School's Back!

After three weeks, the teacher strike has finally ended!  I realize I should probably explain the strike a bit more...  The teachers are supposed to receive a bonus at the end of every school year, as is written in the law.  The past couple years, however, that bonus has not made it into the teachers’ hands.  When this was brought to the government’s attention, they insisted that they had given the money to the municipalities, who claimed otherwise, which intially led to the strike.  The teachers wanted their money and felt some action was needed in order to get the responsible parties to actually make some moves.  Well, the government was able to quickly prove that the municipalities had in fact received the bonus money; the problem, however, was that the municipalities had spent this dinero on other things, and now there was no money left to hand out to the teachers.  It was finally sorted out, though, and the teachers will be receiving all of the money owed to them over a series of payments to come this year.

The problem now is how to recuperate the 13 days of missed classes.  Each community will decide when it wants to schedule the make-up classes, and most are saying that they plan on shortening the two week winter break.  Needless to say, we volunteers are not too thrilled at this idea.  Again, all we can do is wait and see!

Returning to class today was great, though.  It was so fun to see all of the students, receive hundreds of kisses on the cheek, and hear their wonderfully accented English fill the halls (“Hello Miss Kelly!”  “Awesome!”  “What’s up?”).  I also returned to school with some challenges.  The week before the strike began I was told that I would no longer be able to use my classroom on Mondays because the school needed it for reforzamientos, or special classes targeted at the struggling students.  Instead, I would have to use the library to teach my classes.  My initial reaction was one of huge frustration, since having an “English-only” environment is a really important element in teaching the language.  There isn’t a word of Spanish written anywhere in my room, and the ultimate goal is to not let a word of Spanish leave anyone’s mouth, either.  Teaching the students in a different environment, and without my English posters to refer to, is difficult.  In general, taking students out of their normal environment and teaching them in a new and different location is difficult.  I explained all of this to the director of the school, asking if there was any way the reforzamiento could be taught in the library instead.  “Estamos en Chile,” he said.  “We’re in Chile.”  He went on to explain that we’re in one of the poorer schools, which is true, and that we all have to make do with the limited resources and space that we have.  While I understood that explanation, I kept thinking, This isn’t fair!  Why am I the only teacher getting kicked out of my room?  How the heck am I going to play my fun games in the library?  The kids can’t run around in there!  There is no whiteboard in the library, there is a constant distraction of people walking in and out, everything posted on the walls is in Spanish… the list goes on.

Today, though, I made do with my new space and put everything into a bit of perspective for myself: the rest of the teachers at my school don’t ever have their own rooms – the students remain in their course’s classroom, and the teachers come to them.  I am in fact one of only two teachers to have a space I can call my own.  Plus, the rest of the teachers teach 45-50 students in every class, and I never have a class over 25.  Most importantly, though, the students don’t care where they have their class!  The material is what’s important, and hopefully I am clever enough to present the lesson in a fun (albeit different from what I may have had in mind) way using the space that I have.  Today's lesson in the library, while not the "perfect" one I had originally thought of, went just fine.  This little roadbump reminded me to be thankful for what I do have and to use my talents to make the most out of it.  As I was cleaning up my “classroom” in the library today during recess, I was surrounded by students wanting to talk with me, practice their English, hear what I did during the strike, and just hang out.  Times like those are honestly my favorite part of being a teacher, and I don’t even need a classroom at all to have those moments.  Estamos en Chile!