Teaching

Teaching so far has been good but exhausting ... I seem to be able to maintain control of the classroom but barely for some classes. (the other day I ended up kicking a student out of my class but that was an exceptional circumstance where the kid was consistently disrupting the whole class --- I'm also fortunate because I think I can keep him from returning, it is good to know that the administration has my back.) For the most part the students are just very active and talkative. This, however, does not mean that I can ever get them to speak in English. I'm trying out different ideas to try to get the students to speak more in class … skits, rewarding speaking volunteers with class points, praising people who do speak, calling on people.

My teaching schedule is interesting: its convenient in that for the most part all of my classes are in the morning (8 to 1); inconvenient in that its very chopped up meaning that I'll have sections of some classes for more time then I will have other sections of the same class. This is compounded by the random holidays and canceled classes which makes planning class somewhat complicated. I find that despite my classes being solely in the morning, I end up staying much later at the school because I often end up taking advantage of the school's free wifi which I can access on my laptop.

I have managed to remain amused at the slight chaos that affects all school activities. For example, last Thursday I gave handouts to the copy person. On Monday, I went to pick up my copies but the copy office was closed for no apparent reason so I had to create a lesson plan from scratch. Today all the classes started and ended 15 minutes late for no apparent reason. This chaos has been most noticeable with selection of students for the English speaking competition. We keep meeting to select the student that will represent the school but one person who is critical to the selection process is perpetually absent from these meetings.

The most interesting thing so far at school has been the reaction of the younger students to me. While I don't teach the younger students, they often play right outside of my classroom. Often when they see me a bunch of them will come over and swarm me asking me questions saying hi etc. A similar thing occurred when I observed classes in seventh and eighth grade. Midway through class, a group of students flocked to where I was sitting and asked me all sorts of questions such as: what is my name?, where am I from? What kind of music do I like? ( radiohead, guns and roses, pink floyd, and my chemical romance are all popular here) Is my eye color real or do I have colored contact lenses (I wasn't sure why I'd have contact lenses and glasses) do I drink?, do I smoke?, what sports do I play?, why did I come to Chile?, do I like Antofagasta?, do I believe in God? Do I believe that the world will end in 2012 when the Mayan calendar stops (it took me a while to fully understand this question) do you like Chilean women?, do you think our teacher is hot? How old are you? Etc ….. In the seventh grade classes some students asked me for my autograph and in eighth grade some students wanted to take my picture with them (in both these cases I made the mistake of giving into the first request only to have 10 more people ask me). Fortunately, the high school students are less excited about me probably because they have had volunteers teach them in the past and because they are high school students and not as excitable. My favorite class so far is a ninth grade class that still isn't used to having a volunteer and thus causes no problems …. I'm betting that will change throughout the school year.