First, and least importantly, I thought I'd add titles to the posts.
Next, something actually interesting. Yesterday marked my 3rd month of being a Peace Corps volunteer. (Even though I've been here almost 6 months, part of it was training.) 3 months down, 21 to go. Not that I'm counting down, because currently I'm not. I actually wanted to share with you how well things have been going. I have learned in my relatively short time here that it's a very up and down thing. There are good days, REALLY good days, and then days where you feel like you are not doing or contributing anything at all. This is just, as I've gathered from experience and other people's accounts, how it is. Either way, I wanted to share with you that right now it's going very well and I have very high hopes for the coming months.
Right now things are moving right along at the high school where I'm working. I currently work with 3 of 10 teachers, helping them plan lessons, modeling more effective ways to do activities and teach certain topics, and helping the teachers and the students with vocabulary and pronunciation. (Things like the fact that ass does mean donkey, but it will likely be misunderstood; or the fact that a generous woman and a bountiful woman are not the same even if the English/Spanish dictionary says so.) The collaboration with two of the teachers is going really well. They are taking some extra time to plan with me and are really trying to improve some of their activities and practices. There is one more teacher with whom the collaborative teaching has been a little more complicated, but I'm sure we'll get the hang of it. It's not that this person doesn't want to work with me, but I feel some reluctance to working with me that seems to mostly come from insecurity in teaching abilities and English proficiency. I understand this completely. It would be scary to let someone come in and look critically (meant in the most constructive sense of the word) at every part of your teaching, down to the prepositions that you use. So overall, the work in the school is going well.
I wanted to share with you a couple of the poems the 10th grade students wrote today. We are working on building our vocabulary by learning/reviewing 5 verbs every class. Each class we have a different activity to practice the verbs and today it was writing a poem. These were a couple of my favorites:
Apologizing is a beautiful action
Believe in forgiveness
because it is the only way to
avoid wars and conflicts.
Carry it in your heart forever.
-Eliecer
Avoid water contamination
because it is very important for the planet earth,
because many species could die
and we have to aid the planet.
Command the people to avoid contamination.
-Anon.
Ants in my pants...
Benevolence for my peace...
Bored by the human beings...
Answers that haven't been answered...
Cinder in the wind...
-Esteban
I was so impressed with these students. Mind you that these students give me a blank look when I ask them "How are you doing?". They just stare at me when I say "Now we are going to get in pairs." Last week when I was with them I asked them to look up words in the dictionary and they stared at me like I was from another planet. Not only did they not understand what I said, they didn't understand why on earth they would look something up. Usually they wait for the teacher to give them the answer or just give up and don't do the assignment. When they read their poems today they made me so proud. This was not my work, this was theirs. I am assisting them in learning English but today they were the ones really working. They took charge of their learning and got excited about English, and they made me excited about English too.
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