The long promised...

teaching update.

Fittingly, I am finally writing this blog after the teaching program has ended.

Overall the teaching project was an incredible experience. I'm actually fairly certain that I learned more than my students! I had no idea just how difficult English grammar is! Along with my students, I learned the rules (and MANY exceptions) behind the present simple, present progressive, present perfect, past simple, past progressive, past perfect and future tenses! And this was just skimming the surface of all the grammar tenses we have!

 My teaching partner, Laura (a 20 year old girl from Denmark) and I had to read up on all the rules for these tenses, decide how we wanted to approach each tense with the class and then create worksheets to practice the tenses. In all honesty lesson planning was the most difficult part! My usual day went a little like this:

We always started off class with a descriptive writing prompt either reviewing the previous day's grammar, vocabulary or giving our students a creative writing assignment. We mostly started class off with this because our students NEVER arrived on time! (Occasionally, I felt like I was working with kids and not adults! - I forgot to mention our project was teaching teachers English. Sometimes I thought that it would have been easier to work with kids!) At the end of every week Laura and I would take home their journals and correct them.

Every week we sang a new song with our class to practice pronunciation and increase vocabulary knowledge. One week our song was  "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles. We talked about the the sun represents happiness and peace. One day our writing prompt was "Look at the lyrics to 'Here Comes the Sun'. What in your life brings you peace and happiness?"

These were some of the responses:

Luci: In my life it is very important the friendship with God and with my friends. I feel joyful when I sing for God in the Church.I think it is better to arrive peacetime for all the world. The peacetime is when all the people live as brother.

Julia: The sun in my life brings happiness and work with enthusiasm. Too, I can play with my children in the park and swimming in the pool. But the sun can be dangerous for it is necessary to use caps and ointment for the sun. (Apparently she didn't completely understand the prompt but her answer gave me a good chuckle!)

Ramiro (My favorite answer - at least what I can read of it. He has nearly illegible handwriting! It remind me of my father's writing!): The sun is the life and the hope of a new beginning. When the sun beams, all it's right. ...the fields full of flowers, birds, beautifull animals and a wonderful smell in the air it and new energy to my life. ...I love the sky blue, the mountain green, the forest full of sweet fragancys, the white clouds crossing the sky, the birds flying and singing beautiful tones, that is the life for my.

I couldn't have been happier when I read all their responses! While filled with spelling and grammar errors, they wrote beautiful responses!

After our descriptive writing we would delve into grammar (not my favorite part of the day!) It was a tedious process explaining all the different grammar structures and this took up a good portion of the class but they caught on quickly and we were able to progress through many more tenses than I thought we would.

My class
Left to right: Juanita, Alicia, Laura, Julia, Ana, Me, Magdeli, Luci, and Ruth.
Ebert is kneeling in front.

Once grammar came to an end, we would introduce new vocabulary ranging from emotions to verbs to anything else under the sun. Vocabulary was always a hoot because we would play games to reinforce the words and they would ALWAYS cheat! (This is part of the reason I felt like I was working with kids!) They were SO competitive but we had a good time.

Generally twice a week, Laura and I would write stories to do listening and reading comprehension. I have to say that this was quite the exercise in creativity for me! But it was much better that we wrote them because we could cater the stories and comprehension questions to their abilities.

We always ended class singing a song. This was my absolute favorite part of class! Unlike in my Spanish class where when we sang a song in Spanish everyone just mumbled my students actually sang! We sang everything from "Heroe" by Enrique Iglesias to "Imagine" by John Lennon to "Smile" by Uncle Kracker.

My class really struggled with pronunciation so the last few weeks we began practicing tongue twisters. It was absolutely hysterical! It took all my will power not to crack up when they would attempt to say "Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore," "Purple paper people put pink pants on," or "Five brave viking fought ferocious vultures." One day one of my students, Ebert, challenged me to do a tongue twister in Spanish - "Tres tigres tragan trigo en un trigal." I conquered that one. :)

After six crazy weeks, classes came to end. It culminated at the Ministry of Education where every group gave a presentation. My class wrote a poem that they read. My favorite part was at the end Ramiro had written a surprise stanza in which he referred to Laura and I as "beautiful butterflies." After they read the poem, our class called Laura and I up and gave us each a rose and a beautiful necklace! I was so incredibly touched! They worked so hard over the past six weeks and I felt like a proud parent to see them up there reading a poem in English that they had written!

On the last day of class, we gave them a mini test. We had to take a few home to grade and when I was going through them I received this as a nice and comical surprise:

The teaching project was truly a gift. For one, I now know that I do not want to be a teacher! But it also taught me lessons in patience and lead me to have a greater appreciation for all educators. Kudos to all my teachers! I don't know how you do it, but THANK YOU!

A few other updates:

Ariana is still living with us. Nimia went to a judge with her and the judge ruled that she should go to an orphanage because her father is extremely abusive (all the police officers where Ariana lives told Nimia not to let Ariana go back home because they are well aware of his drinking problems and violent behavior.) Ariana refused to go home and didn't want to go to an orphanage so Nimia, being the angel that she is, sought out temporary custody of Ariana.

Now that the teaching project is over I leave tomorrow for Huyro where I will be working on an archaeology and community project. They're even going to let me use a machete! I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to let me wield a machete but I'm sure after the first day they will revoke that privilege!

Huyro is essentially in the middle of nowhere so I'll be incommunicado for a little while but I will let you all know how my machete experience goes when I am back!

One weekend we went river rafting (which I highly recommend!) and
Kayla somehow convinced me it would be a good idea to jump
out of the boat! It was absolutely freezing but SO fun!

Peru is so incredibly beautiful I can't even describe it! This is a picture
from the most beautiful hike I have ever been on!