This
week my challenges have been being sick, teaching English, and helping
in a classroom where the children do not respect me. Coming down with a
cold in a foreign country is difficult. In Colorado I am familiar with
the language and the people, but here it is much different. Not having
this familiarity has presented a challenge for me to take care of my own
very basic needs in order to feel better and recover from a cold.The
students who I have volunteered to teach English to do not always come
to "class." Tuesday there were only four kids in class and on Friday
about twelve. I am supposed to be there for two hours, but the time that
I am actually there continues to get shorter as the children wander
off. I asked one of the older students in the class why and his answer
was that they did not want to learn how to speak English, but want to
understand it. I have provided games, songs, and made materials to use,
but the students do not seem to understand me. In the beginning I
thought that this was due to my lack of Spanish, but adults near by have
told me otherwise. I am very confused about this.
The
class of four year olds that I teach present a continuation of
challenges, but finally I have had a success with the teacher. On Friday
afternoon we split the class up into four year olds and five year olds.
I had prepared for this and was going to give a lesson on the Spindle
boxes. In order to create a flowing environment I had everything
prepared and had taught a few of the kids so that they could help during
the lesson. When the time came Laura, the teacher, gave me the four
year olds and asked me to teach something completely different that was
not prepared. She taught the spindle box lesson for the first time to
the five year olds. The first problem with this was that none of the
four year olds respect me in the least bit and I could not prepare
anything for them in the time frame allotted. By the end of it some of
the materials that Laura and I have spent hours creating were in pieces
and only one of the students had successfully completed the activity. I
felt that I had been set up for failure and that the kids had equally
been set up to fail in this activity. The success that came from this
was the Laura finally said that we needed to prepare the material for
them, which I have been trying to explain for the last two weeks. I have
tried not only explaining this, but also doing it to show the
difference in how the children behave, however, every time my work is
destroyed before the opportunity comes.
(I will try to add more soon with pictures, but am currently having trouble with the computers)
