El Salvador Experience: Teaching: Monday, May 5

Last Tuesday was the first day that don Jesús Orellana decided not to come to class at all. Tuesday was a bit strange because he had actually signed in at the school, and so don Carlos, the librarian, the secretary, and vice-principal all thought he was on campus somewhere, but no-one knew where he was. I had nothing prepared for the students, because I don't have access to the textbooks that don Jesús insists I use, and I didn't even have any paper with me to do a visual activity I wanted to try. At any rate, the 7th graders just took a test that day, and boy, was that ever difficult. It was a bit like herding cats. There are 39 students in the class, and so everyone has to sit very close in the small classroom. One of the students told me that I had to split the class up and send half of the class somewhere else because otherwise everyone will copy. My first thought was, "really? Have they no self-integrity that the only way they won't cheat is if someone is constantly babysitting them?" There wasn't another available classroom, so I asked the librarian if the kids could work in the library. Honestly, the library was smaller than the classroom so even with half the class in there, the kids were packed like sardines and would probably cheat anyway. The librarian took all of their notebooks and told me she'd keep on eye on them while I stayed in the main classroom. I am so grateful for her help! Anyway, so back in the main classroom, I explained the exam to the students (in Spanish) and then they got to work. Most of the students kept talking to each other. At first it was just idle chatter, and I asked them to please be quiet. After a minute or so, some of them started whispering about what question they were on and how much they had done of the test and so I again asked for them to be quiet. The next time I heard chatter, I said that if they kept talking, I would just take all the tests and everyone would get a 0. That got everyone to work quietly! And boy, did my "teacher look" ever get a workout that day! Part of the exam was a word search puzzle, and the other part was a "choose a phrase from the list and match it with the picture" activity. There were two problems with the exam: First, there was absolutely NO word "red" in the word search, and then one of the pictures on the second part of the exam didn't have the answer in the list. The picture was of someone opening a door, but there was absolutely nothing about "going to" or "opening" a door in the phrase list. So, that was a bummer. I explained this to all the kids halfway through the exam, because that's when I noticed the error. After the kids finished their exams, they were free to leave, as I had absolutely no idea what to do for half an hour. I was a little bit distressed that morning; normally I can do well thinking on my feet. After the 7th grade class was the first-year bachillerato (equivalent of 10th grade). As I said, I had no textbooks to work with, but one of the 7th grade students suggested I ask don Carlos for the text. Unfortunately, don Carlos didn't have the 10th grade workbook, either. I was grateful to three of the 7th grade students who offered to stay with me and "support me" while I taught the 10th grade class. I think they figured out by then that I was a bit flustered due to lack of planning and my frustration with don Jesús. I was mentally thinking of various activities I could do with the 10th graders to have them practice English: we could do a dialogue, I could draw pictures on the board and they would say the words in English, they could play pictionary with each other, we could play a sentence-forming game, etc. In fact, I didn't have to pull out any of those games that, unfortunately, occurred to me AFTER I let the 7th graders go, because one of the 10th grade students had a copy of the workbook with her. I asked the students what the last activity they did was, and so we then worked on the next activity. As luck would have it, the activity was the same one that I had done with Friday's 10th grade class: We read a paragraph about transportation, and then we answered 8 questions together. I wrote each question on the board, read it aloud, had the students read it aloud, and then we worked on figuring out what each question was asking, and then the students worked together to answer it as a whole group. It went pretty well! We finished this activity with half an hour left of class, so I made up a game on the spot. I crumpled up a piece of paper into a ball and did my best to explain in Spanish that we were going to play catch. The person who catches the "ball" has to say one word in English (any word at all), and then throw the ball to another person, and so on. I said that I would let everyone leave only after every single student in the class had said at least three words in English. The game went pretty well! The students were very cooperative and everyone said three words. I repeated every word students said, partly so that their classmates could hear the word louder, and partly just to clarify that I understood what they'd said. After that, I told the students good-bye and went to lunch! I felt like that day went pretty well, despite my initial discomfort.

Every day since Tuesday, I've shown up to class with some sort of back-up plan in case don Jesús doesn't show up again. Today, Monday, that line of thinking totally paid off. Don Jesús once again never showed up to class, although today he didn't even show up to sign the ledger and get paid for his day off. The first class of the day was 11th grade, and the second class was 8th grade section C. As the 11th graders filed into class after the Monday announcements and pledge of allegiance in the courtyard, they asked me if I was going to be teaching today, and I said yes. They asked where don Jesús was and I said I didn't know. They asked if we could sing a song and I said I would be happy to teach them a song in English; however, at that moment, don Carlos came to the classroom door and so I went to talk with him. He told me that don Jesús had an emergency that morning and wouldn't be in to the school today, and so he gave me the textbooks for 11th and 8th grade and told me which activities don Jesús wanted completed today. I thanked him, went back to the class, and told them that don Jesús wouldn't be in due to an emergency. Everyone started cheering and applauding! Appalled, I asked "He had an emergency! Why are you celebrating!?" The students said "Well, not because of his emergency, but because you get to be our teacher today!" I think that they were expecting to get off easy, but they'd soon realize this wouldn't be the case! I told them that don Jesús had an activity planned and that we were going to do it, but if we finished early, we could sing a song.
The previous week I had taught the students how to use passive voice vs. active voice. Today, the students were going to do an activity from the workbook that was to read sentences written in active voice and re-write them in the passive voice. I wrote the first three sentences on the board and read them to the class. Then, the students read the sentences aloud. I asked them what the first sentence meant, but no one knew. So, I broke it down. I pointed to the first word. "What does this mean?" I asked (keep in mind, almost all my dialogue with the students is in Spanish. My U.S. accent is hard for them to understand, so whenever I'm giving directions or asking questions, I'll use Spanish to be clear. I'll use English when I'm reading, slowly, or when I'm giving feedback, or when we're doing a dialogue). I pointed to the first word, and several students translated it into Spanish. "Good!" I said, and pointed to the second word. "And this?" Again, everyone got it. We broke down each sentence word by word until someone shouted out the whole meaning, and then we re-read the sentence in English. I tried to explain how to use passive voice in Spanish, but I lost the students by using the word "indirect object." I backtracked, saying that the term wasn't that important, and tried again saying "this is the noun that receives the action." That time, they understood. I don't remember exactly what the sentence was, but let's say it was "Scientists study the moon." I pointed at the word "scientists," and said "this is a noun, the subject." Then, I pointed at "study." "This is the verb. And this," I said, pointing at "the moon," "This is the noun receiving the action. The moon is the thing being studied. This is going to be the subject of our sentence in passive voice." Underneath the original sentence, I wrote "The moon______by scientists." Then, I wrote the words "is, are, was, were" on the board on the right-hand side of the sentences.
"Which word is the verb?" I asked. Some students said "study!" "That's right! Study! Now, is this verb in past or present tense?" There was a murmuring but I heard some students say "present," so I said, "Present! That's right! So which of these words," pointing at "is, are, was, were," " will we use in passive voice?" There was a clamoring of voices, and I heard a lot of people say "are". "No, not are." I pointed at the moon. "How many moons are there?" "One!" "So is that singular or plural?" "Singular!" "So should we use is or are?" "IS!" "That's right!" I wrote "is" on the line.
"Now, we need to make 'study' into the past participle. What is the past tense of 'study'?" Amid a smattering of "I don't knows," I heard some kids say "studied", so I wrote "studied" on the right side of the blank. I pointed at our now-complete sentence. "The moon is studied by scientists!" Very good! I had the students repeat the sentence after me. We did another three sentences together, but after modeling the first sentence, I had the students do most of the work with the next three. I asked guiding questions, like "Which word is the subject? Which is the verb? Which is the receiver of the action? Which word do I begin the sentence with? How do I conjugate this verb? Is it singular or plural?" etc. Basically, the students just told me what to write on the board. The fourth sentence was much more complex than our first simple sentence, because it contained a prepositional phrase. I explained that we will only change the order of the subject, verb, and indirect object, and that the prepositional phrase will go at the end of the sentence, unchanged. It was a very basic description of how to construct a sentence in passive voice, but the students understood because they all completed the rest of the activity with little trouble! I was so proud of them. I told them several times how intelligent they were and how impressed I was with their English.

The 8th grade class went similarly: we did activities together on the board while I asked the students guiding questions. The students spoke, wrote, and listened to English. I asked them what certain words meant to help them figure out what entire sentences meant. After reading and understanding several sentences this way, I said "Wow! See, you guys DO know English pretty well!" One of the boys spoke up and said, in Spanish, that most of the time they feel really stupid because they can't understand English. All the kids seemed pretty proud and excited to decipher sentences word by word and realize that, yes, they CAN understand English. I was happy to hear that they felt better about their abilities today. :)