My first month I had an abundance of time, in an endeavor to use up some of my extra time I offered to take on an extra day at the Liceo, somehow my one offer led to others and I now work at the liceo on Monday and Wednesdays until 4, Thursdays till 5, as well as have a drawing class on Mondays till 6, and help with the government sponsored Public Speaking contest on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I now look back fondly on days when I would sit on my bench in the Plaza listen to the ipod and watch Elqui life.
The drawing class is not quite what I expected. There is one girl who is 10 and she is the oldest! I feel that when the people of Monte Grande hear there is another class at the cultura, all the young mothers use it as a free babysitting service so they can have an hour to themselves. I am not unsympathetic, however it means I have two children of pre-kinder age who cannot even hold a pencil yet alone color inside of a shape. Then three children of kinder age who actually are pretty adept and two eight/nine year olds one of whom is intensely irritating and I have had to threaten to kick her out more than once. Tota says I should put my foot down and say they have to be above a certain age, and if I had thought of it before I would certainly have done so, but two classes in it seems a bit mean. Therefore I spend my evenings racking my brain for more coloring projects that A. I can create without any material except paper, and B. don’t bore me to death.
The Liceo is hilarious and very irregular. The liceo teachers take off whenever they can and Chile has more days of the workers, strikes and unofficial local holidays than there are in a year. The other primary schools don’t take these days off. Therefore on numerous occasions I have run for the bus at 1.30 arrived in Paihuano at five past 2 to discover there are no classes and have to wait half an hour for a bus back to Pisco. Or there have been times when I have missed the class as for no apparent reason there has been no bus and I have sat in the plaza for over an hour. The next day there were three within ten minutes.
When I do get to the Liceo it is very amusing. The students are completely unmotivated, but very funny. I, as the youngest gringa, receive hilarious notes in ungrammatical English: “could you be my reason of life?” is my favorite so far. Last week in Primero Medio (freshmen) I received twenty or so notes which I then gave to Kether, the teacher, causing consternation among the students that he would write them up in the book.
The book is the only system of control. After three bad notations in the book, which also contains all the information about the students, grades and lesson plans and attendance, the students’ parents are called in to meet with the teacher. Therefore if you threaten to write in the book they will behave, for about a minute until they forget. However, most of the second graders have two or three pages worth of two line comments and since the parents don’t care, the one system of punishment is completely ineffectual.
One of the second grader’s parents came to the school the other day as there little brat, Nicolas, had told his parents that Carlos had tried to choke him. Despite them having been called in about once a week to discuss Nicolas’s appalling behavior, they believed him, rather than the truth which was Carlos had to half pull him off a huge cupboard which he had climbed on top of in order to jump out of the window. This jump would certainly have resulted in broken bones. Anyway, because of these silly parents, we now cannot touch Nicolas even when he is running around the classroom with a stick trying to brain a fellow student.
Yesterday, the first of May was another day of the workers so no school and no second graders!
No comments:
Post a Comment