The Affair As It Stands Today

I think I'm falling in love with teaching, not in the sweeping romantic at-first-sight way, but in the halting and uncomfortable way that more often actually happens. I am nervous thinking about it, and spend an enormous amount of time planning for it though I know half the equation is outside my control and no amount of preparation will take into account all the variables. Just before our encounters I feel a deep panic, a sense that if I just sprinted for the door I could be rootless, uncommitted and unafraid (conveninetly forgetting that when I was thus unattached I yearned for something to push against). In the first days only a sense of obligation to the people who brought us together-- my parents for instilling in me a huge value for education, Catherine and Grace and Katie for being my first comrades in independent travel and therefore my fellow in learning that it gets easier and proves to be worth the discomfort, the Mexico crew for teaching me ways of getting to know a place, my Whitman loves for constructing my first full home away from home and camp for letting me live in the strongest communities I've ever known, and of course Stazh for setting me up on a blind date with teaching in Guatemala. For these people I stayed, though I left my first lesson tearful and afraid on a level deeper than perfection or commitment. As I've recounted, the next lesson left me somewhere entirely different: exalted, full of hope and satisfaction, optimistic with that first giddy bloom that is physically incapable of sustaining itself. Now each lesson it is uncertain whether I will leave thrilled or crestfallen-- but I'm getting better at timing, at gauging my classes' needs and abilities and adjusting as I go, at gathering a ballast of understanding so each new development doesn't submit me to a fit of aimless spinning, and even when I spin I am reasonably confident of regaining my course. (I was in a river kayak on Lago Atitlan this weekend, ergo am physically very conscious of the disorienting effects of spinning).

So all this means I'm readying myself to commit, to settle down with teaching, to acknowledge our awkwardnesses and our imperfections and to proclaim that it's worth working through. I spoke to Neil on Friday about the possibility of an internship. It's only talk at this point, but he sounded tentatively excited and said he'd speak with Doreen, one of the director-type figures, this weekend. I've yet to find out the result. I suppose I'm in the waiting-by-the-telephone phase in a way. I feel fairly peaceful about it at the moment. Though our relationship is tumultuous, teaching and I are doing okay. I don't think it's a heartbrteaker. I haven't much of an idea where we're going, but I'm shyly looking forward to finding out.

Some logistics, for those among us who like that sort of thing: On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I teach in San Andres Itzapa, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm in Santa Maria de Jesus. The English teaching load is distributed (in ever-changing configurations) among Neil (the program coordinator, to assign a title that may or may not be official, and most constant figure in our constellation), me, Kavin, and Liv. The latter two will be leaving soon, alas, but before they do Neil's grasping some much-needed vacation, so we're to be on our own for the next two weeks. I'm looking forward to the opportunity of flinging myself full-bodiedly into teaching, leaving behind any opportunity of second-guessing for at least this two-week period because I don't imagine I'll have time. Each class we teach is a bit different. There are morning and afternoon groups with different kids, so each kid attends a half-day with us and the other half either in government school or working at home, depending on the day. In Itzapa, we have the same two groups on Mondays and Fridays, and then two groups on Wednesdays that take Spanish literacy and other subjects with other volunteers on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. In Santa Maria we have the same two classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Our smallest group is eight; the biggest could be more than twenty if everyone showed up on the same day, but when attendance is almost entirely self-motivated and kids are needed for work in their families' fields and homes, it's harder to enforce and the bigger classes rarely have more than fourteen or sixteen kids. They range in age from 12 to 20, and are grouped more by ability than age. Some lesson plans can be used in more than one class, but when one class is reviewing the alphabet and "Hello, my name is Sulmi. What is your name?" and another is learning about expressing opinions about their classes (with all the vocab of subjects and tastes that implies), more planning is definitely in order. Neil works his derriere off to keep us prepared, suggesting activities around which we can structure whole lessons, forming the syllabus, and training us during lunch hours. His experience and his attention to the needs of our classes have done a lot to orient me inthis world, and while I quietly kill the hidden hopes I had of teaching poetry or incorporating creative writing elements into my lessons, I fill the space they leave with more practical goals of creating a base of understanding, of motviating these bright and curious kids to keep coming to a school that is both entirely superfluous to their basic survival and invaluable in terms of exposing them to playfulness, to classrooms that don't revolve around copying off a board, to lateral thinking (maybe, hopefully, please) and a freedom to try things-- speaking, writing-- even when the result isn't perfect that I am learning along with them.

I still have reservations about teaching English. I've read a bit too much postcolonial theory not to recognize the trouble with teaching the language of a world power to a community who will probably only ever come in contact with it in the service sector, pampering its tourists, or emigrating to its cities and farms and laboring to maintain its standard of living. I got my first teenager trying to sell me pot in the center the other day, claiming in broken English that by not buying I was insulting the country he loved, and I almost started crying at the thought that this bitter boy might be an example of how my kids end up applying what I teach them. U.S. language textbooks and their focus on the vocabulary of toursim, of exchange rates and ordering in restaurants and asking for directions, would be almost entirely useless here-- unless you invert all the dialogues and train your students to wait tables and answer guests' complaints, and even that assumes that these kids will leave subsistence farming, and maybe implies that they should. Ultimately I have to fall back on the realization that they choose to come to us, that I'm offering something they decide if they want or not. The subject is only part of the bargain. The difference between our casual, multi-approach classrooms and the strict copy culture of the government schools, the chance we emphasize to learn that the teacher is not the ultimate authority and that your peers make excellent resources, the time to play football (soccer, whatever-- I'm getting used to it) or jacks or to arm wrestle with your teachers (I took on and beat two wiry fourteen year olds the other day, one arm after the other, and am still rather proud) are the side benefits of the program that might ultimately be more important than the subject matter we convey. Yeah. Because despite my theoretical doubts, I feel pretty good doing what I'm doing. Teaching is sor of like flashing the possibility of other worlds at your students, murmuring that the knowledge we offer can change the way they look at the world or live their lives, giving them a sense that there's a lot in the world to know, and if it seems cruel to plant the seed of a longing that might never be fulfilled, what else has education ever really done for any of us, at least the ones who like it? I don't think ignorance of what we're missing has ever made us happier, really. I dunno. I am sure there is plenty more where these ramblings come from, and I'll probably scribble more of them down eventually. Til then....