here. And school doesn't dominate my whole day. While writing this post, I realized that everything else in my Peace Corps life isn't so bad. Compared to others, it's actually quite charmed. The impact I have here is something that may have nothing to do with English, or what goes on during those five hours of school. Know what that means? More having fun, less getting worked up about things over which I have no control.