Schools and my job

I will be working with both the primary school (kindergarden through 6^th grade) and the secondary school (7^th grade through 12^th grade). They divide their secondary school into 2 parts much like we do with middle school/high school. 7^th – 9^th is ‘intermedio’ and then 10^th-12^th is when they have to pick a specialty. The school in Pesé has specialties in business and enterprise. There are 4 English teachers in the primary school and 7 in the secondary school. I’m planning on trying to work with 2 per week so that I can be accessible and in the classroom, but also rotating through all of them in a somewhat timely manner.

The primary school starts at 7:20 and ends at 12:45 with a 15 minute break about 9:30. Classes are 45 minutes long, but don’t have time in-between like we do in the US, so classes never start exactly when they are supposed to. But this is just taken for granted and worked around. The secondary school functions in much the same way, but there are 2 different sessions or ‘turnos’ – one from 7:00 – 12:15 and the other from 12:45 – 6:00. This system is in place because there are too many kids to all go to school at one time, the infrastructure is not big enough. But I think this is a good solution to keep the class sizes manageable. The schools are pretty nice as well; the high school is well kept-up and has computers (though one of the computer rooms is never used because there is not enough electricity to sustain it), a library, science labs, and even a Home-Ec and a Shop-like class room (woodworking etc). The lower school is also well-kept and the classrooms are decorated and have cute curtains. The classrooms don’t have air-conditioning, but with the frequent wind here, it makes it bearable.

I asked for the teachers’ schedules so that I could figure out when I could work with who. I drafted a tentative plan for working with the primary school teachers, and I’ll be working 6 out of 7 periods every day, which is a lot, but I want to give each of the teachers equal time and I want to be able to see each of their classes an equal number of times per week (or at least as close as I can get). When I showed my schedule to César, he asked “You’re going to work this much? Do you plan to die young?” haha. But we’ll see. It’s really just a temporary schedule for the first few weeks so that I can get a feel for the schools and how I can best contribute.