The people of Chile, as I have mentioned before, are quite relaxed. While this can be quite a good thing it can also be a little frustrating. I myself am quite a relaxed person but I come nowhere near as relaxed as most Chileans. I mention this because I came to school this morning and my teacher asked me if I would like to teach today. This would normally be no problem, I jump on any chance to be in front of the class, but she had said nothing to me before this point. So I am not at all prepared. I asked her if she would like me to teach her lesson, hoping that she would have some sort of plan for the days activities, and she said, “No, you just teach what you like?” (Thats the best I can do typing her broken English, and yes that ended with a question mark). So my response was, “I would rather have a little something prepared before I teach”. She said that we would plan today then, and she taught some lesson that she may or may not have had a plan for, I’m still not sure.
While she taught her lessons I made every attempt to be as involved as possible. I found out this morning that many of the other teacher that my fellow gringos are with teach in all English, so I decided that they got it easy. My teacher is a half and half teacher, meaning that half of her lesson are in English and half are in Spanish. This completely sucks because I can only follow half of what she is teaching. There were several times today that I had to ask some of the students to explain to me what the directions were so that I would help with the activity, but I was doing my best to be involved wherever possible, it is no fun to just observe. When lunch time came around my teacher told me that she had some bracelet and necklace making class that she teaches to the 1st graders on Monday afternoons so we would plan tomorrow for the lesson that I would teach on Thursday and maybe Friday. Then it was, i believe, “See you tomorrow”. I still have 2 hours before school is out and then Pancho has practice till 5:30. What am I going to do with all of this time? I went to the computer lab and realy got nothing done.
When school was out I found out that we, as a group of gringos, were going to go to Lota on Wednesday and then to Marshall’s families house for dinner. Lota is a small mine town in which the mines closed years ago and are now there only for tours. I was told that it was quite beautiful but very impoverished, I am very interested to see a different part of Chile.
A couple of us walked to the mall to kill some time, and then I returned to the school to wait for Pancho’s practice to be over. I am glad that I brought my Sudoku today, it really helped to pass the time. When practice was over Odaly gave us a ride home and then went to the office. Pancho and I had the house to ourselves so we did pretty much nothing until dinner was ready. After dinner Pancho worked on some homework and I called home. I could have talked forever about the trip to Chiloe but I decided to let everyone read my blog, it’s more detailed anyway. I went to bed early in hopes to be fully rested tomorrow.
A few final thoughts about the school:
I am beginning to think a lot about my topic for the capstone, Technology. This is perfect because as I am sure I have mentioned, they are in the process of installing a Smart Board in my classroom. I am sure that this is not typical of the entire school. I should find out more information about this. I was also surprised by the fact that the school as a whole only has 2 overhead machines that need to be checked out when used and returned ASAP (The kind that is used with transparencies, seems like ancient technology but I feel that every teacher should have one available for whenever they may need it). A few other things that may not seem much like technology but are taken for granted in the states, are the lack of pencil sharpeners, and the use of 2 ring binders instead of 3 ring binders. These things may sound strange to consider as Technology but I feel it is necessary to mention.
