Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities

I like starting out my classes in the beginning of the year with a discussion of how the classroom is like any society. As citizens of the class, the students have responsibilities to comply with, and in turn recieve their rights. A citizen maintains certain rights (say, to walk the streets freely) because they comply with their responsibilities (respecting private property). When they break or do not comply with the responsibilities (say, robbing a bank), they lose their rights (can be arrested).
I understand that it may be a little simplified, but it works in relation to the classroom. Rights such as to ask questions or to participate in class may be lost in the case of not complying with important responsibilities as raising your hand or paying attention. I always add in a little section on rules too in order to stress some key non-negotiable issues (respect, etc).
In the third week on school (but the first full week since we started off with half days and meetings), I am starting to see how this same scheme can apply to my own role as a teacher. This year at Miguel Pro, I feel like I have more rights - I have the right to be listened to as an equal teacher (last year, it often seemed pointless to mention my ideas in a meeting)
, or the right to feel appreciated (which is new after last year) - that come with a coinciding rise in responsibilities.
In my tutoria, for instance, I have lots of different committees, routines, meetings, and events to organize now at the beginning of the year. Additionally, as Miguel Pro has more celebrations and events for its students (for instance, a reconciliation evening and an early-morning stations of the cross hike to follow), I have to juggle and help organize more outside-the-classroom activities.
Yesterday, I definitely felt a little overwhelmed by all the balls I had up in the air, but today have reached a better state of peace. I enjoy being busy and the feeling that comes with being accomplished and checking off each item on a to do list (whether it be a mental or written one). For that reason, I forsee this year as being more challenging, but in the end, more rewarding as well. I have started off very organized (I have even planned out the entire bimester´s development in a number of classes) and need to continue to stay ahead of the wave of responsibilities. I mean, as a good law-abiding, making-people-happy citizen, I really do love those rights.

Second Week - Grabbing Life by Los Cuernos

Last week, I was definitely frustrated by the lack of organization at Santa Cruz. I felt like
I just could not really do anything and the excitement I had to start the year was waning as the other English teacher and I did no planning, we had only five students (when the class sizes are 30 to 40) in some classes, the schedule was still up in the air, and just generally there was chaos and confusion.

Talking with my community mates helped a lot and starting late last week I have just decided that I need to be more active and just take the initiative. With this in mind, I made placement/diagnostic tests to help us figure out how to divide up our classes (in secondary - which is basically middle and high school combined - there is one other English teacher and we split each class in half and I take the advanced/more interested students and she takes the others.). I also decided I would take it upon myself to make sure we recognized International Women´s Day, which for those who don´t know was yesterday. I chose a nice little poem to read that I borrow from a community mate and the only movie I could find to show was ¨Frida.¨ It ended up being a real interesting choice as it is very racy and has a couple real sex scenes, but I think the constant thought that I might not skip those parts kept the kids more interested. Also, she is a good example of a strong Latin American woman and someone new for them to learn about.

To give everyone out there a little bit of a sense of how my job will work, here is what my schedule for a week is like. Mondays I always get there early - at 7:45 - for Lunes Civico, during which they sing the national anthem and have a general school assembly in which the Director, Padre Jorge, usually goes on about puntuality and other assorted issues. It is always a little funny to me that he is giving the lecture on puntuality to the kids who arrived on time, while the late ones have to stay outside the school until the assembly is over.

For each of the five years of secondary, I teach three pedagogical hours (forty five minute blocks). But since the English teacher - her name is Sandra - also teaches somewhere else in the morning (it is not unusual for teachers here to have two jobs or even to be working two jobs and still taking further career development classes - which is part of the reason why they tend to only spend the hours they need to teach at the school), these classes never begin until 11:15. In the mornings, I do some prep, chat up different teachers who are around and Padre Jorge (both of which I found is the easiest and best way to find out what is actually going on around the school), and hang out with the kids during their 15 minute recess.

I also am starting this week my primary classes, for which I will be teaching 2 pedagogical hours in a row with each of the 4th year classrooms. Last year, the classes I sat in on or helped teacher with these little uns was quite an experience and I am trying to think of how I am going to handle it this year. I think I am going to really emphasize movement (singing, dancing, etc.) and maybe alternative means of grading as opposed to simply tests. Last year, each time we tried to do a worksheet or a test, it was a real struggle to have them focus, not cheat, and generally the grades came out quite low.

Outside of this weekday/teaching stuff, I also am on of the co-leaders of the Youth Group for the parish that meets on Sundays and I am involved in coordinating and running the tutoring program for which students from the most wealthy (and probably best) school come on Saturday mornings to Vinani. They come from Cristo Rey, which is the school where Nate teaches and with whom I went on Mes de Mision.

The Last Hurrah

So, tomorrow classes finally start for me. It´s been almost four months and I have spent a fourth of it in a small town working with adolescent boys, a month of it traveling, a month living with host family, and just a few weeks sprinkled here and there actually living in Habitat and on a routine. I have to say, I am sort of looking forward to finally getting into the meat of the experience. Also, I have to say that I have been feeling odd about living like a tourist and enjoying the benefit of my host family and status as a Westerner who is living quite comfortably. I am sort of looking forward to the challenge of involving myself more in the lives of my students (who are poorer and have much fewer resources than even I do). And I want to do this not because I see myself necessarily as helping them a ton or being able to offer them something, but just because I want to try to accompany them and come as close as I can to feeling and knowing what life is truly like for these Peruvian children. Whether or not I will be able to overcome the obvious obstacles to this, we will see.


The only down side to it all is that pretty much nothing is planned and ready for tomorrow. I know I will be teaching 16 hours of classes with the secondary kids - but I have no idea of my schedule and haven´t planned out anything with the other english teacher. If we do it like we did last year, I will be teaching half of each class (the advanced or ¨better¨ half). I also will probably be teaching the fourth grade little ones. I really need to do some serious brainstorming for some opening activities, so if anyone has some good good ideas, please feel free to post them as comments to the blog!! I also am not too worried because I know I will not be jumping into teaching right away and I have a sense of the school and the kids since I did spend about two months with them when I first arrived.

This past week I spent in Lima - which is a suprisingly enjoyable 20 hour bus ride away. The buses - and we did ride and nicer and thus safer as well line - are pretty nice. They serve meals, the seats pretty much turn into beds, they play almost continuous movies (though quality varied from Spider Man 3 to Norbit), and they play bingo for a free return ride (which I won coming back from Lima and which will serve no purpose for me since you have to use it in a month). Some highlights of the city included the beach (which is like right off the edge of the city with this cliff, so it has some amazing views and little touristy spots), getting pooped on by and pigeon in one of the nice old churches and then being sketichly cleaned off by some random Peruvians (who may or may not have been trying to pick my pockets as well - and that isn´t just paranoia), eating some tasty tasty anticuchos on the street (anticuchos are the cows heart and it was a dollar thirty and so amazingly tasty - I can´t use that word enough), seeing some random traveling band from France perform in the middle of one of the nicer parks, and just generally enjoying city life. It made me realize how much I miss just a real real city and I was soaking up all the observing of the different markets, people, and general hustle and bustle of the city. The bus system is especially interesting as it is all privitized and so the result is a million buses going like crazy men trying to pick up fares and without any real rhyme or reason.



As promised, here finally are some photos with the accompanying, hopefully helpful-enlightening captions:









This was one of the ways we got to and from work most days on Mes de Mision. This was the safer way....































Mes de Mision (with the laguna that we checked out and provides much of the electricity to the region in the background)

This is a picture of some of the dances going through the street in Puno during the fiestas. They were all this wildly dressed.















Street meat - Lima-style. Look how happy we are!