Spanglish Speakers

Last Saturday Ryan, Katie, and I kicked off our first official Spanglish Speakers meeting. Spanglish Speakers is a mentorship program we started that links some of the fifth graders from Katie’s and my schools with some sophomores and juniors from Ryan’s high school. Ryan’s school, Liceo de Hombres, is the best public high school in Los Angeles, so his students will serve as great role models for Katie’s and my fifth graders, some of whom come from rough backgrounds and all of whom could use a bit more positive attention in their lives.

Our first meeting was a huge success. To start the morning we gave every student a puzzle piece and had them find their groups – or teams – by finding the other pieces of their puzzle. In total we had four teams, each with two high schoolers and two fifth graders. The teams then chose some pretty fantastic names (Team Awesome, The Brave Race, The Crazy Team, and The Princesses for our group of all girls), introduced themselves in English, and made some amazing team posters. After recess and snacktime (two things we didn’t initially plan for but realized quite quickly would be desperately needed), we regrouped and painted our own Spanglish Speakers t-shirts. It was a great Saturday morning filled with both Spanish and English (hence the “Spanglish”) and lots of getting to know each other.

Spanglish Speakers will not only be a beneficial experience for the fifth graders, who get to spend some time with intelligent and positive role models, but also for the high schoolers, who get to serve as leaders and teachers. Community service is still not a very common concept in Chile, so the fact that these high schoolers are dedicating two Saturday mornings a month to come and speak English with some fifth graders is pretty darn impressive. Katie, Ryan, and I worked really hard in the weeks leading up to last Saturday, and we all agreed that it couldn’t have gone any better! We have some pretty exciting ideas for future meetings up our sleeves, too, so stay tuned!

Antuco

Yesterday Katie, Ryan and I went to Antuco, a nearby town of a little over 3,000 people. Antuco sits at the base of a huge volcano with the same name and is a gorgeous town surrounded by snow-capped mountains. We were invited by Raul, one of the town’s two English teachers, to come and meet his students and get them excited about speaking a foreign language. It was a great day filled with lots of English, good food, and beautiful scenery. Raul also took us on a quick trip up into the Andes, about a half hour from Antuco, and it sure was pretty up there. Here are some pictures from the day!

The adorable Pre-K class. They sang us some fantastic songs in English and were beyond precious.

The high school students after a question and answer session. They all wanted pictures with us and gave us a taste of what it feels like to be a celebrity.

A visit to the school for the kids who live on the extremely rural outskirts of Antuco (there are just over 30 kids in the whole school). They got the three of us to sing our national anthem for them, and in return they sang the Chilean national anthem. They sounded better!

Sometimes I forget how close to the Andes I live. Chile is so beautiful!

Small Victories

This past Friday I was short an English co-teacher. Due to unforeseen circumstances my school is on English teacher number three and in search of number four while number two, the permanent English teacher, heals an injury. That leaves me, the volunteer gringa, to teach all these kids on my own. It’s not an ideal situation, but as I’ve learned over and over here in Chile, you just have to roll with the punches and remember that it’s all for the kids. Normally on Fridays the English teacher and I co-teach a 45 minute 8^th grade class, but because of the school’s little dilemma I offered to take them by myself.

Let me tell you a little bit about this 8^th grade class. They are the class that the other teachers complain about at every coffee break. A class of 44 adolescent boys and girls crammed into a room much too small for them, they are at first glance a teacher’s nightmare. There are six or seven boys who are consistently disruptive, and there are just as many girls who have no problem chatting in the back of the room and rolling their eyes at their teachers. I struggled my first few months with this group, but after setting my boundaries and leveling with them we were able to achieve a mutual respect that, believe or not, makes this one of my favorite classes to work with. There are inevitably still some issues that arise during our classes together, but this energetic bunch never fails to make class extremely entertaining.

Now let me tell you a bit about the teachers at my school. I should start by saying that some of the teachers are great and come up with amazingly fun activities for these kids. A lot of the teachers, though, spend their class time screaming at the students and writing things on the board, and that’s that. To an extent I can’t blame them – I think a lot are just burned out after years of working with so many kids at one time. But some of the stories that I’ve been told are just inexcusable. For instance, I was just recently told that a teacher was caught sending a student to the bank during class time. Her punishment was a slap on the wrist and a warning not to do it again. Another teacher was caught out running errands during school hours, leaving her classroom teacher-less. Kids pick up on adult attitudes, so it’s really no big surprise to see the students rebel against teachers who act so carelessly. It’s so frustrating to witness, though, especially with the knowledge that a large percentage of our students don’t have any caring adults at home, either.

So back to Friday. I headed over to this eighth grade class to take on all 44 of them by myself (remember, I usually only work with one half at a time). I was greeted at the door of the classroom by one of the math teachers who had just finished her period with them. She took one look at me and said something along the lines of, “You’re going in there by yourself? You can’t go in alone, they’re such a terrible class and they’re extremely bad today.” I kid you not, as she was saying this there was paper flying through the air, a wrestling match of some sort going on, and kids out of their seats and drawing on the board. I told her that we really didn’t have any other option but that I thought I’d be ok on my own. That didn’t seem to please her, though, as she continued to emphasize their unruliness. “They won’t listen to you,” she said. At that point Seba, one of the “unruly” 8^th grade boys who the teachers often get frustrated with, was standing within earshot of us. “No, tía, we listen to Miss Kelly,” he said. With her feathers all ruffled she shot back at Seba, “Good! You should!,” tossed the gradebook at me and stormed off. While I did feel sorry for the teacher, the satisfaction of hearing Seba say that was unforgettable. And to top it off, I did walk into that classroom, settle down the “unruly” students and get all 44 involved and learning for the next 45 minutes. I don’t mean to brag by any means, but wins like this one don’t come along very often, and this was a victory worth sharing!

Winter Vacation & The Importance of English

I just returned from 14 packed days of travel, and every moment was fantastic. My friend Hal and I started the trip off in the driest desert in the world, the Atacama Desert, in northern Chile. There we visited some huge dunes, saw a breathtaking sunset over La Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley), woke up before sunrise to view geysers more than 4000 meters above sea level, and took a dip in a natural thermal bath. From San Pedro we then took a three day tour into Bolivia, driving through spectacular scenery in the Andes mountain range, freezing our butts off in some rustic refugios at night, and making great new friends. The final stop of that trip was Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world. We stepped out of our jeep onto a sea of salt – white in every direction for as far as the eye could sea. It was really quite a sight, and my friends and I had a good time using the white backdrop to take some cool photos.

After Uyuni Hal and I headed up to La Paz, Bolivia with two Brazilian friends. A capital city located in the heart of the Andes, La Paz was bustling with cars, people, and tourists. Bolivia’s poverty was extremely apparent in this city, unfortunately, as there were so many people living on the streets and begging for money. The number of children on the streets, working and begging, broke my heart. I had never been in a place with so many hungry, dirty children, and it took all my strength just to keep on walking by the kids and not scooping them up and taking them home with me.

La Paz itself is a beautiful city, though, full of life and colors and wonderful markets. While in the capital we did get to catch a glimpse of Bolivia’s President, Evo Morales, along with his visiting friend and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The two walked out of the Presidential Palace to roars of cheers and support from the crowd that had gathered outside, and it was definitely a sight to see.

We also took time to visit nearby Lake Titicaca and the much revered Incan island Isla del Sol. The lake itself is quite beautiful with the Andes off in the not too far distance, and on Isla del Sol we explored an old Incan temple and learned a bit about its history. Near La Paz we also checked out Tiwanaku, the site of temple ruins that were constructed well before the Inca civilization. After La Paz we headed back to Chile and spent the last couple days in the warm weather town of Arica. There we explored some old caves, relaxed on the beach, and tried to avoid the fact that our vacation was coming to an end.

I came upon a couple realizations during this trip. I didn’t really realize how developed a country Chile is until I went to neighboring Bolivia and was faced firsthand with stark contrasts. My trip to the other side of the border made me not only thankful for all that I have been blessed with in my life, but also thankful for all that I have here in Chile. The experiences on this trip also reinforced for me the fact that English is an extremely important language. Regardless of where we were, as Hal and I traveled around and met people from all over the world, the common language was always English. I met people from Germany, France, Denmark, and Brazil who didn’t know much Spanish but spoke great English, and that’s the language they used to get by as they traveled. During one tour I even did a bit of pro bono work as I translated what our guide said from Spanish into English for two girls from South Korea. Tourism is such an important part of the economies down here, and knowledge of the English language is a key component of successful tourism. I sometimes find myself wondering what kind of good I’m really doing down here by teaching English when there are so many health, poverty, and general education issues that need plenty of help. English knowledge has the power to move people up in the world, though, and provides for much greater opportunity. It was nice to see people seizing those opportunities firsthand on my vacation, and now… back to work! Four more months of teaching left, and plenty more stories to come!

A Great Day

Some days at school are harder than others. Some days a lesson plan that I thought would be fantastic turns out to be a disaster. Some days the kids are bouncing off the walls, getting into fights, and some days I just don’t have the patience for it. Some days I can’t handle the fact that my co-teacher’s idea of “teaching” is writing things on the board and sitting down at her desk. Some days I just don’t have the energy. I’m sure all teachers in every corner of the world experience these days, but boy is it hard to remind myself of that some days.

But then there are days like today. I had one of those “some days” yesterday and pretty much had no interest in coming to school today. However, as it usually works out, today ended up being a great day. After my first class I was in my room cleaning up when a bunch of students came in. They always come in during recreo, or recess, because my classroom is off of the dining room, where they’re all getting their free warm milk and sandwiches. I have an electric heater in my room and let whoever wants to come in and eat in front of the heater since the dining room is SO cold (I’ll have a whole separate post on how cold my one hundred year old school is at some point…). Anyway, once recess ended the kids all said their goodbyes and ran off to class, and I turned and looked at the board where they had written “Miss Kelly cools” (cool was one of our slang words of the day). Not exactly perfect English, but it was awesome to see and definitely slapped a smile on my face.

Later today, I had one period with a seventh grade class that I teach on Fridays. I have to miss their class this week, though, because I need to head to Santiago tonight to get my visa squared away. When I told my students I’d be missing tomorrow’s class, you would have thought I said I’m never returning… which is what some of them thought, I guess. They ran up to me with their pain-stricken faces to make me promise that I’d come back. That slapped an even bigger smile on my face.

Then today at lunch my host mom told me a story that made my day. My host mom works for the city of Los Angeles, and she is responsible for handing out vouchers to single mothers – part of a government welfare system. A poor, single mother can come in every month and pick up $5.500 pesos (about 10 bucks) per child. A lot of the students at my school come from poor families and neighborhoods that I’ve been told I should NEVER go to alone because they’re so dangerous. Well a woman came in to pick up her vouchers from my host mom today, and my mom asked her where her kids go to school. After hearing that they go to my school, my host mom asked her if they take English. “Ahhh, Tía Kelly! Yes I’ve heard alllll about Tía Kelly and her fun classes.” The mom went on to say some really nice things that her kids said about me, but I won’t bore you with the details J

The point of writing all this is that I could care less about all the struggles I had with my classes yesterday because today reminded me that I am having a positive effect on these kids. Sure, there will be days that don’t go well, but why dwell on the negative when there’s so much to be happy about? The fact that my kids are writing in English and going home and telling their parents about me is a great reminder of why I’m here and the impact I can have. A BIG thanks again to everyone who made this experience a possibility! Here’s to many more great days!