School...an education in culture

Most schools are the same no matter where I am in the world. The major difference is the kids who appear at the door step each and every morning. There's one student, who isn't even I my class who greets me every morning, always the first one there. His name is Diaz, and 10 year old who some day will be president. He's always saying, "In English, in English" to the other students in the elementary level. Anyway, here greets me every morning with "Hello teacher" to which I reply, "Hello, how are you?" He replies, "I am fine. How are you.". No matter what my reply, he always says, "Fine." He's got that down pat...



I have no clue whether my beginner students understand a thing I 'm saying. We have very interesting conversations..."turn to paragraph 1. Paragraph 1? Yes, paragraph 1. Paragraph 1. Yes." And so it goes.

My intermediate group sometimes laughs, especially when I resell it and say it is funny. "what is a running nose? Idioms like "buzz cut", "snail's pace", and so on.

With the intermediate group, my highest level, they get almost all the vocabulary. However, in one story, a girl called her sailboat, "Guppy," and they had no idea what it meant, especially in relationship to the story. We talked about symbolism...then everything clicked for them. "We were all on the same page...". There was some confusion about the word " St. Maarten." Most do the students were pronouncing "street" and not "saint.". That was confusing both to me and to them.

We have use of a small copy machine. You run one side, take the copies out, put them back in to make the other side...and so it goes. It takes about one hour of copying to make three sets of stories, 40 copies total. Then I have to collate and staple if there is time. The copier usually overheats, runs out of toner or paper, which means we have to go to the store for more. We usually have two packages of paper at any one time. With temperatures in the high nineties outside, it's usually much hotter inside. We have been drinking about 4 liters of water during our classes.



Then, there's the bathrooms. I haven't even mentioned them yet. There are two toilets/stalls on our floor. They are squatty potties, basically a hole in the floor. Since we are on the 3rd floor, we have trouble with the water pressure. Therefore, we have to pour drinking water into the hole for flushing. And we need to provide our own TP. Just think how much schools could save. And kids would't be so anxious to go to the bathroom...since I carry the backpack in our group of teachers, I also am "designated toilet paper guy."

The bottom photo shows kids watching and discussing the movie "Invictus, " a film we used for an afternoon activity.

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