I’ve struggled with a bit of a writer’s block, but now that school is ready to start in one week, I can fill everyone in on what I’ve learned about the system here. Teachers have had a 2 month “summer vacation”-- if they were lucky. My counterparts have been going to school during the vacation, usually half days, to try to secure their position as English teachers. Many of them studied something else in college and if they want to teach English they need, quite justifiably, to learn enough English to be effective. Three of the four use no English in their classes. English is taught in Spanish. Needless to say there’s a lot of rote teaching of grammatical rules and lists of vocabulary and very little practice speaking. The courses these teachers take are more of the same. I’ve tutored two teachers during the vacation and I can say that they are not learning much that would help them with the job. No wonder, they teach as they were taught.
Two weeks before the students show up, the teachers appear daily at the instituto. What do they do? They had a full day presentation on interfamilial violence sponsored by the national police and an NGO. After that day, though, each morning half of the teachers register students and half prepare the classrooms. No one knows what classes they will teach because no one knows how many students will enroll for the year. That’s why the registration. There is no support staff except for one secretary and one lady who sweeps the hallways and waters the plants outside and monitors access to the bathrooms—no guidance department, registrar or administrative assistant, And so half of the teachers sit at tables outside and register any student who shows up with proof he passed the previous grade. This goes on for two weeks and then the business of forming classes and assigning teachers can begin. That should happen by the 10th and classes start on the 13th. For me this means I have been unable to work with my teachers to prepare a schedule for myself or even to start preparing for the 13th. I am told that the class assignments we receive on the 10th aren’t final at any rate. There will all sorts of changes until mid-March.
The other half of the teachers are preparing classrooms. This means they literally wash them down, ceiling to floor. They take down last year’s bulletin boards and replace them with new touting the virtues of the socialist state as last year’s did. Nicaragua has a moral and political base to class and curriculum. The kids are taught politically and socially articulated values, like the value of community and solidarity. I’ll be interested in watching how this plays out this year as we teach.
The teachers assigned to classrooms have another job as well. It is apparently hard to flunk out because there are always other chances. The school offers tests to any student who failed a class. Moreover, the teachers post what will be on the test and are available during the first two weeks to help students prepare for it. I’ve sat in on a few of these sessions—all of them the same half hour review of the time and what people do in the morning-- and I’ll be interested to see if the test is a duplicate of the exact material reviewed.
No one complains. No one articulates disdain for the jobs assigned. I can sit and have a conversation with a math teacher who is patiently cutting out letters he’s traced for the bulletin board slogans. He’s happy to talk, but then again he’s happy to cut. One day last week someone brought in ingredients for soup and while all this registration and classroom work was going on some people broke away to build a fire, set out a pot of water to boil and start the cutting up of meat and vegetables. People looked happy to be doing that as well.
I make school sound like an island of camaraderie and it is. The teachers appear to love sitting and talking with one another. But I also hear complaints about the “chisme” (gossip) which is also a part of the school world. The complainers recite that what they say is repeated and that others are eager to bad things about the others. This belief is widely held. It makes me so careful about what I say. Any hint of discontent on my part with a person or a system will spread, I’m afraid, like wildfire. It’s hard, too, because once I’ve established “confianza” (confidence) with a teacher, as I am happy to say I have with 2 of my counterparts, and after they have confided in me about their difficulties, it’s hard not to be candid about my own. But it’s a bad idea, especially if anything connected to the school is the source of my problem, or anyone in the community for that matter. Even an apparently neutral remark, like my observation that the principal of the school works very hard, is an opening. Why doesn’t she hire help? She makes more than they do.
The net result of all the uncertainty, after is caused me some discomfort, has been to make me relax. I’ll be ready when I need to be, whenever that is. No use stressing about it. I’m off to the instituto now. Maybe someone will let me cut out some letters or make crepe paper ruffles for the bulletin board. If not, I’ll head on down to the cyber to post this blog. Am I already a little Nicaraguense? Hope so.
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