Teaching Experience

I recently started two volunteer teaching jobs: one at a high school and one at a rural K-8. I am teaching English to mischievous high-schoolers and rambunctious 1st and 2nd graders, and it has been great so far. Although discipline problems are many, I am glad that I have the opportunity to help in some way and hopefully help boost these poor kids' self-confidence and give them a better shot at getting a college degree. Maybe there will be more government aid for students by the time they have the opportunity to go to college.

As it is right now, tuition is expensive and the student loan program is pretty insuffiicient. The students at to U de Concepción have taken over many of the buildings and have succeeded in stopping classes by strike. (Since there are so few students in my two grad seminars, we have continued to meet off campus and plan to complete our work on time so as not to lose vacation days that will likely be used to recuperate the missed days from the striking. We support what the strikers are doing, but we are continuing our work without really crossing a picket line, so to speak). The strike situation may seem radical to North Americans, but I have been told by many people that the only way to get the government's attention here is to have a strike. Unfortunately, although the government usually makes concessions initially, they often take back what they gave later on, thus causing more strikes. The teachers go on strike, too, because at the primary, middle, and high school levels, the government also underfunds schools, and the teachers' salaries are pitiful. My scholarship stipend is the same as what a teacher makes in Chile, which would be well below the poverty level in the U.S.

But back to my teaching experiences. I began working at a high school in San Pedro (about 20 minutes from Concepción proper) about 3 weeks ago. Although San Pedro is a pretty wealthy town, this particular high school is where poor children from the outskirts of town come to school. It is also a dumping ground for students who have been kicked out of other schools for disciplinary problems. I am working at the school through the program Inglés Abre Puertas, or Enlgish Opens Doors, which is a government program that recruits native English speakers from universities to volunteer as teaching assistants in schools whose students come from low socioeconomic levels. I think it is a good program, and the teacher I work with tells me that she can tell that the students are more motivated now that I am there. Just having a foreigner around stirs up student interest in most cases. There are many kids who are really good at English. I just hope they get a chance to do something with the language in the future.

I work at the high school on Monday and Wednesday mornings and at the rural school on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday for bi-weekly 45-minute sessions with students in 1st and 2nd grades. The rural school gig was arranged by my host Rotary Club, which does various activities to help the school. This year they plan to build a multi-use sports field to replace the current one, which is just dirt (or mud if it has been raining) that has no actual goals or markings for sports.

Every time I go to the school, kids from all grades surround me, looking at me like I came from another planet rather than another country, and ask me questions until the principal takes me to the classroom. The kids I teach are soooooo cute and sweet, and they are really excited about learning English, especially the 2nd graders. The 1st graders are much more bashful, but they are doing well. The first day that I went to the 2nd grade classroom, the kids jumped up and down and cheered when I came into the room. I couldn't have asked for a better welcome! Although they are more rowdy and are greater in number and thus a little harder to keep under control, the 2nd graders show a lot of potential. It's amazing how well kids can pronounce words from another language! I don't think they quite understand all of the meanings yet, but that will get better with time. This week I taught them basic greetings, and we made masks with which we could practice the words. The masks are good not only for making learning more fun, but also for helping the shy kids to feel less intimidated.

I found out that one of the kids, who is particularly affectionate and always asking to help me with things, lives in a home for children. He is nine years old and should be in 4th grade, but he is so tiny! I think my 6-year-old niece is as big as he is. His parents were drug addicts and abandoned him, and he lived on the street begging for money before he began living in the children's home. Stories like that just break my heart, but they also give me more passion for working with them. I wish I could just adopt all those kids and care for them the way they should be cared for. Many, if not all, of them live in shacks or run-down houses with no heat or indoor plumbing. For many of them, both at the rural school and the high school, the only food they get is the school breakfast and lunch. There are a couple of high school students that I teach that are fifteen or sixteen years old but look like they are eight or nine. This is likely due to malnourishment, and I wouldn't doubt that some of them were premature or had fetal alcohol syndrome.

A lot of the high school students, though they come from these situations, have cell phones. A lot of them work after school and probably use some of their money for things like cell phones, because having the appearance of living comfortably when one is not is sometimes, I guess, more satisfying than taking care of basic needs first. That's material culture for you, I suppose.