First Few Days of Classes and Brazilian Independence

I need to get better at posting consistency with this blog.  The problem is that Sunday is the only day here where I really have a chance to catch my breath.  This week was particularly crazy.

Teaching

I am now in full-swing with my two English classes.  The high school class is truly remarkable.  They have turned in some very impressive assignments already (including very artistic postcards written to friends while on vacation, and advertisements for vacation destinations).  Although I have only had the class three times, we've already covered so much.  Most recently, we've started our literature focus.  The entire rest of the course will be taught as a survey of English literature and written media.  I am so pumped about the prospect of teaching English through short stories and selections because I love to read.

Our First story--a personal selection--was All Summer In A Day by Ray Bradbury.  It is a short science fiction story about an elementary school class on Venus.  If you haven't already read the story, I recommend that you do.  The effect the story had on the class was profound, and we (or at least I) had a lot of fun reading it.  We covered terminology such as setting and inference, and highlighted some vocabulary within the text.  Mostly though, we focused on reading for comprehension.  These high school students are truly amazing.  They started studying English only three years ago, and they are now noticing pathetic fallacy and buried metaphors to a degree that they would wow an English teacher in the US.  It must be due to excellent teaching.

We have our first exam next week.  It's going to be a joke of an exam, mostly because I'm expected to test them after only three classes (and this past Saturday was the first day we had the textbook or syllabus).  Test test will be:

1. Day/Time/Date/Condition/Weather
2. Questions and answers about the weather
3. Vocabulary pertaining to vacations/destinations and nature/environmental issues
4. Essays on the reading: setting, action, inference

My class at Politecnico is proving to be a little more difficult.  First, they were fairly neglected compared to the other specialists at the institute.  Over the past academic quarter they have had four different teachers and have fallen eight full weeks behind!  I'm not expected to catch them up fully, but I am expected to cover the material.  The hardest part of the class is going to be to get them back under control and disciplined.  It seems that they're used to setting the pace of the class and goofing around in their L1 (Spanish).  I can't have that if I'm going to get them to learn what they need to learn.

Any advice on managing a classroom of extra-large children would be much-appreciated.

We have covered small towns and big cities, as well as jobs and working conditions.  I am fortunate that the first two weeks for my high school class was out of the textbook I'm using for my G10 language specialist class.  I will likely use the same verbs and grammar topics in both courses.

So far teaching has been excited, exhausting, inspiring, demoralizing, and every other effect one can imagine.  I'm hoping that by the end of next week I'll feel more like a normal teacher.  I begin tutorials this week (paid office hours to help struggling students) which will bring me closer to economic self-sufficiency and allow me a more normal routine.

Brazilian Independence

So, though I'm neither Brazilian nor in Brazil, I celebrated Brazilian Independence Day yesterday.  Some of my new Tico friends (who I met through my orthodontist friend Karina) called me yesterday and invited me to tag along with them to a party.  I worked all day Thursday and Friday, and was entirely draining from my commute and class on Saturday, but I couldn't refuse the invite.  After all, I can sleep Sunday and Monday, and there's always time to sleep when I'm dead.

The event was slightly uncomfortable, but we had a good time.  We talked with some very interesting girls: Brazilians, Portuguese language students, and Ticas who like a good party.  There was typical Brazilian food, Capoeira demonstrations (Brazilian break dance fighting... honest!), Samba and other Brazilian dances, a mariachi band, masked goblins and "giants," as well as an angel sent to mingle and dance.

(From left to right: Wisconsin, Kenneth, an angel from heaven, me, Toni)

It was a great night, though I was very full (from a huge meal I cooked and ate right before they called me) and exhausted (from a crazy week).  I think sometime in the next few weeks I'll convince the guys (Kenneth, Toni, and Wisconsin) to go out with me in Heredia and crash at my place.  Regardless, I'm started to feel a little more linked in.

Pura Vida,

Z