Substitute Teacher

“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 6^th 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 6^th 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 6^th 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 6^th 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 9^th grade class was considerably more well behaved, though no class displayed more perseverance than the 7^th 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."