8 months into my service in Panama, here are some reflections.
Things that I've become accustomed to:
- Not having air conditioning (though I'm NOT accustomed to the heat)
- Not having hot water
- Traveling by bus (or little 15 person van)
- Buses without a schedule
- Veering all over the road while in a bus to avoid major pot-holes
- The bus driver going over small bumps at about 5 mph
- Living 40 minutes from a real grocery store
- Excessive wait times
- Example: I had to go to the doctor last week. In America, if I had to wait more than 20
minutes for the doctor to arrive I would be frustrated and annoyed.
The timeline here: 8:15 - I arrive and am told the doctor is just waking up
9:00 - I think, hopefully he'll get here soon
9:30 - I'm starting to get antsy, he really should be here soon.
9:45 - I ask the nurse to call again, I am already going to be late arriving
for my friend's project that I'm helping her with.
10:00 - The doctor finally arrives and takes me into the office/room.
10:05 - He is finished asking me how I feel and looking at my throat.
10:20 - We finish our conversation about Peace Corps and politics. He tells
me to call back for my final test results. I leave. Bit of a difference, huh?
- Being called a gringa (though the one time I got "china" when I was actually dressed in a typical panamanian outfit, I didn't quietly accept)
- Speaking Spanish!
- Tipica music
- Explaining US seasons (Many panamanians think it's cold year-round. Why wouldn't it be? It's hot here year-round)
- Slow internet
- That most actual work stops in November due to the abundance of national and local holidays
- November calendar: 2 -All Soul's Day
3 - Independence Day from Colombia
4 - Flag Day
5 - Colón Day
8 - parades in Los Santos
9 - parades in Chitré
10 - First cry for independence in Los Santos
16 & 17 - Founding of Pesé (includes days of celebrations & parades)
28 - Independence Day from Spain (so of course they have the previous
Monday off of school/work)
- English teachers not always speaking good English and never having teaching degrees
- 2 shifts at schools
- Lack of internet or phone service in a variety of places
- A constant presence of ants in certain parts of my house. Though I will NOT permit and crazy infestations or any invasions of my kitchen.
Things I've learned to love:
- Patacones (friend plaintains)
- Ojaldra (fried dough... think a round, softer, salty funnel cake)
- The rain - it cools things down!
- Panamanian typical outfits - polleras and guayaberas
- Talking with panamanians who have read about and pay attention to US news or have some grasp of its' culture
- Hammocks
Things I don't accept or still miss from the US:
- The constant heat and lack of seasons (seca to lluviosa doesn't really count in my book...)
- I really miss fall!!
- The style of wearing really tight clothing that shows off all of your stomach rolls
- The fact that food is not usually considered a meal unless rice is involved
- The lack of a lot of vegetables
- The high price of good cheese, good deli meat, and good chocolate
- My comfy bed and need for blankets
- Random men cat-calling at me. No soy tu bebi.
- No passing time at school - how on earth are the kids supposed to pay attention all day, or, for that matter, even be in class on time?
- Students not doing homework or caring about school (certainly not all students, but a good number)
- The massive amount of sugar they put in their juices! :( I want good, fresh juice!
- Bad treatment of Panamanian pets - though I do think Americans go overboard frequently
Things I've realized/how I've changed:
- American culture intensely values personal independence
- Gained a LOT of patience - both for waiting times and for cultural misunderstandings
- I finally understand, from a personal perspective, why immigrants in the US (or in any country) cling to and live near other people from their country.
- Schools in the US are much more of a community (with other clubs, groups, and activities) than they are in most other parts of the world (at least in my European and Central American experience)
- I enjoy camping!
- I can handle a lot more bugs. I still don't do massive spiders - I'm talking tarantulas or other excessively large ones.
- It takes a while to get projects going - but don't give up - it will happen eventually!
- Lowered expectations of attendance for events.
Moral of the story:
I've changed a lot and learned a lot, but I've also learned about what things I can't or won't change!
Friday, November 9, 2012
Monday, November 5, 2012
The Ups & Down of Teaching: A Story of Success and Frustration
Some days I love being in the schools: the kids are learning and interested, they come up and hug me, I enjoy talking with the teachers and feel like we're having a great exchange of ideas. Life in Panama is good.
Other days I feel like breaking down and crying, screaming in anger, or both simultaneously, at the students who don't care and who disrespect their teachers, and at teachers who aren't motivated to plan engaging lessons for their students and who don't put in effort to improve their English.
Most days are somewhere in between these two extremes. Let me shed some light on these emotions with a story of one of my weeks about a month ago.
The setting and characters:
I was working in the colegio with the professor who teaches 8th and 9th grade. Now this is a teacher who really means well and he wants to help his students. He has come to all of our charlas, so he has only shown me that he is motivated towards improving and helping his students, but as this story shows, there are some things that are still lacking.
The current unit was weather, so at the beginning of the week when I asked what he was working on, he showed me to handouts with some readings for the students on the topic of natural disasters. In my opinion, the one he had chosen for 8th grade was actually harder than the one for 9th grade, but both were over the heads of the students. But at this point, I couldn't talk him through choosing something else as he had already been working on these readings for a week and a half (?!?). So I went with it.
Act 1:
He told me he wanted to work on pronunciation - which made me happy, since I feel like that is something missing in most teachers' English curriculum here. So off we went to class. He proceeded to read the passages while the students thoughtlessly repeated after him. He then asked me to be the reader so that the students would learn a better accent from me. This killed me because the students - unless they are internally motivated and extremely interested in English already (not the norm) - aren't going to actually learn how to pronounce the words just by repeating after me.
The other issue was that only about one third to one half of the students actually had the handout. Here, the students have to pay 5 cents per page for copies (they are not covered by the school), so some of the students didn't want, or couldn't, pay for the copies, and others had lost or forgotten the handout(or as they say here: it left me at home), so only a few actually had the page to follow along. The others were talking, throwing things across the room, and generally not paying attention and being disruptive. While this in itself infuriated me, more than half of my anger and frustrations were directed at the teacher who had planned this lesson without any engaging materials or activities. If I were a student, I probably would have been behaving in a similar way (or at least considering it). I got so upset at one point, I left a class 5 minutes early. I was just about at the point of tears and/or screaming and yelling.
So what to do? That afternoon during a free period, I talked with the teacher about behavior. It doesn't matter if the students have the copy or not - they need to be actively trying to engage in the class. This means sharing with a student near you who does have the copy, sitting straight in their chair, looking at the speaker (whether the teacher or another student), and participating when asked. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to talk to him about how to make this kind of lesson more engaging at this point in time.
Act 2:
The next day we went to class and spent between 20 and 30 minutes (of the 40 minute class period) talking to the students about behavior. The teacher did most of the talking, but I also tried to impress upon them that the only way they were going to learn was to practice. The worst class (which is also the largest with about 35 students) was still talking and not paying attention while the teacher was trying to talk to them about this serious topic (in Spanish). I was getting more and more angry and when I finally was given the opportunity to talk, I refused to talk over them and waited until they quieted down. I then told them that their behavior was teaching me that panamanians aren't respectful, shouldn't be respected, and that since they weren't listening to their teacher, why should I listen to them? Now, I know that this isn't true. Panamanians are wonderful people and I hold many in high regard. But that's not what their behavior was communicating to me.
10 minutes later, I hope that I got something across to them about behavior and about how to learn a language. I understand - I learned French through middle and high school all the way through college. I have learned Spanish since arriving in Panama in January. I get that languages can be hard to learn. But you won't learn unless you pay attention and practice. Now, my little soap-box speech probably didn't change any lives or drastically change their attitude, but I did get a round of applause when I sat back down and I hope that it might have encouraged a couple of them in the right direction.
The teacher finished out the classes by continuing to work on pronunciation, which was just as un-engaging as before. But he asked if I could come to class the next day. I needed to prepare for a charla the following day, but I said I could come to the first 3 classes. Boy, am I glad I agreed to that.
Act 3:
I arrived, and he started going over some pronunciation but quickly let me have the reins for the class. I tried to tie the words back to their meanings and get the students to understand the words alongside learning how to pronounce them. I also tried to explain why you pronounce them a certain way. I really want to help the teachers teach phonics, but it's hard when I'm only with a teacher for 2 days every 3 or 4 weeks.
Then we went to that biggest class where I had my big speech. They were still misbehaving some, ut I took over and with an impromptu lesson got them interested, paying attention, and participating. Now, don't take this to mean that I have all the answers and I'm some magical teacher who knows the secrets to getting students to engage with and learn the material. It's much more likely that I just got lucky with this lesson, but I have learned a lot about how to try to connect with the students and not just have rote lessons of memorization with copying and repeating.
I wrote the words up on the board, had them do some repeting after me (they need to have some base to work from) but then had them do most of the pronunciation both in groups and individually. With some of the harder words (like biodegradable. No, I don't know why they need to know this word... again, I was just going with what I had to work with) I told them that we were going to repeat in rows, so I went row-by-row and had them repeat after me, then I told them that when I pointed at their row, they had to say the word. This aspect of competition and unexpectedness got their attention. I was still having trouble with one row in particular that just refused to say the word - only 1 or 2 students were saying it, and only softly. The competition helped them a fair bit.
But then I did the same thing with another word and that difficult row finally participated! I gave them some praise when they all said it loudly (the word before, it had pretty much stopped the game), but kept moving on because I didn't want to overly praise the behavior that I expected of them.
At the end of the lesson, the students were happy, wanting me to come back and teach all the time. That made me feel great. Then the icing on the cake: the teacher thanked me so much for being with him and helping him - that he had learned a lot from that lesson. Just from my impromptu lesson trying to focus on getting the students to participate.
Epilogue:
At that moment I thought: this is my Peace Corps experience in a nutshell and what I hope continues to happen. Occasionally there are extreme frustrations, but I keep on working and, in the end, hopefully the teacher learns how to become a better teacher and how to engage his students, and the students become interested in English and enjoy class. That's really the purpose of my work in the schools.
Now, this isn't an every day, every week, or even every month experience. But it does happen occasionally, and those are the days that I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing here. It was a great feeling to have that feedback from the students and the teacher, and I hope that I can continue with that kind of work as much as possible.
Other days I feel like breaking down and crying, screaming in anger, or both simultaneously, at the students who don't care and who disrespect their teachers, and at teachers who aren't motivated to plan engaging lessons for their students and who don't put in effort to improve their English.
Most days are somewhere in between these two extremes. Let me shed some light on these emotions with a story of one of my weeks about a month ago.
The setting and characters:
I was working in the colegio with the professor who teaches 8th and 9th grade. Now this is a teacher who really means well and he wants to help his students. He has come to all of our charlas, so he has only shown me that he is motivated towards improving and helping his students, but as this story shows, there are some things that are still lacking.
The current unit was weather, so at the beginning of the week when I asked what he was working on, he showed me to handouts with some readings for the students on the topic of natural disasters. In my opinion, the one he had chosen for 8th grade was actually harder than the one for 9th grade, but both were over the heads of the students. But at this point, I couldn't talk him through choosing something else as he had already been working on these readings for a week and a half (?!?). So I went with it.
Act 1:
He told me he wanted to work on pronunciation - which made me happy, since I feel like that is something missing in most teachers' English curriculum here. So off we went to class. He proceeded to read the passages while the students thoughtlessly repeated after him. He then asked me to be the reader so that the students would learn a better accent from me. This killed me because the students - unless they are internally motivated and extremely interested in English already (not the norm) - aren't going to actually learn how to pronounce the words just by repeating after me.
The other issue was that only about one third to one half of the students actually had the handout. Here, the students have to pay 5 cents per page for copies (they are not covered by the school), so some of the students didn't want, or couldn't, pay for the copies, and others had lost or forgotten the handout(or as they say here: it left me at home), so only a few actually had the page to follow along. The others were talking, throwing things across the room, and generally not paying attention and being disruptive. While this in itself infuriated me, more than half of my anger and frustrations were directed at the teacher who had planned this lesson without any engaging materials or activities. If I were a student, I probably would have been behaving in a similar way (or at least considering it). I got so upset at one point, I left a class 5 minutes early. I was just about at the point of tears and/or screaming and yelling.
So what to do? That afternoon during a free period, I talked with the teacher about behavior. It doesn't matter if the students have the copy or not - they need to be actively trying to engage in the class. This means sharing with a student near you who does have the copy, sitting straight in their chair, looking at the speaker (whether the teacher or another student), and participating when asked. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to talk to him about how to make this kind of lesson more engaging at this point in time.
Act 2:
The next day we went to class and spent between 20 and 30 minutes (of the 40 minute class period) talking to the students about behavior. The teacher did most of the talking, but I also tried to impress upon them that the only way they were going to learn was to practice. The worst class (which is also the largest with about 35 students) was still talking and not paying attention while the teacher was trying to talk to them about this serious topic (in Spanish). I was getting more and more angry and when I finally was given the opportunity to talk, I refused to talk over them and waited until they quieted down. I then told them that their behavior was teaching me that panamanians aren't respectful, shouldn't be respected, and that since they weren't listening to their teacher, why should I listen to them? Now, I know that this isn't true. Panamanians are wonderful people and I hold many in high regard. But that's not what their behavior was communicating to me.
10 minutes later, I hope that I got something across to them about behavior and about how to learn a language. I understand - I learned French through middle and high school all the way through college. I have learned Spanish since arriving in Panama in January. I get that languages can be hard to learn. But you won't learn unless you pay attention and practice. Now, my little soap-box speech probably didn't change any lives or drastically change their attitude, but I did get a round of applause when I sat back down and I hope that it might have encouraged a couple of them in the right direction.
The teacher finished out the classes by continuing to work on pronunciation, which was just as un-engaging as before. But he asked if I could come to class the next day. I needed to prepare for a charla the following day, but I said I could come to the first 3 classes. Boy, am I glad I agreed to that.
Act 3:
I arrived, and he started going over some pronunciation but quickly let me have the reins for the class. I tried to tie the words back to their meanings and get the students to understand the words alongside learning how to pronounce them. I also tried to explain why you pronounce them a certain way. I really want to help the teachers teach phonics, but it's hard when I'm only with a teacher for 2 days every 3 or 4 weeks.
Then we went to that biggest class where I had my big speech. They were still misbehaving some, ut I took over and with an impromptu lesson got them interested, paying attention, and participating. Now, don't take this to mean that I have all the answers and I'm some magical teacher who knows the secrets to getting students to engage with and learn the material. It's much more likely that I just got lucky with this lesson, but I have learned a lot about how to try to connect with the students and not just have rote lessons of memorization with copying and repeating.
I wrote the words up on the board, had them do some repeting after me (they need to have some base to work from) but then had them do most of the pronunciation both in groups and individually. With some of the harder words (like biodegradable. No, I don't know why they need to know this word... again, I was just going with what I had to work with) I told them that we were going to repeat in rows, so I went row-by-row and had them repeat after me, then I told them that when I pointed at their row, they had to say the word. This aspect of competition and unexpectedness got their attention. I was still having trouble with one row in particular that just refused to say the word - only 1 or 2 students were saying it, and only softly. The competition helped them a fair bit.
But then I did the same thing with another word and that difficult row finally participated! I gave them some praise when they all said it loudly (the word before, it had pretty much stopped the game), but kept moving on because I didn't want to overly praise the behavior that I expected of them.
At the end of the lesson, the students were happy, wanting me to come back and teach all the time. That made me feel great. Then the icing on the cake: the teacher thanked me so much for being with him and helping him - that he had learned a lot from that lesson. Just from my impromptu lesson trying to focus on getting the students to participate.
Epilogue:
At that moment I thought: this is my Peace Corps experience in a nutshell and what I hope continues to happen. Occasionally there are extreme frustrations, but I keep on working and, in the end, hopefully the teacher learns how to become a better teacher and how to engage his students, and the students become interested in English and enjoy class. That's really the purpose of my work in the schools.
Now, this isn't an every day, every week, or even every month experience. But it does happen occasionally, and those are the days that I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing here. It was a great feeling to have that feedback from the students and the teacher, and I hope that I can continue with that kind of work as much as possible.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
My Work as a PCV: Charlas & Other Secondary Projects
The past month or so has been filled with charlas,co-teaching, and planning for future projects. First, I'll fill you in on the charlas.
So another PCV, Miranda, and I have started a series of charlas for our teachers. We hope to use the presentations and workshops on more of a mass-quantity scale to communicate information to our teachers. The first one was about classroom management. We tried to tackle an excessive amount of information for the first charla, but since we wanted to cover certain topics before the end of the year, we had to rush through some of the information. But we learned a lot through the first charla - not only about our presentation styles (I needed to slow down and be more thorough, Miranda needed to give less detail and speed up), but also about the format of the presentation, location, timing, and, probably most importantly, our expectations of our teachers (only about half of the teachers we work with some each time, which we had higher hopes for the first time around).
Our second charla was about student-centered teaching. We tried to communicate engaging techniques and activities to reach the students and get them engaged in their own learning. The hiccup that came with this charla (and the change in location) was that the location closed at 4:00, which they neglected to tell us. Due to this, Miranda had to cut her section in half which, unfortunately, forced us to cut a lot of the interactive activities. Oh well, we knew for the next time...
And next time was... lesson planning. Again, we covered a lot: trimester, unit, and daily lesson plans. But this time we had more of a workshop-based approach, and the teachers really enjoyed it. I think they learned a lot from it - both from what we presented and from each other - which is what we want to happen!
We have one more planned for this year - how to create and implement a syllabus. Many teachers in Panama don't use a syllabus, and we want to show them how useful they can be - both for the students and the teachers.
Many of these topics our teachers already have some knowledge of - some of them even know a lot about them, and we've learned from them. But one of the big problems is that the English teachers haven't studied teaching - they have earned an English degree and then are qualified to teach English. But as anyone who has tried to teach knows, being thrown in the classroom without any preparation is insanely difficult, and without any guidance, it is hard to get through to your students - both with regards to classroom management and lesson delivery. We hope close that gap and to help those teachers who might have not had enough training, but it also requires the teachers to be pro-active, which is not always the case. Overall, however, the charlas have been a good experience and we plan to continue them into next year.
I have also been planning a workshop for my 9th grade students called Elige tu Vida. This program encourages them to think about their future, set life-, education- and career-goals, teaches them about sexual health and family planning. I'm working with the Psychological-Pedagogical Office (that's the best translation I can come up with...) to present this to to the students. The colegio is going to donate a snack for the students and the health center in Pesé is going to supply the condoms. I still have to write a grant to print the workbooks for the students. I'm hoping to get the grant money in December and perform the workshop during their summer break. I'm a little bit concerned about the timing and if the students will come, but the women I'm working with say they will, so we'll see.
Lastly, I'm also starting to help with an Ultimate Frisbee initiative called Ultimate Without Borders started by an RPCV and another PCV here in Panama. We're promoting youth clubs through Ultimate Frisbee. It's a engaging and enjoyable sport that has the ability to facilitate teaching many life-skills such as teamwork, conflict management, and confidence. We are also planning to integrate some curriculum into the club, to teach some other topics as well. I'm really excited to be able to help with this project - I think it has great potential and I really love the means (ultimate!) and message. More to come on this in the future, I'm sure!
This past week has been a bit rough since I've been sick with strep. But the doctor gave me antibiotics on Thursday, so thankfully I was well enough to participate in the independence day celebrations this weekend. And this was after the incident a couple of weeks ago where I cut my hand on a glass while washing it, leading to a 2 hour emergency visit to the doctor and 3 stitches. But I'm on the mend, both my hand and throat, and looking to be healthy and avoid any more sicknesses or injuries!
Next posts, soon to come: (1) the ups & downs of teaching and (2) Panamanian holidays in November - el mes de patria.
So another PCV, Miranda, and I have started a series of charlas for our teachers. We hope to use the presentations and workshops on more of a mass-quantity scale to communicate information to our teachers. The first one was about classroom management. We tried to tackle an excessive amount of information for the first charla, but since we wanted to cover certain topics before the end of the year, we had to rush through some of the information. But we learned a lot through the first charla - not only about our presentation styles (I needed to slow down and be more thorough, Miranda needed to give less detail and speed up), but also about the format of the presentation, location, timing, and, probably most importantly, our expectations of our teachers (only about half of the teachers we work with some each time, which we had higher hopes for the first time around).
 |
| Me, starting our first charla - at the training center in Pesé |
 |
| Me about to begin our second charla at the National Assembly meeting space in Chitré |
 |
| Miranda, walking a couple of the teachers through a workshop portion of the charla. |
 |
| Miranda introducing the daily lesson plan format to our teachers. |
We have one more planned for this year - how to create and implement a syllabus. Many teachers in Panama don't use a syllabus, and we want to show them how useful they can be - both for the students and the teachers.
Many of these topics our teachers already have some knowledge of - some of them even know a lot about them, and we've learned from them. But one of the big problems is that the English teachers haven't studied teaching - they have earned an English degree and then are qualified to teach English. But as anyone who has tried to teach knows, being thrown in the classroom without any preparation is insanely difficult, and without any guidance, it is hard to get through to your students - both with regards to classroom management and lesson delivery. We hope close that gap and to help those teachers who might have not had enough training, but it also requires the teachers to be pro-active, which is not always the case. Overall, however, the charlas have been a good experience and we plan to continue them into next year.
I have also been planning a workshop for my 9th grade students called Elige tu Vida. This program encourages them to think about their future, set life-, education- and career-goals, teaches them about sexual health and family planning. I'm working with the Psychological-Pedagogical Office (that's the best translation I can come up with...) to present this to to the students. The colegio is going to donate a snack for the students and the health center in Pesé is going to supply the condoms. I still have to write a grant to print the workbooks for the students. I'm hoping to get the grant money in December and perform the workshop during their summer break. I'm a little bit concerned about the timing and if the students will come, but the women I'm working with say they will, so we'll see.
Lastly, I'm also starting to help with an Ultimate Frisbee initiative called Ultimate Without Borders started by an RPCV and another PCV here in Panama. We're promoting youth clubs through Ultimate Frisbee. It's a engaging and enjoyable sport that has the ability to facilitate teaching many life-skills such as teamwork, conflict management, and confidence. We are also planning to integrate some curriculum into the club, to teach some other topics as well. I'm really excited to be able to help with this project - I think it has great potential and I really love the means (ultimate!) and message. More to come on this in the future, I'm sure!
This past week has been a bit rough since I've been sick with strep. But the doctor gave me antibiotics on Thursday, so thankfully I was well enough to participate in the independence day celebrations this weekend. And this was after the incident a couple of weeks ago where I cut my hand on a glass while washing it, leading to a 2 hour emergency visit to the doctor and 3 stitches. But I'm on the mend, both my hand and throat, and looking to be healthy and avoid any more sicknesses or injuries!
Next posts, soon to come: (1) the ups & downs of teaching and (2) Panamanian holidays in November - el mes de patria.
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