It's been WAY too long since I've posted and for that I apologize. I'm writing this as I sit in my student's swanky lounge. I got here insanely early. On Tuesday I left my house at 9:05 and did not arrive at my class (the one I'm currently waiting for) until 10:08. The class starts at 10… so not ideal. In order to avoid this trauma I left my house today at 8:55. I figure, leave 10 minutes earlier, arrive 10 minutes earlier. False. I arrived at 9:30! Half an hour early for class and 40 minutes earlier than I arrived last time. Santiago, you and your bizarre traffic patterns never cease to confuse me!
My absence can be attributed to a multitude of tasks and annoying activities. I've been working on some things for next year which has taken up a lot of my time. By next week most of my planning for next year will have calmed down (I hope!). I've also been in overdrive since my student gave me his soul-crushing (albeit accurate) comments about my class. I've done everything I can to address the situation, but that's meant planning classes to a tee and not blogging.
I don't have much time at the moment to write a proper post but I will hopefully get back to posting more regularly soon. I will, however, leave you with this anecdote about gum in Chilean classrooms…
Before I came to Chile I read this weird book about Chilean culture. Pieces of the book are incredibly accurate, but other pieces of the book are clearly written for wealthy expats moving to Chile for important business reasons… certainly not for teachers going into poor neighborhoods to teach children. According to this book, gum is not accepted in formal environments in Chile. I assumed, therefore, that gum would be outlawed in classrooms (so to speak).
This brings us to yesterday (Wednesday). I was teaching a class of fourth graders. They are sweet kids, but totally insane. The school even warned us that this class has behavioral issues and they didn't know what to do with them. Anyways, we were teaching a class and I look over and see a kid pull a long string-rubber thing out of his mouth and squish it into the table. At first I genuinely thought it was rubber. He then coiled it back up and popped it into his mouth. At this point I stopped class and broke into fluent English (something along the lines of "Oh my god, that is so nasty!"). My co-teachers looked over and they too were horrified. The kids, however, were totally confused because their English doesn't span past numbers, colors, and a few simple phrases. They did catch on to the fact that we were talking about the gum.
Then things took a turn. The boy with the gum took the gum out of his mouth, rolled it into a ball and threw it at another student. This student proceeded to put the gum into his mouth! At this point my co-workers and I were laughing as well as disgusted… it was all a bit crazy. Then the gum dropped out of the second boy's mouth. He dove to the ground to put it back into his mouth(!!!). I, however, could not handle the grotesque notion of the gum's recent germ contact (who knows where the gum started--> boy 1--> table--> boy 1 (+his hands)--> boy 2--> floor) and I also dove to the floor. I got the the gum first and threw it away. This caused a stir amongst the kids who felt wronged that their (horrifying) piece of gum had been thrown out. I felt a little bad, but in the end I stand by my decision.
So there's my teaching anecdote for the day. Please excuse lack of pictures, as I said proper posts will come back soon!
Have a nice THURSDAY (TGIT)!
XX
A
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