Teaching at Carachipampa

Well, after teaching for 5 months, I finally thought about writing a blog.  And then I procrastinated on doing so for 2 more months, but I guess better late than never? 

To be honest, teaching is hard.  Way harder than I thought it would be.  Sometimes I just come home and contemplate how an entire class of 12-year-olds can be so wholly incapable of writing a single sentence.  Other times, I wonder what the legal ramifications of duct-taping a student to his chair would be.  I remember that I’ve made literally hundreds of vocabulary worksheets for students that—every. single. week.—seem shocked that they have to learn words.

But then there are other days.  Days when my students draw me cartoons and fight over who gets to sit with me at lunch.  Days when I see the light bulb finally go off in a 7th grader’s head on what a direct object is.  Days when my homeroom christens themselves the Boxtrolls and runs around collecting recycling from the entire school.  Days when we reenact scenes from Shakespeare and the boys fight over who gets to play the corpses.

And I realize that the good days outweigh the bad.

A very old picture of the 8th graders in the Reading Corner-That's-Not-A-Corner

This school year was made especially interesting by the fun fact that it was never supposed to happen.  At training last summer, Carachipampa’s teachers were called to a meeting where we were informed that the school was possibly not going to open again this year, or ever.  Throughout the year, there have been meetings based entirely on the idea that we shouldn’t leave our stuff in our classrooms because we could be shut down by the Bolivian Department of Education at a moment’s notice.  I made a spreadsheet of job opportunities at various other schools in the city and updated my resume just in case.  Last week, though, we finally received the license and Carachipampa is a legitimate school!  This is the first week in 7 months that I know that my job will still exist a week from now, which is a huge relief.

9th grade is a time for bromance.

A DAY IN THE LIFE:
7:30:  Get to school and have morning meeting.  To be honest, this is the worst.  We sit around for half an hour and repeat the same announcements as the day before and the day before that.
8:00:  Frantically print off last-minute worksheets or whatnot.
8:15:  Homeroom with the 9th graders.  We are in charge of recycling, so the back corner of my classroom is the home of an enormous, messy box of unsorted paper at all times.  I tell myself that this is part of my sanctification because otherwise it would drive me insane.
8:25:  First period:  Today this was 8th grade.  They came in, complained about doing the DOL, then they did the DOL, then we went over the new vocabulary for the week.  They complained about the Works Cited that they have to turn in tomorrow as Step 2 of their research papers.  We discussed MLA format for the 74th time this year.  Then we reviewed the last two chapters they read of Treasure Island, and Pau got up to wander around the classroom.  I threatened to make Pau sing a song to the class, and he returned to his seat.
9:15:  Second period:  Free block!  I spent it plotting how to teach 7th graders about commas and how to tone down the overtly sexual remarks that Mercutio makes in Romeo and Juliet:  Act 2.
10:20:  Third period:  10th grade.  We’re in the middle of a short story unit dealing with irony and ambiguity, and today we went over “Notes from a Bottle,” a story in which the world floods.  My students showed a flagrant disregard for the tragedy inherent in the story by proclaiming that such a flood would give Bolivia back its sea (a very big deal; we as a nation are very upset with Chile for stealing the sea from us 134 years ago), and there was much rejoicing.  There was more vocabulary, and one of my students asked if he could “abscond” from the classroom because he needed a “respite” from learning.  While I was proud of his vocabulary word usage, I denied his request.
11:10:  Fourth period:  Free block again!  I made vocabulary worksheets.
12:00:  Fifth period:  7th grade.  We began with new assigned seats, carefully engineered to put each of my problem students in a bubble of solitude and order.  It will not work, but one can hope.  We then moved to vocabulary worksheets, which were completed quickly* and quietly* in a totally not-chaotic* way, after which we discussed how to write a sentence like a non-toddler.  Highlight of the conversation:  “Miss, when are we ever going to use this in real life?”
*These words are all lies.
12:45:  Lunchtime.  I eat with the kids most days because it’s a fun way to connect with them.  It also cuts down on food fights and children pretending to snort Fun Dip like cocaine.
1:25:  Seventh period:  9th grade.  We are still working on Romeo and Juliet, which is a terrible play about terrible people for those who are lucky enough to have avoided it.  We discussed Romeo’s interaction with Tybalt, and my students asked why it wasn’t called “Romeo and Tybalt” since Romeo claims to “love thee better than thou canst devise.”  Teenagers.  After a brief flash of pride that they were at least using quotes from the play to back up their loony ideas, we got back on track with the “ghetto theater,” where we very loosely interpret how certain action-packed scenes went.
2:10:  Eighth period:  11th grade.  We’re in the middle of The Scarlet Letter, and this class is actually awesome at discussions.  They have very different opinions on Dimmesdale and Chillingworth, and they are able to discuss those differences in a mature fashion.  They’re wonderful.

That time Pau got chased by a goat (he's very proud).

My 7th graders embodied in a single image.

I brought a tiny friend from the hogar to school one day.  My students got fairly attached.