End of Year Projects

With less than a month left of teaching left in the school year, my English classes have begun their end of year projects. I wanted to take this opportunity for my students to use the English they've learned during the year and actually put it into practice in an activity.

In 8th grade, we're reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. While not at the level where they can geniunely read the entire book, we're reading passages and learning vocabulary using the story as a frame work. I've been trying to focus on reading and understanding using content: the idea that they don't have to understand every word in order to understand what's happening!

We've just finished studying vocabulary from the first Sorting Hat Song. Here are some of the kids choosing houses to be in:

In 7th grade, we're learning how to write letters and are going to use our vocabulary to write letters to next year's 8th grade class at my home high school.

In 6th grade, we're learning about questions (starting off with the basic seven question words) and will use our vocabulary and our new knowledge to write and take part in interviews!

In 5th grade, we're reading a English Berenstein Bears book, Catch The Bus. It focuses on time and school language, so we're both using our old knowledge and learning new words.



In 4th grade, we're learning school vocabulary and using that to make a final end of year map of the school, with labels and pretty drawings. Here's an example of some of the vocabulary we're learning and examples of the kids' draft maps.




So far, it's been really enjoyable to be able to see the kids use their English and to see themselves suceeding at communication.

One more month to summer!

A Day with Ruth – 2nd of March, 2013

(in Spanish, the “th” sound goes unpronounced. Ruth’s name is therefore pronounced “Rue”)

On Saturday, I went to the nearby village of Habinero to visit one of my 7^th grade students, a young girl by the name of Ruth.

                           

Ruth is twelve years old and has two young brothers who live with her and her mother. I teach one of her younger brothers, Ismael, in sixth grade. Ruth would like to be an English teacher when she is older and seems pretty determined about it. (Even on days when she doesn’t have English class, she comes and finds me and asks for a word of the day, to add to her ever growing English vocabulary.)

When I arrived in Habinero, having caught a ride with another volunteer, Ruth’s cousin, a boy called Anderson, walked me to her house on the outskirts of the village. (Amusingly, Anderson seemed to be infatuated with a young girl in my 7^th grade class called Perla.) I gave quite a surprise to my students who saw me walking through the village, unused to seeing me outside of my own village.

Ruth had cooked lunch and was very proud to serve me up a full Dominican bandera – rice (by the pound), beans and fried salami in sauce. I helped her mother to sort clothes for sale and then Ruth, her family and I sat outside in the breeze while Ruth’s mother ate her own lunch.

Then Ruth showed me around her neighbourhood of Habinero, introducing me to other students and their families, pointing our houses of family and people she thought I should know. We bought sweet oranges from a girl with a big bowl of them and visited another one of my students, Carmen Lina, and her brothers. Ismael showed off with his slingshot and we watched 15 minutes of, bizarrely enough, a Spanish dub of Dodgeball that was playing on Carmen Lina’s tiny tv.

Poignantly, on the way home, Ruth pointed out a small square of concrete next to a deep, rocky trench, with a single room still standing on the edge of the concrete. This was where Ruth’s house had stood, until the tropical storm Isaac washed it away in August of last year. Ruth’s current house, on the edge of the village, was built by the government while Ruth and her family stayed with an aunt in Barahona, the nearby city. The rocky trench I had not noticed earlier was the path the river followed when it overflowed its banks.

Back at home, we fried plaintains and salami for a snack and ate sitting in the back doorway, watching chickens peck at the packed earth. We talked about school and Ismael’s hobby of fighting fish. Her younger brothers demonstrated their reading ability out of coveted textbooks and told me about their classes at Habinero’s small primary school. At the end of the day, Ruth’s uncle took us back to La Hoya on his motorbike and Ruth and I said goodbye at the school gate.

I enjoyed getting to experience another village and pass time with my students, spending my free time in the same way as the children I teach. It was eye-opening to see how some of my most disadvantaged students live and work but rewarding to witness the fruit of my time in the community as I recognised friends and was recognised by students.

Carneval in La Vega!

 

Today we visited the famous carneval of La Vega! We took a gua-gua from the capital to arrive at the hotwl with plenty of time to get stuck in in the carneval. 

The whole town of La Vega turns into one giant carneval making machine for the whole month of February. Everyone in the town is part of a carneval group that spends the whole year preparing for the month of February, making their costumes and preparing for the four Sundays of Carneval. The atmosphere is one of a giant street party, every house and business converted to selldrinks and snacks to revelers and the streets full of vendors and people celebrating. 

The Parade:

At it's heart, Carneval in La Vega is a big parade of all the costumed "diablos". There are hundreds of differents groups, made up of different ages and genders. Families participate together, from girls and boys as young as eight and nine all the way up to the upper generations.

The Costumes:

The costumes are all meticulously put together, obviously planned and worked on for the entire year. It's almost impossible to see that there are humans inside and they must be hot and very uncomfortable, because most participants remove their masks to be able to breathe. The costumes make noise, sparkle and are covered in about every colour you can think of. Some groups obviously prioritise creepiness, others try to be big and impressive, others focus on traditional sparkly devil forms. No matter what, participants are obviously intensely proud of their costumes and love to show them off and take pictures.

 

The Butt-Hitting:

It is utterly impossible to describe a day at Carneval in La Vega without recounting the constant state of fear in which you exist as practically every diablo (and quite a few other people as well) try to sneak up on you and hit you as hard on possible on the butt with their whips. Many diablos will simply tap you but the moment you turn you back, you'll be whipped as hard as possible with a long rope ended up a heavy weight. Speaking from personal experience, IT IS INCREDIBLY PAINFUL. Any and all walking has to be executed with an escort and with a constant eye on your behind. You truly spend the whole day afraid for the integrity of your behind!

The experience was a ton of fun and full of "alegria" as we participated in the peculiarly Dominican way of having fun (a holiday all about hitting people on the butt!).

Teaching Experiences

1.      Fourth grade spend a whole class colouring in rocks with crayons so that we can play counting games with the finished products. I am seen collecting rocks from all over the school during the day and children are seem looking for rocks all throughout class. I am beginning to develop a slight reputation as unhinged.

2.      Making flashcards with Fifth graders of items you can find in the classroom, ending up with several hundred flashcards of tables with six legs and “teachers” that look like bizarre humanoid monsters with suspiciously pale skin.

3.      “Describe a person in the classroom” with 7^th grade. Rosa, upset after being punished by the classroom teacher, writes a description that describes her teacher Senor Thomas as “fat, ugly, stupid and mean”, all in faultless English.

4.      Learning numbers with Dominoes in Sixth grade. Guillermo answers “Who knows how to play Dominoes in English?” with “but profe! You don’t need to speak to play Dominoes!”

5.      While learning about countries and continents in 8^th grade, I am pulled into a minor disagreement with Isaac, who insists that the country of Denmark is part of China.

6.      Asked to substitute for the 5^th grade teacher in the afternoon, we have an impromptu visit to the library when it’s discovered that the textbooks I’m supposed to be teaching out of are missing. We go and read books for the last hour of school.

7. In the space of less than two hours of teaching, I confiscate a bouncy ball, three notebooks of non-English nature, a pencil, two sticks and two mangoes.

Cleaning House: Dominican Republic Style

Step One: flood the building. The entire floor must be covered in water, ideally to the point that you need to take your shoes off and roll your trousers up. Ankle depth is perfect.

Step Two: enthusiastically throws buckets of water on all surfaces you think need cleaning. The windows, the walls, doorways and especially in the corners. Splash intensity is more important than accuracy.

Step Three: wade through the water with a broom and begin to sweep the water out the front door or other entryways.

Step Four: mop the whole floor. Don’t be stingy with the bleach and cleaning fluids. Wring the mop by hand but don’t forget to spin it right at the end, flicking nearby individuals with bleachy water.

Step Five: sweep the soapy water out of the house, usually through the front door. Make sure people see you cleaning!

Step Six: let dry. Reward yourself with some well-earned chicken and fritos (fried plantains).

(Repeat these steps daily)

This was written (humorously) with experience after helping clean out the building where we attend the weekly youth group. I was given Step Three as a job that I was unlikely to mess up. However, most Dominicans do clean their houses upwards of once a day, sweeping three or four times a day. This can be accounted for a number of reasons. La Hoya itself has only had paved roads for a handful of years, meaning that most people are still accustomed to dirt roads and a higher level of dust and dirt. Houses here are, on average, smaller. Most houses consist of about three or four rooms on a single floor, contained in a square footage that would settle comfortably into the average British person’s living room. Furthermore, most Dominicans don’t use garbage cans and there is no garbage collection in the village. When cooking or getting rid of trash, most people will just toss the offending item onto the floor (usually in the same sort of general area) and then later sweep it all out at once, usually onto the street or into an outdoor garbage pile that will later be burned.

Photos from the DR

Remember, you can always see more photos from the DR here at my flickr!

After Hurricane Isaac, a school chair left outside is found in a tree on the school grounds.



Eupa and Beatriz, both in Second Grade, pose for a picture on Christmas Day.


A cow joins the school during a parade through the village.



From left to right: Huwilda, Yuraidi, Betania (me!) and Lorenny, celebrating Christmas Dominican style.



Christmas morning, PT volunteer style. 



Beatriz in her school uniform, waiting for the school day to start.



Sobilenny, a fifth grader, during our parade through the village on the international day of no violence against women. 

Day in the Life

A typical day in my life as a PT English teacher in La Hoya.

7.00am – woken by my phone alarm. I’m curled up in the blanket I’ve thrown around myself while sleeping. My mosquito net has partially fallen down while I was sleeping but I’m too comfortable to move. The temperature in the morning is just right, one of the few times when it’s not too hot. Becky gets up to shower, which I take as my cue to fall back asleep.

7.30am – woken by children shouting and screaming as they walk past our house on their way to school. Realise I have to be at school in15 minutes and drag myself out of bed. Throw my dirty laundry into our laundry basket, throw on something clean, pull my hair into a pony tail and slap on some bug spray. Becky and I try to take turns carrying the laundry to Mota, our laundry lady, so I take it today. Then I stuff my planning notebook, chalk, pens, keys and phone into my purse and get out of the door bare minutes before I need to be at school. (Thankfully, it is literally a ten second walk away.)

8.00am – ‘fila’ at school. Students line up by grade and gender in front of the school gates. We say a prayer, sing a song and hear any announcements before singing the national anthem (of which I now know all the words) while the flag is raised. 

9.40-10.20am - It's a Monday, so I have my first class of the week: the dreaded 7th graders. 40 moody 7th graders shoved into a classroom barely big enough to contain them. I try to by turns to subdue them or cajole them into learning some English, which they manage about two thirds of the time. I feel sorry for the few kids who are trying to learn while being entertained by the jokers in the back who seem to see me as something of a personal challenge. 

11.20-12.00 - The morning shift of 5th graders. I call them a swing class. Some days are great and some days are classesare from hell. They're smart but hyper-active and even the slightest game or activity can send them into paroxysms of excitement. 

12.00am-2.00pm - Lunch break! Known variably as siesta or almuerzo, everyone goes home, eats a large lunch, usually of rice and something else (beans or veg) and then sleep. If there's electricity (and therefore hot water) I'll shower or try and get some work done and maybe manage to cat at 20 minute catnap before going back to school.

2.10pm - I teach 4th graders English in the nearby village of Hato Viejo on Monday afternoons. The school in Hato Viejo is a parnership school with my charity COPA, meaning that while COPA is not involved in the running or administration of the school, COPA does help out with materials and certain types of tuition: namely Art and English. My collegue, a Dominican woman called Rosemery, teaches Art to all grades in Hato Viejo (pre-school through fourth) while I just teach English to fourth graders and help out with the art classes. The class is small and well-behaved (they're less used to Americans and their teaching methods) but they are seriously further behind then my fourth graders in La Hoya and take much longer to learn the same materials. We play a lot of games and repeat topics over and over again. I find them adorable.

3.20-4.00pm - Sixth grade B. While the nicest of the two sixth grade classes, they're also the slowest and come form the poorest background. They are the only class to ever have attempted to steal school materials from my classes. 

5.00-5.40pm - The afternoon shift of 5th graders! The most disadvantaged students, they feed into COPA La Hoya at fifth grade, from the partnership schools of Habinero and Hato Viejo, which both terminate at 4th grade. They're enthusiatic, desperate to learn and adorable. They struggle with complicated topics but I find their classes the most enjoyable. 

5.40pm - School finishes with the ringing out the bell, singing of the national anthem and the lowering of the flag. Becky and I rush home and I start dinner, hoping to finish cooking before the sun sets and darkness sets in at 6.30pm (tonight it's stir fry). On Tuesdays and Thursdays we go to church but on Mondays we have the option of staying in or wandering down into the village, probably being forcefed a second dinner and sitting outside a house of a friend on plastic chairs. The verb for "hanging out" in Spanish is "compartir", which translates literally as "to share". Dominicans love to talk and hang out with their friends and I have to say, I've developed a taste for it myself. (although not for the mosquitos that bite at you throughout the night!)

10.15pm - our curfew is at 10.30 so time to go home! Someone with a motor (a run down motorbike that acts as the favored mode of transport here) will usually give us a lift back home, avoiding the dogs that hang around La Hoya during the night.

11.00pm - asleep by 11! If there's no power (there usually isn't), going to bed is a confusing mess of flashlights and oil lamps that we move around the house as we brush our teeth with clean drinking water (NOT TAP WATER) and set up our mosquito nets.

Tomorrow it starts all over again!