*I decided to edit and re-upload this particular blog post
for several reasons. While the original post did reflect my feelings and
position at the time, I realize that it could be easily misunderstood. This
blog is not meant to represent the opinions of the Peace Corps or the US (as my
disclaimer states). However, I know I must continue to remain mindful of what I
choose to discuss, as my blog will be some people’s only idea of Colombia*
So ten months have officially passed as of June 27th,
yet I still haven’t actually explained what I’m doing at site. So here’s the
deal. About seven months ago I moved to my pueblo (that I can’t mention by name
for security reasons) with the intent of being a “co-teacher/English teacher
trainer”. Having had no experience teaching English, much less training someone
else how to teach English, I was apprehensive at best. I moved to my site
around November 18th which is basically the end of the year. The
Colombian school system more or less follows the calendar year. As a result
November was the worst time to move in. Like most people (I’m sure around the
world) no one is too keen on learning/teaching with the end of the year so
close. The following two weeks I got to observe a few classes, and learn about
the culture of the school. This mainly consisted of me sitting awkwardly in the
back of the classroom, and enduring seemingly endless introductions.
My school is huge—at least by Watkinson standards where my
graduating class had 56 people in it (and was the biggest class in the history
of the school). There are a little over a thousand kids in the secondary school.
Each class has about forty to forty-five students in it, and each grade has
about five classes. The classrooms are probably built to fit about thirty
students, which usually means that students are almost sitting on top of each
other. Being in a poorer area (as almost all PCVs are), my school lacks many
resources that are taken for granted in the states. This means: broken roof,
cracked floors, desks that are falling apart, complete lack of classroom
materials, and absolutely no technology available. To put this all in
perspective, the only thing provided for teachers is a whiteboard. Also we
didn’t receive our government issued textbooks until a few weeks ago. Yes
that’s right. For five months out of ten month school year we had no books. Unfortunately
this appears to be the norm throughout PC Colombia posts. It appears as if
there is some disconnect between the Ministry of Education, and the schools in
each department (think state). For example, during training I met the ministry
of education for Bolivar which is the department that I work in. She was a very
pleasant and informative woman who answered all of our questions about what to
expect in the classroom. She was in charge of making sure that all
schools received there materials on time. However, she informed us that she was
recently engaged and moving to Bogotá. This meant that once she was gone, there
was a major shift in the office, which resulted in a delay on receiving our
books.
Luckily my English
teachers are pretty organized, and have a basic outline of what students should
learn each year. While this plan is really just a skeleton of a syllabus, it
has helped to give the last five months some structure. I’m really blessed
because there are other Colombia PCVs in schools with no syllabus, and English
teachers who don’t actually speak English. So for the past five months I’ve
been working mostly on basic vocabulary with my sixth and seventh graders. We
haven’t really touched grammar, which worries me, but it could be worse.
The Classroom
There are many things that I could say about working in my
classes. But I want to try and stay as objective as possible. It is really
easy to get caught up in complaining about what’s wrong with your school. As I mentioned
previously, most of my classrooms have upwards of forty students. Now imagine
me, working with forty pre-teens who think that they are literally too cool for
school (lol I couldn’t help it). The age of my students range drastically, and
many aren’t the typical age for their grade. For example, I teach eleven year
olds and fifteen year olds in my sixth grade class. My seventh grade class has
fourteen year olds, and kids who are only a few years younger than me. This
creates a very interesting dynamic in the classroom.
It is incredibly hard to get my students to actively
participate in the classroom. I’m sure a lot of this comes from embarrassment.
Why would you want to speak a language that you barley understand with a
teacher who’s a native speaker? Of course there are the kids who are quick to shout
out the answer, whether it’s wrong or right. Although they can be very
annoying, I’m glad to have them when no one else wants to talk—especially the
kids in the back. To actually get to the back of the classroom I have to fight
through the obstacle of desks jammed together because of lack of space. When I
project my voice (because yelling and projecting are two completely different
things) and call out to them specifically, I’m usually met with silence. Other
times it’s a nonchalant shrug followed with “no hablo ingles”. My counterparts
typically don’t make kids answer; this is to avoid “pena” (embarrassment/shame)
in front of the other students. This means that there are kids that literally
say and do nothing for two hours in class without repercussions. When you ask
some kids why they aren’t taking notes, or doing an activity, they’ll answer “I
forgot my pen/pencil/notebook/book bag”. This is one thing that really pisses
me off. It would be one thing if I knew my kids couldn’t afford these basic
school supplies. But this is not the case. Some days they just don’t want to do
work, so to avoid it, they don’t bring anything with them. Once again no
repercussions.
Then there are the fights. I’ve learned that this is not
typical in other volunteers’ sites, so I don’t want to generalize. But my kids
are literally always fighting. It might be a “city” thing as my site is more
urban than country—but that’s no excuse. It’s always over the dumbest stuff too.The
fights will break out quickly with students grabbing pencils and pens to stab
each other. This of course sets off their classmates who egg them on and shout
“pelea!” (fight!). Now technically as a volunteer I am not supposed to involve
myself in fights. But when kids are literally about to kill each other, I have
to jump in. I understand that these school fights are a result of other things
going on in my pueblo. To even think about having a fight as a solution, means
that my students are seeing other people fight. This is not too different from
schools back home where students fight for the same reason. The crazy thing is
that, by the next day, the kids are fine. The same two kids that wanted to kill
each other the day before, will be best friends the next day. I’m still trying
to figure that one out.
The grading system is interesting. Students’ assignments are
graded on a scale from one to ten, with ten being the equivalent of 100. There
aren’t any rubrics, so most grading is typically done arbitrarily. This leads
to major issues with grade inflation. I personally wouldn’t bring the typical
math based grading approach to the classroom (ex. If there are ten questions,
each is worth one point, you need seven right to pass). If I did literally
everyone would fail. The students do their work in a notebook which the teacher
grades (and sometimes they ask me to help out). They usually scan the notebook
for a little while then give the student a grade. Now remember, most of my
English teachers are intermediate English speakers (at best) so there are a lot
of mistakes they don’t see. When I try to point it out, they kind of brush me
off and say it’s not important. Now part of my wants to scream when this
happens. How can we expect students to truly learn if they are not corrected?
It appears as if some of my counterparts think the students will be discouraged
if they receive bad grades. I’m sure that this is true, but I think that they
help students realize what they need to work on. I’m sure another part of it is that teachers
don’t want kids to be held back. I’m not exactly sure how this system works.
But at the end of the year, all of the kids who are on the verge of failing
have to do “recuperacion”. This typically means giving failing kids a review
packet from the past semester to complete. Once completed sufficiently the kids
are given a passing grade. I’m not sure what happens to kids that don’t fill
out the packet, but supposedly only a few kids are held back each year. This
system is obviously very different than the one that I’m used to. It can be
very frustrating to see kids fool around for the whole semester, receive a
failing grade, only to be given a pass after completing a packet. Especially
when there are kids who come to class prepared every day, complete every
assignment, and behave respectfully.
Now I don’t want this to sound like a negative post. I just
want to be as honest as I can about what’s going on at my site. There are
clearly many issues with the Colombian educational system (as there are in most
countries); if there weren’t problems Peace Corps wouldn’t need to be here. But
despite how crazy my kids send me, I enjoy working with them. It also makes me
exponentially more grateful for all the teachers that I’ve had. Teachers are
incredible people, and I honestly think that they don’t get as much credit as
they deserve.
Future Plans
Once this break is over I’m switching some of my classes.
With one of the two World Teach volunteers gone, I can now work with the ninth
graders (much more mature and calm). This gives me more freedom to do what I
want to do. I’m also working on the World Map Project, which is pretty popular
throughout Peace Corps. I’ve been given two walls on my school grounds—one for
a mural and one for a map. I plan to work with students to paint a World Map
with a focus on languages (ex. English speaking countries in red, Spanish in
purple, Chinese in green, etc). I also would really love to work with girl’s
empowerment or sex ed with my students. Basically I want to do more than just
teaching in the classroom.
