Teach it, sister.

As I cannot boast any concrete teaching experience, I am lucky to work as a substitute teacher, especially at an international school in Honduras. Since arriving here, I have taught Kindergarten, sixth grade, seventh-grade English, and high school Bible classes (no giggles, please). Every time I subbed for a class, the teacher expressed immense gratitude, not because I am so talented, but mostly because subbing usually involves finding 5-7 different teachers to take various hours of each day. This requires exhaustive planning and transforms into a big hassle. Finding one person who can sub an entire week, or even a whole day, is dynamite.


As an amateur teacher, I am learning on the job. However, at International School Tegucigalpa, it's pretty normal for teachers to lack experience in the classroom upon arrival.  Every year, IST recruits at specific private, Christian colleges in North America including Taylor University in Indiana, Calvin College in Michigan, and Judson University in Illinois among other colleges in California and Canada. Thus, many of the North American teachers are newly-graduated from university, green in life and unversed in teaching. IST also hosts numerous student teachers for a few months at a time. Not every new recruit to IST has a teaching degree, either. The ratio is maybe half-in-half, the non-certified teachers comprising the teachers who specialize in certain subjects (chemistry, biology, algebra, etc) and do not teach elementary skills such as writing and reading.


Like schools in the States, bilingual schools in Honduras run from September to June. A public Honduran school will begin the school year in February and end in November. Besides IST, there are a number of bilingual schools in Tegucigalpa including Mayan School, American School of Tegucigalpa, England School, Discovery School, Hamilton School, and of course, Happy Land School, among others.  Native Hondurans inform me that IST is among the best, if not the most prestigious, of the bilingual schools.  


At International School Tegucigalpa, each teacher signs a contract; the school requires North Americans to stay for at least two years.The school provides furnished housing, cable, internet, and bus transportation to and from school. Normally, only third-year teachers can request one of the school's personal vehicles. However, this year the school bestowed a Ford Escape upon the ladies of Casa Amarilla (yellow house) despite their second-year status. We pay for gas while the school pays for all repairs (at least those not accrued while crashing into other vehicles or inanimate objects). Health insurance is provided, as well as a land line phone to call the U.S. and a cell phone for each teacher. Like IST teachers, I buy minutes from Tigo (the cell phone company) to maintain enough saldo (balance) to make calls and send messages on the cheap phone I purchased myself. 


Last week, Mr. G traveled to the States to recruit for IST in the Midwest. He asked me to teach his three sections of 7th-grade English for the week. I readily agreed because I'm looking to get experience in teaching numerous grade levels to see if I might like to pursue education as a career.


Now, Mr. G prepared some top-notch plans for me. I proctored quizzes, I enthusiastically taught a lesson about adjectives (even the positive, comparative, and superlative forms), I reviewed vocabulary, I reminded them of their assignments and assessments, and I made coffee for the other teachers (as Mr. G usually does). I did many teacher-ly activities.


Most of the time, however, I used the infamous Stink Eye, I yelled over noise, I started my collection of banned objects used while I talked (balls of playdough, personal notes, art projects, scissors, glue sticks, magazines, food, toys, etc), I repeated myself, I bestowed detentions, I ordered kids to the Recovery Chair and then to the hall and then to the principal's office, and doled out other strange and unusual punishments.  One kid decided to eat a hot dog during class, condiments and all. Several of the students who asked to get materials from their lockers didn't return for 15 minutes. Two students received my wrath when I noticed the swastikas, or the "nasty signs" as they called them, drawn on their notebooks and hands.  I caught numerous students talking and cheating on quizzes; I grabbed the papers without a word and wrote big, fat zeros in red pen with comments like, "Talking to neighbor" and "Passed note to Carlos O."


Two kids cried on Friday. The first boy passed notes during the vocab quiz. He cried for most of the hour while his fellow classmates consoled him and directed dirty looks my way as if to say, "How could you do this, you witch?" The second crier spent lunch hour with me. Earlier in the day, when I asked the students to pass their quizzes forward, he had taken the quiz from the student behind him and quickly copied all of the answers. After I informed him that he was in more trouble than he realized, he leaned on my desk until his face stopped about six inches from mine. I watched the evolution, impressed by his showmanship, as his eyes turned a pitiful red and big, fat tears rolled down his face: "Please, mees," he pleaded, "do not do this." I had threatened to send an email to Mr. Atkinds, the vice principle charged with disciplining unruly middle-schoolers. Hiding my laugh in my hands, I attempted to end the melodrama with comments like, "Go on, Carlos" and "Ok, Carlos. Time to go," and finally, "Please leave, Carlos."


I must say, the situation got a little crazy and I got a lotta mean. Turns out, sub-time is go-nuts time.


Lessons learned:


- You cannot make friends with your students. Most teachers go with the motto, No smiling until Christmas. Discipline first, even if it means your students look at you like they want to punch you in the larynx.


- Follow-through (the double-edged sword). One teacher recently told me that her students never enter the classroom quietly as she has instructed them to do. One day, she became so frustrated, she threatened to make them exit and enter the classroom correctly ten times in a row. Of course, she was forced to go ahead with this plan, despite the time consumption and the confused looks from the other staff members.


- Fake it till you make it. Even if you have to make your students exit/enter the classroom 10 times, you should pretend like everything is going as planned. Yes, Carlos Enrique, I MEANT for this activity to fail miserably. In fact, I knew you were going to eat that hot dog in class just now. Students smell timidity, hesitation, and indecision.


- Do not believe students when they insist that the teacher normally allows them to eat in the classroom or gives them "free time." I subbed an hour of sixth-grade last week and when the middle school bell rang, about 70% of the class insisted that this marked the beginning of a daily "five-minute break." They behaved so convincingly that I conceded and announced that the "five-minute break" had started. Later, when I mentioned this to Esther (the actual teacher) she had no knowledge of this said "break." 


- Do not ignore bad behavior. It never works. Address everything, unless it's crying. I ignore that.


- Shut down situations completely and right away. For example, one student (who is typically a nuisance) complained last week, "Mees, my cheek is swollen. I need to go to the school's doctor." Uh huh. I assume she hoped to wander the halls and to "bb," or Blackberry, her friends. I admit that the excuse proved clever as anyone would hesitate to hinder treatment in the event of a health issue. However, I decided to answer her with, "If you can talk, it must not be that bad. You can go after class." When she complained about it later, I responded with, "You can either stay here and stop whining, or you can visit Mr. Atkins' office but you are not going to visit the doctor during my class." She didn't ask again.


- Learn names. No kid responds to, "You in the purple, why are you singing Justin Bieber songs right now?"


- If you tell students to stop talking, they will begin to whistle, mumble, rustle, and make noise in any other way possible and in such a way as to make it impossible to track.  Mostly, I deal with this by demanding, "Who is whistling? Who is it?" in an angry voice because . . .


- Students will rat each other out. Use this to your advantage.


- If a student succeeds in punching you in the larynx, abandon ship.


To conclude, I want to share a YouTube which shows more of the school grounds and the classrooms at IST. Tashina, Paula's sister, makes an appearance as the teacher in the teal sweater. I attempted to embed the video directly in my blog but it didn't work, so please click on this link.


There. Now you are aware that IST supports dark orchestral music, Yummies, Frutilicious things, Coca Cola, Oodles of Noodles, Vienna sausages, slow motion, gymnastics, men who stare, and walking backwards.


I hope everyone enjoys an ecstatic, delicious, food-filled Thanksgiving tomorrow! I will stay here in Tegus: reading, watching movies, and, I admit, venturing to the movie theater to see The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn (hopefully in English). Currently, I am in the process of planning solo trips to touristy places around Honduras like Roatán and the other Bay Islands. 

Waterworks

The other day I tried to wash the dishes, but when I turned on the faucet only a dribble of water responded. This is not the first time I'd noticed the inconsistent water pressure. I thought I'd imagined it but this time I asked my roommate, Sarah, what the deal was. She explained, "The water's almost out." 

Uh. . . . what?

Apparently, the water system here involves having a cisterna, or cistern, which a house uses to store water. Our cisterna (pictured below) looks like a large concrete box and sits on top of our house. 

Someone (not sure who, but I'm guessing it's The Man or one of his Honduran affiliates) refills this tank when we are not looking. This struck me as odd because, technically, there's a possibility of simply running out of water. We don't know who refills it, so we could be stuck for days: shower-less, pasta-less, tea-less. There's a lot of trust built into this cisterna system. 

Likewise, it is also possible to run out of drinking water. Each household, not just the germ-a-phobic North Americans, uses plastic Bubbler tanks to store purified drinking water. When the water in the tank is gone, one has to run to the local pulpería (sort of like a convenient store/kiosk) and exchange the empty tank for a full one. However, if one doesn't have a car, the water usage can get tricky; it is not safe to walk around on the streets, even in the "suburbs" where I live. Plus, the pulperías aren't open all night. So, there are times when one simply cannot access proper drinking water. At the Halloween party, for instance, Casa Gigante ran out of purified water and no one brought beverages. Literally, there was nothing to drink. 

For this reason, most Honduran households drink a lot of Coke (instead of the dreaded Pepsi). Hondurans think it's strange to carry water all the time. Even the poorest of families do not cut Coca Cola out of their budget, but bring it home by the 3-liter.  I assume that, before good water storage, most people developed a precedent for maintaining a supply of store-bought beverages. The idea of drinking Coke (rumored to completely dissolve rusty nails) like water is shocking to me, especially when I think of the health fuss soda has created in schools in recent years. The Honduran Coke fetish reminds me of Medieval families that (children included) used to drink beer constantly due to a lack of safe drinking water. In these moments, I realize that few people have the privilege of simply reaching for their Nalgene bottles whenever parched. While I am never truly in danger of complete water deprivation here in Tegucigalpa, it's scary how few steps one unwittingly takes to reach that point.  

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On a quirky side-note, this is our pila: 

Doesn't it look like one of those fancy/creepy baptismal pools? 

Fall Party

Apologies for the absence. Last week I developed a special relationship with a parasite and then with the toilet. Our painful affair lasted a week but the memories will live on forever. 


With the holidays approaching, Hondurans are preparing themselves for celebration. In fact, I walked into school this morning after a week-long hiatus to find an elaborate nativity scene marking the entrance. Somehow, all the figurines appear to be Caucasian and Baby Jesus could be albino. IST is not the only early bird. In the city, restaurants and public buildings have garlanded themselves and placed wreaths everywhere. I forget that without Thanksgiving and, really, without anything to mark fall as a season, there's no holding back the Christmas cheer. 


Having said that, I want to share some photos from the "Fall Party" at the Yellow House this weekend. Many of the North Americans in Tegus, especially us Michiganians, miss autumn in the worst way. Here there are no pumpkin spice lattes, hay rides, pumpkin carvings, cider, cinnamon donuts, Halloween costumes, cornucopias, Thanksgiving turkeys, leaves falling, sweaters, scarves, etc. Thus, a Fall Party was in order. 


In order to simulate autumn in the States, we carved a gigantic grapefruit and an apple.  Here they grin at us, backs to the city. 





Julienne, Sarah, and Jen decorated the balcony. Julienne strung authentic Midwestern leaves, sent to her straight from Michigan by her wonderful boyfriend, Jon. Perched in the corner are the brooms Sarah and I bought in Manzaragua. 

 Sarah made apple cider, complete with orange slices and sticks of cinnamon. 





Jen hollowed out apples and we melted caramel for dipping. Other deserts included chocolate-covered peanut butter rice crispy treats, pumpkin pie cake, apple crisp, iced pumpkin cookies,   apple cinnamon empanadas with caramel dipping sauce, etc. 




Jen swinging on the hammock.





Livin' it up. 

Hope everyone started the week well. I am once again subbing for Mr. Goasdone's 7th grade English class. Today, all of my students were obnoxiously out of control. In one class, I threatened to pass out the quiz on adjectives immediately because I insisted that their chatting led me to believe that they already knew the material. I then gave them a worksheet and called it a quiz. In response, they talked amongst themselves. Gah. 

Julie

Quinceañera

On Friday night, the ladies of the Yellow House (and many of the other North Americans living in Tegus) surprised our roommate, Julienne, with a belated quinceañera. The actual Spanish word quinceañera describes a girl who is fifteen years old. The word also serves as the formal name for a girl's fifteenth birthday. However, more recently quinceañera refers to the formal party thrown upon a Latin American girl's fifteen birthday. In the U.S., a quinceañera can be likened to the "sweet sixteen" birthday. The show on MTV called My Super Sweet 16 functions as a pretty apt comparison to the scale at which a quinceañera is celebrated. In any case, a quinceañera marks a huge milestone for a girl in Latin American culture, one that symbolizes her entrance into the adult world. 

From what I understand, a quinceañera is a mix between a wedding and a debutante ball. The idea is to introduce the new woman to the world. Hundreds of guests are invited. Delicious food is prepared. Decorations are slathered on banquet room walls. Back home in Grand Rapids, I heard of quinceañera that took place in the ballroom at the Amway Grand Hotel, the most glitzy expensive venue in town. On her fifteenth birthday, a Latin American girl is an absolute princess for a day. In fact, many quinceañera's wear a tiara and a gown designed to resemble that of Cinderella's own ball gown. 

Like most North American girls, Julienne never experienced this type of celebration on her fifteen birthday Apparently, a few weeks before my arrival, she mentioned to some of the girls that she always lamented not experiencing a quinceañera for herself. Thus, a secret plan was hatched to make Julienne's dream come true. On Friday night, we told Julienne that everyone was going to Gino's, an Italian restaurant in Tegus. 

(A picture of the ladies of the Yellow House in their formal wear heading to "Gino's". From the left: Jen, myself, the unsuspecting Julienne, Sarah, and Paula.) 

 

Before we started the car to drive to "Gino's" (wink, wink) we blindfolded a baffled Julienne. 

We proceeded to drive all over town, chiefly to confuse her but also to buy her a birthday granita (frappaccino). Once we arrived at Casa Gigante for the party, we had Julienne to change into a more formal dress. 

(Julienne, granita in hand, lead by Manu and Paula to her quinceañera).

Typically, at a quinceañera, the birthday girl's father escorts her into the ballroom. After that, a father-daughter dance ensues. In fact, a quinceañera may involve an number of formal dances. Most parties include at least a dance with the father and the date.  Because Julienne's real father wasn't present to lead her, Manu kindly stepped in. Fittingly, Julienne and Manu danced to Butterfly Kisses by Bob Carlisle. 

A girl turning fifteen must also bring a date to her party. Julienne's main squeeze is back home in GR so Nacho Libre was gracious enough to give Julienne her first dance as a woman.

Next up, the dance of the damas (ladies). It is not weird for the friends of the quinceañera to learn a dance routine to be performed at the party. The quinceañera at the Amway Grand included a formal dance routine presented by ten damas and ten caballeros (gentlemen) to a Ricki Martin song. Below is a picture of some of Julienne's damas dancing to (what else?) La macarena. 

 A "throne" was prepared for Julienne lest she become tired. Her tiara and her scepter were presented to her.

Like a true quinceañera papa, Manu gave a speech to toast to his "daughter's" womanhood. Then a slideshow played, displaying pictures of Julienne's journey to adulthood.

Next comes the cutting of the cake. Like a wedding cake, a quinceañera cake is a much fussed over ordeal, one that covers most of a six-top table. April of the Green House designed a postre fit for a princesa, complete with a cake-topper. Unfortunately, the delicious frosting was made with cream cheese and the cake turned slightly droopy (but no less appetizing).

After all the formal rites and rituals were performed, party time began.

Not surprising, Nacho revealed a hidden talent for break dancing. Hold out for Step Up 4, Nacho!

Julienne's quinceañera was a blast. I hope I have a chance to attend an authentic one at some point! 

No new adventures planned for now but in a few weeks I will teach an entire week of seventh grade English classes. Wish me good luck!