Well, it´s official!
I have completed my 8-month Teach English, Volunteer, Tour-of-Duty in Antofagasta, Chile!
Today was my last day, rather bitter-sweet due to the fact that all week there has been a strike (Paro), therefore, I was not able to say good-bye to all my students. Furthermore, I have boxes of gifts and prizes for my best students, so, I will return on Monday to hand out the prizes and give a farewell address to the school. Should be interesting.
It has been a challenging 8-months to say the least. My biggest obstacle of course was the language barrier. Having taught these last 5 years back home, I always relied on my ability to reach the students with my words and ideas. Teaching is all psychological. If you can get through to them without them knowing it, then, you´re in! However, here, I was unable to do that due to the fact that my Spanish is not at the level it needed to be. I became frustrated, handcuffed, trying to teach and talk to kids, WITHOUT TALKING! Or, of course, speaking in English, which would then put them on the defensive, and they would instantly start mumbling and babbling words to mimic me and the class would erupt in laughter.
Just when I was getting somewhat comfortable in my classroom situation, I was told by the Directora (principal), that I had to change classrooms. This resulted in me having to remove all the posters, labels, pictures and drawings, and cram it all into a much smaller classroom. The new sala took some getting used to, but eventually it was more intimate and proved to work better.
The kids were wonderful and I will miss them dearly. I had grades 5th-8th, but I was greeted daily by all the kids in the school, especially the little ones who were convinced that I was the tallest person in all of Chile.
What did they learn? To tell you the truth, I don´t know if they learned much of anything. I had each class for only 45-minutes per week! 26 classes, with 10-20 kids in a class, what can you teach? They understand “Good Morning”...and all can say “Hello”, so, in reality, what´s more important than that!
I taught them “Long time no see!” And it was pleasing to have a student come up to me after a week-off and say “Hello mister, long time no see.”
My stop-watch was my savior!...days when I was fresh out of ideas, I would pull out my stop-watch and have them count. Standing up, I would point to the first student “One,” then go around the room, each saying the next number and sitting down, then, go around the room again, this time standing up. 11-20 was the most difficult. “Five-teen” and “Thur-tiy-teen” were ...impossible?? 13 was and is, the hardest concept and pronounciation for them...perhaps that is why it´s so unlucky?? But they loved the stop-watch because they always wanted to improve on their times so we could “play” that all-day, and I would tell them “Stickers for everyone if under 15 seconds.”
Mondays were long.
Tuesdays were longer.
Wednesdays were easy.
Thursdays were shorter than Wednesdays, but seemed longer....??
Fridays were the shortest day, but seemed like the longest.
I never received advance notice if there was some assembly (actos) and I knew they weren´t last minute because the kids would put on beautiful displays of costumes and dancing. Whole performances that had been planned for weeks, but who knew?
GAMES!!! Of course the kids always wanted to play a game. So, after making them copy down that days´ lesson (usually consisting of taking a verb such as necesitar and making a sentence...ie. Yo necesito un lapiz. I need a pencil.) I would than say sentences to them such as “I need a week-long vacation to get the hell away from here!” and they would just stare at me blankly, not having a clue as to what i´m saying....I did enjoy my petty moments.
Back to the GAMES!...Juegos Profe!!!...oh yeah....so, their favorites were of course, Hangman...in English...I would write Person, Place, Thing on the board to give them hints. Scategories proved to be a life-saver towards the end of the year...give them a letter, write a Famous Person´s name, a food or drink, a city, a country, an animal, etc. We played hide-and-seek...I had a tiny soccer ball, I would send a kid outside, then hide the ball, and the kids gave him/her the “HOT, COLD, WARM” clues. This taught them temperatures, and concepts such as “FREEZING...ON FIRE...VOLCANO, HOT!” The stop-watch was also incorporated into this game as well, for my room consisted of four long tables, so, we always had groups of four. Pictionary was very popular....give them a word “¿En ingles Profe?”...OF COURSE IN ENGLISH!! I would say to them. Once again, person, place, thing....Dog, Cat, Spiderman, Superman, Titanic, Hamburger, Hot Dog, Harry Potter, Empanada,... those were some of the more frequent words. Touch was a good game too. (If I was in the United States and told people, “Yeah, I played a game called Touch Me with my 12 year old students” I´d be in jail right now.) The game, with the stop-watch of course, consisted of me bringing a student to the front of the class...I would say, “Touch the Door” and they would run to touch the door...the chalkboard, the school map, surfer, galaxy, circle, wave, sand, beach, islands, Arnold Schwarznegger, Batman, etc. It took one kid two minutes to touch the chalkboard....and I think the other kid is still trying to find the “chair”.
Simon Says was popular. I never lost.
And “Up, Down, Left, Right, Stop” worked for a day...that was when I blind folded a student, drew a square on the chalkboard, gave them a piece of paper with tape, and their group gave them clues with the words. Basically, a version of Pin-the-tail on the Burro.
During recess (recreo), I would either cry in my lap, or, go outside and play...somedays there would be kids playing with a basketball, so, I would demonstrate my skills much to their enjoyment. I had a small football which was sent down to me, that too proved to amaze them especially when I would throw a perfect spiral 60-yards. They had never seen anything like that before. There was actually one kid who was a natural!! He had an amazing arm, and if he lived in the States he´d be going to some quarterback school right now, developing his skills for a future college scholarship. I hadn´t seen this student though for sometime, so I asked his classmates, “Where´s Liro?”...ohh, he dropped out....an 7th grader.
By far my hardest student was Mr. David Lara. A 7th grader with no respect for me, school, nor himself. From Day One he was asking about Mr. Cameron, last year´s volunteer, and very popular with the kids and community. “I want Mr. Cameron” he would say. He would enter my class, screaming, jumping up and down, shouting profanity and basically beg for attention. One day, we had a talk, he, myself, and Leticia (the English teacher with whom I worked with). Come to find out, he lives with Grandma, but she wants nothing to do with him because she can´t control him. He rarely sees his mom because she too was tired of him. Never knew his father. He proceeded to tell us how he planned to live on the streets and steal because he had no where else to go. He was kicked out of school two months ago. My hardest student, but, ironically, also my favorite. I will miss you lil´David.
Juanito (they called him Juanito because he´s by the far the biggest kid in school, taller than me) and by far my best student. So kind, always willing to do anything to help or participate, and absolutely dominate on the basketball court. Malenie is the best English speaker in the school, and she is infatuated with Hillary Duff. Jean-Paul is the cute chubby kid, every school has one.
I will miss them all, some more than most, but all gave me wonderful memories (and some a few more gray hairs canas).
I never did get them to stop writing on the desks. But, a week from now, i´ll be laying on a beach on Easter Island, smiling about how I waged an 8-month long (losing) battle over kids writing on a desk! So insignificant in the larger scheme of things! No food in the Class! That was a rule they accepted, of course I did have to throw away about 317 lollipops! (chupetes)...ripped them right out of their mouths!..after 2 warnings of course.
So, as I prepare to leave the city of Antofagasta, with lifelong memories, I am confident in that while maybe my kids didn´t learn as much as I would have liked, I have left an impression on them. It´s a powerful feeling, to know that 10 years from now, these kids will be somewhere hanging out, maybe at the mall or at the beach, at a party, and perhaps my name will come up....”Yah, yo recuerdo Mister Clark....”
I´ll miss you Escuela 80....Long time no see!
