Colombia: The Land of Sweat: Put me in coach, I'm ready to teach

Last week, we had our "field practicum," which involved us going to one of several schools in the Barranquilla area. Once there, we were to spend a day observing classes and two days actually teaching lessons. The purpose of this was to give us some hands-on experience teaching local kids. This was particularly helpful for me because I don't really have any formal experience teaching a class.

My group visited a school called Maria Cano Institucion Educativa Para el Desarollo Humano (The Fightin' Canos). Lots of schools have long, convoluted names like that. Like at all the schools I've visited, we drew quite a bit of attention from the students. Many of these kids have never seen white people in person, so it makes sense that we would be "show stoppers." We went to an empty classroom to meet the English teachers, in this school, there were only four, and to discuss the plans for the next few days. In this class, I was surprised to find a Smart Board, which uses some touch technology in unison with a projector. Most schools in the US don't even have these. I thought it was ironic that they had a Smart Board, which apparently no teacher knew how to use, but many classes didn't have air conditioning or even fans that worked well. We found out that it was a gift from the mayor to each school. Great Idea, Mr. Mayor.

In one English class we observed, I couldn't really tell what the topic was. The class consisted of the teacher playing the song "We Are the World" about five or six times and students had to identify words that were in the song. Then she went over some vocabulary words that didn't seem to relate to each other at all. In this class, there was a moderate level of noise at all times and kids would occasionally get up and just walk around the class. This actually was a somewhat well-behaved class in comparison to a class I would teach later that week. Later, we visited a third grade class that was incredibly well-behaved. The teacher is very talented at classroom management. Later that day, we were told which classes we were to give a one hour lesson and in which topic. Naturally, I, the one with the least experience, ended up introducing technical grammar lessons to students who haven't learned those respective subjects yet. Great.

That night, I spent a good deal of time planning my lessons. Per usual, I was worried I would be eaten alive. However, both of my lessons went well. My first was teaching the conditional tense to tenth graders. I played one game where they would stand up if they liked something I call out. At one point, I called out "stand up if you like sopa de mondongo," which is a soup made with cow stomach, and the kids went nuts. Apparently they love it. Who would have known?

The third and final day, I had some more simple themes that focused on vocabulary. I actually felt confident about the lessons I had planned. The first class went well, and as I was heading back to the teachers lounge I was asked if I could do a quick lesson to a class before lunch. I agreed and started regretting that decision about five minutes into class. I was told it was an eighth grade class, but it seemed like the ages ranged from about eleven to kids in their early twenties. The entire class, kids were yelling and walking around all over the place. Basically not paying any attention to me. I mean, it wasn't so bad. At least I didn't get robbed by any of them. But what made it worse was that I was drenched in sweat because the fans in the class didn't work. I was as moist as a rotisserie chicken by the end of class. It was gross. The last class I taught went exceptionally well. I actually made up a song about fruits and vegetables and I brought my guitar and played it to first graders and preschoolers. They seemed to like it. Take that, Wiggles.