Classes advance

The weather is moving toward autumn here: Sunday morning was damply chilly and completely cloudy, so that the nearby mountains and the ocean were both invisible from the roof. (I love hanging my laundry out on the roof because whenever I go up there, the view of all the brick houses and dusty roads up and down the hill makes me stop and ponder the fact that I'm in Peru, on a roof, hanging my hand-washed laundry out to dry.) From what I've heard, the entire winter in Lima is cloudy, chilly, and damp... something to look foreward too. On the plus side, I really have gotten used to cool or lukewarm showers--it actually feels weird to me now to take a steamy hot shower or to leave the water running the entire time. I tried it recently when we went away for the weekend and stayed in a hostel, and it just wasn't as great as I remembered. It helps that I'm getting up early to go jogging almost every other morning, so I'm all warmed up by the time I shower. Other things I am surprisingly used to are lighting the gas stove and oven with a match, flushing the toilet with buckets of water left over from doing laundry, and washing all the dishes by hand. I only very rarely miss driving; I miss my washer and dryer constantly. It's even stranger to be without things like a microwave, dishwasher, etc. now that we have recently gotten high-speed Internet in the house. (YAY!!)

We've now had almost two full months of classes at Fe y Alegría, and our schedules are finally settling down into what we hope will be a comfortable pattern for the year. A brief description of what I do on a weekly basis:

I am working with small groups of 9th and 10th grade students during their English class, taking them to the library to work on conversation and grammar a bit more extensively than they would do in the classroom. It is nice to work with only six students at a time, but Catherine and I have both felt frustrated lately because there is little continuity in teaching this way: the groups keep changing, which on one hand gives everybody a chance to work with us, but on the other hand means that you can never be sure what you have taught to whom, or establish any standards for your little "class" such as speaking English whenever possible. Apart from English groups, I am also helping two of the 11th grade Communication classes (what we would call an English class) with discussion of literature. Every Friday, half of each class goes with me to discuss the book they're reading in the auditorium, while the other group stays with the teacher to discuss their book. I've been giving reading quizzes and working with them on pulling quotes out of the text to answer the questions I ask. It's extremely difficult to make them do the reading they're supposed to do outside of class. The students are all incredibly warm, energetic, and eager to learn, but they haven't been taught to do much of anything on their own; from what I've seen, the classes seem to emphasize memorization over critical thinking. The first few reading quizzes have been abysmal, and on their test, which covered both my book and other things they're doing with their teacher, some of them simply don't answer whole sections. It's a little scary. Last Friday I think I finally scared some of them by handing back the reading quizzes, but I honestly don't know what I'm going to do if they don't respond to my attempts to get them to read. I don't want to be the bad guy yelling at them all year, but there's so little class time that I barely have time to do anything else.

For the first few months I was here, there was almost no music in my life, which I felt as a loss--but recently I have become very musically occupied once again! Last Friday was my first rehearsal with a chorus of nineteen fourth-graders, and it went very well. I call them my Pollitos, or Little Chickens, because their "audition" was to sing a children's song about little chickens in two different keys, and the ones who could more or less stay on pitch got to be in the choir. (There were surprisingly few who could.) They were very attentive for most of the rehearsal and completely unembarassed to use their voices in silly ways for warm-ups. We worked on singing the Spanish version of Frére Jaque, and I actually noticed an improvement in their intonation by the end of the rehearsal! I was so happy! I'm also working with a chorus of 9th through 11th graders, who are more hesitant about using their voices but able to sing more complicated things; so far we've managed to get four parts going on a simple song, badly tuned, but four parts nonetheless. The students love it. Several of the guys play guitar very well and accompany us. And finally, I've become a regular member of the church choir, which is fun because I get to meet adults from the parish.

In trying to find the best work for myself here, I've learned more about what my own vaguely-defined expectations were for this year and what I'd hoped to accomplish. I've discovered that being "The Teacher" is not a role I easily identify with--I don't have the training, the wardrobe, or the urge to impose my will on large groups of unruly young people, which seem necessary for the job. The way I see it, if you don't want to learn, it's your loss, so why should I drive myself crazy trying to force you? (Especially when I'm not trained to do so and don't really know what I'm doing?) I am well aware that this attitude makes me better suited for a college environment than a grade school one, and also that I have voluntarily come to Peru in order to help grade school students, so to some extent (as Catherine has pointed out) I did "sign up" to be The Teacher for a year. But if I stop to think about it, I realize that I never pictured myself in front of a class; my idea of "helping the school" was basically that of tutoring students one on one (including the adults whose classes have moved!) . Today, for example, I had a student come by for help with an English project, and I loved being able to work with just her, going through everything until she understood it. It's funny how you can get so caught up in what you think you're expected to be doing, and trying to make it work, that you forget that you might be better off doing what you're more comfortable with. For example, another thing I'd pictured myself doing was helping in the parish, visiting sick people or something like that, which I hadn't even thought to ask about until recently because I've been so focused on making things work at the school.

However, all that said, I definitely do enjoy working with my choirs, and even with the Communication class I am willing to play Teacher for the sake of having them read and talk about books, because music and literature are very important to me, and I'm confident in my ability to teach the students something in those areas. The English groups have drawn me into the school by introducing me to practically all the 8th through 11th grade students, but they are actually where I feel the least comfortable at this point, because I don't have the training that Catherine does in teaching languages. My next step is to reach out a little more to the parish and see if anything appealing needs doing there.