It is more or less a given that schools in Barranquilla don't really get down to serious teaching until after Carnaval. So that means that kids are in school for over a month before teachers decide that they'll start actually teaching. Good, quality learning time. One of the many focuses of the Peace Corps here is to try to implement lesson planning among the teachers, who prefer the "just wing it" method. I was lucky enough to have my principal set up an hour and a half each week where I can sit down with the two teachers I work with and plan lessons for the upcoming week. It seems perfect. So every week the teachers and I sit down, focus on planning, and get quite a bit done. Hahaha, oh, my crazy imagination. For the first month I was mostly observing classes, which means that I watch a class for a bit, until a teacher calls on me to repeat an lesson they had just done, but in my swarthy American accent. And during this month, the teachers said that it was the time that they do diagnostics, so they don't really need to plan anything. So these first few sessions involved the teachers meeting with me and borrowing my laptop to work on other projects or check their e-mail or, I don't know, shop online for Faberge eggs or something. Needless to say, not much got accomplished.
Finally Carnaval rolled around and people decided that they should, you know, like teach and junk. But not before they celebrated Ash "Thursday." The Wednesday after Carnaval was Ash Wednesday, but there was a school meeting, so that meant no school. But principal nun couldn't let a prime Catholic holiday like that just pass by, so the school celebrated Ash Wednesday on Thursday. It consisted of two two-hour masses, one for each half of the school, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. They should have been hour-long masses, but both times the priest was an hour late.
Once they got that out of the way, I was told that it is time that I start actually co-teaching. Now, the Peace Corps says that I should take at about six weeks to observe before I start co-teaching. This was a month in, so I've done a bit of observing, but I wasn't expecting them to just straight up tell me that I'm going to start next week. I could have thrown a fit, and asked them "Who you think you are, telling me what to do? I'm an American, for pete's sake. No one tells me what to do." But I saw this as an opportunity to actually get these people to get on track with lesson planning and actual teaching, so I complied. Now in our planning sessions, I feel it is a major accomplishment if they just tell me what they are going to teach the next week so I can be prepared and maybe think of an activity or small lesson. Baby steps.
During our previous planning session,out of nowhere, a counterpart asked me why I don't believe in god. at the moment, I was not expecting the question, but overall I was surprised I was not grilled sooner over this, seeing as I'm an atheist and I'm working in what is basically a Catholic school. Our conversation went as such:
Me: I believe in science. To me, I find it much more reliable than believing in god. Plus, I don't like organized religion.
Her: OK, so you believe in evolution, right? You believe we came from monkeys, right?
Me: Well, apes to be exact, but yes, I do.
Her: OK, well, what about that tree? Did that also evolve from apes?
Me: No, that's ridiculous.
She then crossed her arms and gave me this smug look, like she felt she just won. Now, we were conversing in English, which is her second language. Although she is a fairly decent English speaker, much better than I speak Spanish, topics with such gravity and complexity as this require a high level of verbal manipulation to get your point across, which she did not have instant access to. I told her to think about her argument some more and come back to me with some new material for her case.
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