"Teacher"

Get settled, this is more than your 30 minute Barney episode.

3/19/10

            I owe it to myself and to at least my devoted readers (Aunt Erin) to write a bit about my most recent experiences. I moved to Laboulaye (a very small city in the south of the province of Córdoba) to work as an English teacher and to “got mitzvah” myself into adulthood. Laboulaye is one of those cities (would probably be considered a “town” in the States) where you can’t walk downtown without seeing absolutely everyone you know. With that being said, my second day here I was interviewed for the local news channel (Channel 2.) I stumbled through the interview (all the while grinning and nodding with an upset stomach) and then thought nothing of it. The next day I was lunching with Claudia and her mother when my bite of chicken was interrupted by my face appearing on the TV screen. My eyes rolled around in my head as I nodded too frequently to what the news anchor was saying (“Ella es Jeelian EsScrum.”) A grin was stretched almost painfully across my face as I was jabbering in terrible Spanish, and to my horror, mimicking a typical “American Southern accent.” I could have died. But what’s worse is that in a tiny town full of people who ALL watch News Channel 2 during their lunch at 1pm, everybody saw it. I am recognized by all, yet I know no one. People pass me on the street on motorbikes and actual bikes and saw loudly “That’s her!! That’s that girl!” I was recognized and blessed by a nun a few days ago. But when you’re the ONLY North American in a town of 20,000 Argentineans, I guess it’s hard to hide.

Teaching English has been like giving your toddler big girl pants just a little bit before she knows what big girl pants are all about. All of a sudden my days are full of lesson plans and games; all the while I’m not really certain how to teach. It’s one thing to teach something that you’ve been taught. When I teach someone to tie a climbing knot, I visualize the method that Mr. Hartley (my 6^th grade theater teacher) taught me. (He also taught rock climbing. Where can I score that job?) But language is one of those things that you are learning before you can even walk. Imagine trying to explain to someone how to not just pee one’s pants. You just don’t. You know not to. And if you do, you suffer the consequences. We grow without learning complicated (man-created) structures for basic, conversational language. We don’t learn rules for when you’d use “I’ll” vs “I’m going to.” To ask the question “Why do you put ‘does’ at the beginning of a sentence?” means nothing to us (to native English speakers.) But then, when you declare that “to do” is an action and “to have” implies ownership, it becomes difficult to explain the following sentence to a non-English speaker:

“Do you think if you had had more things to do that you would have gotten them done, had you more time to have done them?

Oh, and one other odd thing about teaching. In Chile they called me “Miss Gillian” (pronounced “Mees Sheelian” or sometimes just Tía (aunty.) Here in Argentina they don’t call me by my name at all. They call me “Teacher.” Now THAT I don’t think I’ll ever get used to. That’s just a little bit too apple-on-the-desk-paddle-in-the-drawer for me.

The class levels I’m teaching are mixed. Here’s my schedule:

-Monday and Wednesdays: 2:30-4pm I teach two men who are very advanced in their English. Their names are Marcelino and Marcelo, believe it or not.

-Monday and Thursday from 6:30-8pm is a group of 6 11-year-old beginners. Right now we’re reviewing numbers.

-Tuesdays and Thursdays: 3pm-4:30pm I teach a group of 6 intermediate students (ages ranging from 16 to 26.)

-Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 8:15-9:45pm is my favorite group. It’s a group of 8 13-year-olds, mostly girls, who love games and are very motivated. Even the girl who sometimes refuses to play the games told me today excitedly that she was writing a murder mystery in English. It’s nice to know that even if students are not exactly engaged in EVERYTHING you’re doing, that they still have a personal interest and are willing to share part of it with you.

I WAS teaching a 5 year old beginners class, but that has recently be unleashed upon a different teacher. Here’s how the second day of this class went:

We spent 10 minutes copying the date on the board. (I blame myself, never underestimate the excitement of a 5 year old to actually be able to copy something off a board. Also never underestimate the amount of time that activity can take. And then after it’s all said and done, they’ve written “Viernes” instead of Friday (what the board says.)) Then we spent 30 minutes of me saying “Findddddd red!” and various other colors, and then all of us thundering around the tiny room, knocking over metal pencil boxes, jumping up and down on chairs, and searching for yellow (when we were supposed to be looking for red.) But that was a fun game! Then, a note came through that we needed to copy down the new schedule (Copying off the board again!) and it took another 30 minutes to write “Miércoles y Jueves, 6:15-7:15pm. Man was that hard. Especially when we didn’t like how it was written and erased it every time our hand managed to scrawl out the letters. And then we got our foot stuck in the chair. Three times. And then we knocked over our pencil case again. And then someone else’s pencil case. And then we made our grandmother (and the taxi downstairs) wait for us for 15 minutes while we ferociously colored a picture of a pear orange -- What? It’s wasn’t a pumpkin? (I couldn’t be talking about a certain hyperactive little kid!)

Thus far my Fridays are free, but they are soon to be filled with adult conversational classes. I’m told that in April I’ll start tutoring (making monnnneyyy) for several people around the city. So that’s my schedule!

I do have one humorous (and eerie) story from one of my classes. Marcelo, Marcelino and I were reading a ghost story to go over the past perfect tenses (I had been, he had been, etc.). At the end of the story I asked the men (simply to relate to the text) if either of them knew a ghost story from Laboulaye. Marcelo then proceeded to nonchalantly recount (as most non-English speakers do in broken English) the one ghost story he knew of Laboulaye. It went like this:

“Yes, so there was a girl from the United States who came to Laboulaye and then disappeared. People say that she was murdered by this man and then buried in his backyard. We think that she’s dead because people have claimed to see her in front of store windows or sometimes on the side of the highway. Yes, and his family lives across from this Institute.”

As the story continued I began to kick myself more and more for asking such a simple, yet revealing discussion question. I thought (hoped) he was perhaps making it up to scare me considering that he was talking to the ONLY female American currently residing in Laboulaye. But no, it’s been confirmed as true. Virginia (an Argentinean English teacher) explained to me that the woman had been in the wrong crowd, was pregnant, and into hard drugs, so no way would anything like this ever happen to me. But it’s not like I’m a secret anyway. Everyone knows I’m here, thanks to News Channel 2. What a coincidence that an innocent ghost story should affect me so much! But I have nothing to worry about, apparently, seeing as I am neither a drug addict, pregnant, nor poorly seen in the city, yet.