“Sientate!” and “Silencio!” were
the most common words spoken during my first two days teaching at the Robert Smith
School in the town of Talica, 30 minutes north of Huaraz.
Luis, my host, coordinator, and a
fellow English instructor at the school, informed me that my first two days
would entail substituting for a sick English teacher.
“Can you teach tomorrow?” he asked
shortly after my arrival in Huaraz at 8pm.
“No problema,” I assured him.
By day two, the students in my 6th
grade class completely ignored my presence, still
talking and prodding one another over completely blank pages twenty minutes after the bell rang. I paced from
table to table.
“No habla, solo escribe.
Entientes?” -- No talking, only writing. Understand?
“Si. Si. Entiendo.” Yet every page
in the room remained blank, and the students giggled and recommenced their chatter shortly after I turned my back.
I threw my hands up and left the
room. I scurried down the hall to the office of the head of discipline,
hoping nothing major would go awry in the unattended classroom. Stepping into
the office, I inadvertently interrupted a conversation going on with two other
teachers. In sloppy Spanish, I requested help with the 6th graders
and returned to the classroom. Minutes later, the PE teacher who resembled a female
sumo wrestler came to my rescue. Her low booming voice conveyed several choice
phrases, none of which I understood but all of which intimidated me, as well as the rowdy students. Hands clasped firmly behind her back, she
prowled the classroom for the remainder of the period. I gave her a smile
and an encouraging thumbs-up. She nodded.
During lunch I graded the papers. The majority of the students received the lowest grade possible -- a C -- on the assignment. Some of them only recopied the assignment from the chalkboard onto their papers, and even managed to misspell some of the words.
After enjoying my two-course lunch, Luis found me in the
computer room searching Google for folk tales or short stories to use during
the next class period with the 6th graders.
“That won't work. We can’t print out enough copies
for all the students,” he informed me. “But, I’ll give you something that will
help you with this class.”
He pulled a stack of cards out of
the closet, adorned with the names and photos of various famous soccer players.
“Use these as a reward for correct
answers,” he suggested. I shrugged and stuffed the cards into my bag, heading
back to the classroom.
My skepticism that the 6th
graders were too old to be entranced by trading cards was alleviated the moment
I removed them from my bag.
“Me, me, me!” they shouted, “I
want!”
“You have to stop talking and open your
workbooks. Whoever can tell me the correct answer to the first question on page 24, with raising your hand, will get a card,” I explained, gesturing while I emphasized "raising your hand."
“Shh! Shhh!” they said, shaking
scolding fingers at each other.
Bingo.
To my great relief, the 9th grade class was considerably more well behaved, though no class displayed more perseverance
than the 7th graders. As a group, their English was significantly more developed than any other class, and they boasted of their aspirations to
become cardiologists, actors, video game designers, and systematic engineers.
“I’m playful, sociable, and
unique,” one of them wrote.
“I'm funny like my mother," wrote another. "And my dream is to go to L.A. and meet Notch, the creator of Mindcraft."
