Ch. 2: “So how is teaching??”
The question everyone back home asks when they want to catch up on how I’m doing. Understandably so, since teaching was the primary context behind my move to Colombia. However, the answer to that question is so big, so convoluted, and so emotional that I don’t know what to say. In fact, I try to answer that question for myself everyday: Self, how IS teaching?
However, this entry is an attempt to answer that question thoughtfully, and with a bit more substance beyond my go-to chirp: “It’s great but so hard!!”.
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One day, to teach my 6th grade class about the days of the week, I made up “Festivo de Queso”, a week-long holiday to celebrate all the glory that is cheese. Students had to create a holiday calendar and propose a creative activity for each day. Then we reviewed the days and had a competition to see who had the most creative activity.
They loved it. One of the most creative ideas was to throw a cheesy potluck to feed the poor. At the end of class, I asked what day today was and they proudly chirped back the correct day. It was great.
The next day, I witnessed my first fist fight in the same class.
It was after spending the first 45 minutes trying to get everyone to sit down, which easily involved 40–50 students. As I was substituting for the room teacher, I was the only one who was in charge. In theory.
Suddenly, I see two kids (my smallest, interestingly enough) lunge at each other. Before I knew it, the classroom had transformed into a WWE match. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been just the two kids fighting. Unfortunately, the entire class erupted in screams and hoots and stormed over to create a makeshift ring around the fight.
Immediately, my American self is conflicted about how much I’m allowed to physically handle the kids to break up the fight. Am I allowed to grab them? Or am I only supposed to tell them to stop? In the seconds that I’m mulling this over, the spectating students are already in action, attempting to pull the two fighters apart. Unfortunately, what they end up doing is dragging the fight into different corners of the classroom.
It only ended few minutes later, when the vice principal stormed in and screamed at the kids.
This anecdote captures the essence of my classroom experience so far in Cartagena, Colombia. My classes are loud, energetic, and unpredictable. The same students can be perfect angels one day, graciously entertaining a ridiculous activity about cheese, to a teacher’s worst nightmare, pounding each other’s faces.
I teach 1pm to 6pm at a public high school across from my house, located in such a neighborhood that my co-teacher asked students to walk me home for my safety. The school itself is beautiful. However, like all buildings in Cartagena, classrooms are semi-open spaces, with glass-less windows and door-less doors, that let in both the breeze and the surrounding noises. One time (or perhaps several times), I spent several minutes asking my students to stop talking, only to realize that they had. What I was hearing was students from other classes talking…and also the neighbors on the street.
When I first got here, I was initially told that I’d be teaching every class from 6–11th grade, which works out to 25 different classes and me spending less than an hour with each class once a week. When I felt myself burning out after only two weeks, we changed my schedule. Now I teach 6–8th graders. 12 different classes, two hours with each class once a week.
I work with 3 different Colombian co-teachers, the primary English teachers who are responsible for the class. However, it is not unusual that I teach classes alone, as the co-teacher is not always present. In those circumstances, I must teach, manage, and entertain single-handedly the distracted group of 40-something students, using a hodgepodge mix of communication.
I’m never quite sure how much my students already know, what they are learning when I don’t see them (students take English twice a week but I see them once), and how much control I have over the lesson plan. Addressing these uncertainties requires close and frequent communication with the co-teacher. However, I’m still trying to figure out how to exert myself in this new cultural reality, in which regular meetings, punctuality, and long-term planning are not norms.
And of course, my students. My lovely Colombian students, who are beautiful, warm human beings…but not-so-beautiful students.
I mean that in a logistical sense. It seems to me that they never learned to behave in such a way that their behavior is conducive to learning. Majority of them want to learn (or at least that’s what they tell me), and some of them are exceptional students, in any sense of the word. But many haven’t adopted the teachable posture and behaviors that accompany the desire to learn.
Of course the same issue exists in the U.S., but it is literally amplified here. Students will yell at each other across the classroom to ask for a pencil while I’m speaking. Or get up in middle of class to look through my grade book. Or interrupt a lecture to ask if I have kids. Or work on their math homework and braid each other’s hair as they are sitting in front row.
There is no filter. They don’t think twice about doing any of these things. But at the same time, they always stop (or at least pause) when I ask them to. It took me a while to realize — after weeks of gaping at, what I perceive as, blatant behaviors of “IDGAFs” — but they don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that it always has been condoned.
Nevertheless, while they are wanting in classroom behavior, in warmth they most certainly are not. They never fail to return my smile and my “hola”s when I beam and greet every single student like an overeager foreigner (oh wait). When I ask them to put away their phones for the 5th time, they do it for the 5th time (which is both sad and impressive at the same time). I had been mentally prepared for students who will find me weird for smiling so much, smirk at me publicly for my broken Spanish, or force me to play a terrifying game of chicken in front of the class when he flat out refuses to put away his phone. But none of those things have happened. The students always smile back. They lovingly correct my Spanish, even in cases when I’m speaking Spanish to control them. And they always put their cell phone away…until they nonchalantly take it out for the 6th time.
Finally, in terms of students’ English abilities, it is very, very low, with little to no vocabulary. Most look at me with deer-in-the-headlights eyes when I ask “How are you?”. I’ll expand more on this next time.
Such is this new daily grind of mine. There are more stories — of victories and battles lost — and even more observations and lessons learned. But I have an entire year to share them so I won’t say them all here. The thing I want to say for now is that, similar to my epiphany about physical comforts, the reality of working as a teacher in Colombia will be extremely rewarding but nowhere as pretty as my expectations. In this new web of cultural norms in which I’m flailing helplessly, there is no doubt that I will take away more than I can give.
I just hope I can give something.
And on that note, let me go back to how that 6th grade fight ended, as it shows a glimpse of the attitude I’ve been taking in this environment.
After the vice principal left, majority of the students immediately started talking again, although at a reduced volume. Before I lost them completely, I tried to express in Spanish that I wasn’t mad, only…sad (because I didn’t know the word for “disappointed”. And yes, I pulled the most overused line of all time on them because it was genuinely how I felt). I tried to explain they were old enough to be taken seriously, but as much as I wanted to treat them like adults, I couldn’t if they didn’t give me that opportunity.
It was a cute attempt but a total failure. My mini-speech tanked. I was left standing like a fool in middle of the class, slowly drowning in the rising sea of noise as students got up to talk to their friends. A small handful of students, scattered across the classroom, looked at me with sad eyes and waited for me to continue.
It actually took everything I had to not walk out. I only had 20 minutes left before the class finished. I hadn’t even begun the lesson I’d planned on occupations. No one was paying attention. I felt disrespected, ignored, and worthless. Why must I go through the motions?
But I didn’t walk out. Instead, I walked to the corner of the room next to the whiteboard, and sat down.
More than a dramatic gesture, it was me feeling utterly defeated but at the same time trying to keep myself from doing something I’ll regret. The class paused then, when they noticed my unusual behavior.
When I saw their faces looking at me and realized I’d unintentionally managed to get their attention, what I needed to do became so obvious. I couldn’t give up. It didn’t matter how I felt. I was the teacher.
So, grimacing and still seated, I glanced at my watch and pulled out my computer. “If anyone wants to learn about occupations today, please bring your desk here and we’ll get through whatever we can before the class ends.”
The result was 15–20 students getting up from their seats in the class to quickly drag their chairs over. Before I knew it, I had a tight semicircle formed around me with kids peering eagerly at the presentation on my laptop. Some of whom were the kids who had patiently listened to my mini-speech earlier.
We managed to get through a good portion of the lesson, and by the end, majority of the small group were able to respond to my question, “What is your occupation?”, in a timid but nonetheless steady voice, “My occupation is a student.”
One of the girls pulled my arm at the very end. “Nancy, what is your occupation?” she asked slowly.
Somehow the fact that this one student had taken the initiative to ask me a question she had just learned outweighed everything that had happened. So I replied, in a clashing mix of gratefulness and guilt, “My occupation is a teacher.”
