Maestra Cati

I have been teaching English once or twice a week to a diminished but determined group of students since the end of January. While it´s not part of my official Peace Corps assignment, I told everyone that I would be happy to offer a class as long as people showed up, studied, and took it seriously. I am still en la lucha (in the fight) with the studying, but most of the group continues to impress me with their dedication and patience.

I say patience because most of them have been out of school for years, and as one remarked recently, ¨I haven´t written anything in 23 years.¨I struggle with trying to teach them because the only way I know to teach is grammatically--that is how I learned and understood Spanish, and drawing comparisons and explaining structure grammatically is what makes sense to me. But they don´t know what subjects, verbs, nouns, objects, or anything else are, and half of them didn´t make it past sixth grade. And pobrecitos (poor things), they sit there and listen to me trying to navigate my way through Spanish and English and never criticize, just copy, copy, copy. It´s a strange experience correcting their homework, because often their Spanish is wrong, and I am never sure whether to correct their conjugations and spellings in Spanish as well. I am unsure whether it affects their understanding of English. Despite all of that, they do rather well and I was impressed with the results of their first test.

In mid-May, we´ll have our last class of what I have named Ingles Basico I. Those who wish to continue will graduate and start Ingles Basico II in June. I plan to present them with certificates and a photo of the class as a reward. (Some students who have dropped-out heard about the picture-taking and certificate-earning, and they have become very jealous! I have been receiving petulant visitors to my house trying to find ways to bargain for a certificate. All denied!)

I´ve gone back and forth trying to decide whether I enjoy teaching. Some days I throw a lesson together right before class, and just go through the motions. Other days I feel a certain glee in seeing what they´ve learned and the smiles on their faces when we play the games I´ve prepared. I´ve always tried to keep the class lively-- participatory learning is of course the cornerstone of Peace Corps. We have plenty of activities, competitions, prizes, and games to keep them on their toes. I only wish I had more resources or time to prepare better classes, but lack of computer access makes things difficult.

A picture of the happy students, who really are happy, despite their straight-faced Ngobe picture-taking style: