The school day is divided into two shifts: morning from 7:15-12:15 (roughly), and afternoon from 1-5:15pm. Students only attend school for half of a day, which makes sense because there are probably more than 1,000 students at this K-12 school (it's a small community, and 1,000 students is a lot of kids for a K-12 school). The school itself is divided into two locations: The older building is next to the central park of Caluco, and the newer buildings are on the way into Caluco, right on the edge of town. I will be working with older students, grades 7 through II bachillerato (the equivalent of 11th grade) in the morning at the old building, and 6-year-olds in the afternoon at the new building with teacher Jacqueline.
Every morning shift, I work with Don Jesús. The first class of the day was with seventh grade students, and they were a pretty animated group! Normal class sizes here range from 30-40 students (20 is a small group here), and the seventh grade class was, I think, somewhere around 32 students.
Don Jesús introduced me to the students and they came up one by one to say "Hi, my name is... what's your name? ...Nice to meet you." This was so that they could practice making introductions in English. 7th Grade is the first year that students start taking an entire class of English for the whole school year. Each grade has an English class for a couple of hours once a week. Classes are in blocks, and not every class meets every day.
Anyway, there was then time for the students to ask me questions using words and phrases in English. One of the students asked if I was related to Britney Spears, and another asked if I was Britney Spears, and I said no. I jokingly said that she's crazy and does drugs, and I don't. Don Jesús explained to me that people here don't know anything about the lifestyle of celebrities, they just know the name and the music, so the students wouldn't understand that Britney Spears might not be a great person to compare me to.
Many of the kids asked me if I liked Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, and One Direction. While I know that many youngsters in the U.S. are fans of such artists, I am not, so I just told the kids I haven't listened to the songs of those singers. We spent maybe 20-30 minutes of introductions and Q&A before the teacher announced that it was time for the students to have recess. Okay, I thought. "Wow, it's already 8:45? That sure didn't feel like an hour and a half." You see, the "official school schedule" that I was given says that each day, classes last from 7:15-8:45, then a 15 minute recess, then from 9:00-10:30, then another recess then from 10:15-12:15. What actually happened on my first day was that there were three 20-25 minute breaks between 7:30, when class actually started, and 10 am. I was pretty confused. The teacher also left during all of these breaks, and I didn't know what to do, so I just sat in the classroom and waited for him to come back and start class again each time. During the first break, students were talking with me and asking me about music and such, and that was pretty fun. During the second break, a girl brought me a bean pupusa, and that was really thoughtful of her (it was also a delicious pupusa). Some girls were sitting in the corner of the room giggling and making fun of how I was eating the pupusa, but I didn't care. I was glad I could be an entertaining foreigner, at least. During every break, students were running around outside, kicking soccer balls and each other, screaming at the tops of their lungs, fighting, wrestling, etc. It wasn't until the third break, though, that as I was talking with a student, I saw a girl fall down out of the corner of my eye. I looked over and she was sitting on the floor beside a desk, clutching her elbows across her stomach. At first, I thought she just fell and hit her elbow on the desk, but then she wasn't getting up and some students were gathering around her. I got up and knelt by her side, and I asked her in Spanish if she was okay. She nodded weakly, and I asked a girl next to her what happened. "She fell," said the girl. My mind was racing. I had no idea what to do. No one had told me any school rules or policies, and I didn't even know if there was like a nurse's office or any kind of first aid available. Am I responsible for this child's safety? I certainly feel responsible as a teacher. I didn't know where Don Jesús had gone, since he would just disappear without warning. I just sat there by the girl, worried, unsure of what to do. After a minute that felt like an eternity, Don Jesús walked into the classroom and saw me kneeling by an injured kid. "Well, this sure looks great," I thought. He asked what happened, and this time the injured girl said that one of the boys had kicked her in the stomach as he was roughhousing with his friends. Why the heck did the other girl tell me she just fell? Don Jesús just asked her to stand up. Then, he asked me if accidents like that happen in U.S. schools. "Sometimes," I said. What I was really thinking was that in U.S. schools, teachers are responsible for the students and it's illegal for them to leave students unattended, but I somehow didn't think that was an appropriate response.
At 10, the classes changed. Seventh grade went to another class, and 10th graders came in to learn English. The 10th graders, or primer bachillerato, were learning about the seasons of the United States. Here in El Salvador, there are only two seasons: Summer (hot and humid) and Winter (rainy and slightly cooler), so the teacher wanted the students to learn about the four seasons in the U.S. He asked me to write some sentences on the whiteboard about each season, for instance, what do people do or wear in each season? How is the weather? etc. Students would copy this into their notebooks. As I started writing, Don Jesús disappeared again, but instead of leaving for a few minutes or during a break, he left me in charge of a class of 10th graders for almost an hour. Needless to say, it did NOT take me an hour to write three sentences about each season and have students copy it down. I even took my time, reading each sentence aloud and having the students repeat after me to get some practice hearing and speaking English words. After we finished the activity, I paused and looked outside the class to see if I could spot Don Jesús. No sign of him. So, I awkwardly walked back to his desk and looked in the English as a foreign language text book he was using with the kids. I had no idea what he wanted them to do next, but one of the activities in the book consisted of two columns: one of the four seasons, and the other with activities and adjectives relating to each season. It was a matching excercise. I borrowed this idea and just kind of made up something on the spot so that I wouldn't lose the students' interest. I went to the board, and on the left, I wrote a list of "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter," and on the right, I wrote two columns of words related to each season. I only used words that I had already written in the descriptive sentences, like "hot," "cool," "windy," "sunny," "rainy," "tank-tops," "ski," etc. I had no idea how to say "I want you guys to match these words with these words," in Spanish, but I gave it a shot. What basically came out was me pointing and gesturing elaborately while saying something to the effect of "write this in your journals, and put these words with these words, like this," and I demonstrated what I wanted. The kids were pretty confused, but they started writing it down, anyway. Although these kids are learning English, my accent is very different from the thick Spanish accent of the English teacher, so even when I spoke very slowly, they had a hard time understanding me. I just tried to explain directions and words in Spanish. After the students struggled with the activity for a few minutes, Guillermo, my ride, and Lacey, the other intern, showed up outside the classroom door. They were here to pick me up, but Guillermo accidentally had arrived an hour early, and the profe was still absent. I quickly asked Guillermo how to say "matching" in Spanish, and he told me, so then I re-explained the exercise to the students, to a chorus of "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" I noticed that there were a few students who were still struggling, so I asked them if it would be better to do this together, and they said yes. So I asked students in Spanish which words go with Winter, and then some would hesitantly pronounce the words "cold" or "ski" and I would draw a line between those words on the board and the word "Winter." Eventually, with the help of the students, the only words left to match to the seasons were "sunny," "rainy" and "windy." I realized that I had committed a big TESL mistake, because I had taken nouns and made them adjectives. I asked the class if they knew what those words meant, and no one did, so I explained the meanings in Spanish. After that, the students quickly and correctly matched "sunny" with summer, "rainy" with spring and "windy" with fall. Finally, Guillermo, Lacey, and, surprise, Don Jesús came back to the class. The teacher asked if we finished the activity and I said yes, so he asked Lacey and me to demonstrate a mock-conversation in front of the class so that they could hear English being spoken. Lacey and I spoke very slowly about how hot it is in El Salvador. The teacher asked the class if they understood us, and they said no. He said he didn't understand us either, and the students laughed!
After that, I went back home to Conny's house. It was a very interesting day. I wouldn't mind being left alone with students if I KNEW I was going to be in charge of the class so that I could plan activities. I have no idea how much English the students already know, so I'm not sure what activities might be appropriate. It would also be helpful to know the school rules. I don't like seeing kids fight and hit and kick and throw things at each other, but none of the teachers seem to do or say anything, so I didn't want to overstep my bounds by saying something. I also don't know how to say "stop that," or "quit it" or "don't fight" in Spanish. Those may be phrases I'll have to learn if I'm going to have any sort of classroom management.
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