Now for the news!
We´re wrapping up a school year here at Nuevo Mundo. Recent weeks saw me running like a madwoman to keep up with the pace. Since I review the content and grammar for ALL English language materials, finals week kept me moving. Lately I´ve had LOTS of grading to do thanks to our new, ´´experimental´´ system. We´re still working out some kinks, which means I made and graded about 225 exams in 4 days, and other teachers neither made nor graded any. Every year is another chance to get it right...right...? Also, since we´re moving to the IB system, which means lots of critical thinking work and essay-writing, I ended up with so many hours of grading (over 30!) that I recruited Jake. The vice principal Rodolfo took advantage Jake´s English fluency as well and had him grading History, Psychology, and Business exams. It´s been a crazy few weeks.
Now I´m into the somewhat uncomfortable phase in which I give feedback to teachers and make recommendations about who stays and who goes. I have at least 3 who are heading out the door, and one other I will strongly recommended we let go. I´ve never had my word carry weight in whether someone keeps or loses their job - it´s hard to be honest when I know that honesty will complicate the life of people I like personally, but don´t think can handle the job. Any tips from people with management experience?
Jake has been busy here at Mundo between grading and now teaching another weeklong prep course for incoming students. He has his hands full this time because they are Foundation students rather than morning school students. To refresh you, the morning school is composed of wealthy students, while the foundation draws from the poorer communities in Guayaquil and Duran. Understandably, the Foundation students are much less prepared, especially in English, and Jake found yesterday that even his simplest English and best acting couldn´t communicate his point. We´re forbidden from speaking Spanish, so he´ll have quite a week.
The weather here is getting insufferable (for a Midwesterner). Now, it´s even hot and sticky at night. We´re very lucky to have an air conditioner in one room of our house and this past week we finally gave in and turned it on. What a wonderful indulgence! Bugs have been awful - we get lots of ´´grillos´´ which are enormous crickets that find their way into the house no matter how well we close it. Then they hide in our clothes and sing all night to wake us up, so we spend 10 minutes every morning killing bugs. I´m not particularly squeamish, but even I´ll say it´s pretty gross, especially when you find them in your shoes in the morning.
The rains have held off here to the point that we´re experiencing water shortages. This doesn´t effect us because we´re repeat clients who empty an entire tanker of water into our cistern every time we call, so we´re a more profitable investment than the neighbors who ask for only a barrel or two. Even when the neighbors can´t get water, we can (it makes me a little uncomfortable to think about white privilege, but I also really like the fact that I´m not as vulnerable as my neighbors. It´s confusing to feel both of those). Again, to refresh, our neighborhood does not have running water and large tanker trucks full of non-potable water continuously circle through to fill up the buckets and barrels people place outside their houses and bring in, bucket by bucket, for showering and diswashing. We´re lucky enough to have a large, underground cistern and a pump that brings water to the tap in our house. Drinking water is available at the corner store and we buy it in large, company-water-cooler-size jugs. And when I say we, I mean Jake because I can barely carry that much liquid for three blocks and he chivalrously rises to the occasion. What a gentleman.
We´re both getting back into the swing of things. Going home and seeing friends and family was wonderful, but a little disorienting. It feels like THIS is the place I should be visiting, and THERE is the place I belong. Seeing you all for a brief vacation and then returning ´´home´´ to Ecuador felt strange and left me in limbo for a while. Finally, a few weeks later, my spirit is catching up to my body.
One of the volunteers, Steve, hosted his family here this week. What a treat to have other English speakers around! Jake and I are lucky to have the volunteers, but having new people with new stories is such a novelty. It´s strange to think that it´s a luxury to have companions you can easily communicate with but in a foreign country, it absolutely is.
Take care all, and feel free to comment here of via email!
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Inicio
Dear friends and family,
Ok, you were all right - a blog is a better way to keep in touch. To those who kept up with my previous blog during my first tour in Ecuador, the link still works, but I haven´t updated it. Come here for news.
For a first entry, I´m posting the initial email I sent to all of you in early November as a reminder of what I´m doing (it´s a little unorthodox - I forgive you if you forgot). I´ll follow this with another post to give updates. From November:
*********
In the last few weeks, I´ve gotten enough emails saying, ´´Hey, I´ll be in Chicago soon - can we get together?´´ to make me think I haven´t properly informed most of you about my current job and recent move. So, time for a catch-up.
I lost my job in July due to State budget cuts that eliminated my position (and half of the funding for social services in Illinois, which thankfully is now almost completely restored). Less than a week later I found out that the bilingual school where I taught while in Ecuador had lost the head of their English Dept. After a few international phone calls, I packed my bags and headed to Guayaquil.
On September 28 I flew down to Ecuador with Jake, my boyfriend of a year, and have spent the last month absorbing and producing as much as possible with LOTS left to do (exciting!). Our school year ends in February, but I will likely stay in Ecuador through the winter vacation and continue at Mundo until July 2010.
And, dear friends and family, please continue to share your lives with me while I´m away. Homesickness is an ugly foe and getting updates from you softens its force, helping me to be more present both here and there. You may deem your life ´´boring´´ next to my ´´adventures´´ in Ecuador – I label your world familiar, inviting, and, most importantly, yours. I want to participate in it as much as possible. Write! About yourself! Please!
Lastly, thanks to all of you for your endless support that energizes me enough to do things (like move to Ecuador with little notice) that push me to think and grow. Every one of you had a hand in forming who I am, and I´m grateful to you.
Below I´m including a little more depth on what I´m doing here. More to come soon, including the requisite, ´´You won´t believe this crazy thing that happened to me in South America´´ stories. Peace be with you!
Un abrazo,
Chris
P.S: If I forgot anyone you know who would like to receive messages from me, please let me know.
My job. I supervise 16 teachers in Language, Business, Psychology, History, and Computer science in grades 7-12. The school, Unidad Educativa Bilingue Nuevo Mundo (or ´´Mundo´´ in all subsequent emails because the name is painfully long), just applied for and received International Baccalaureate certification, but they need some help getting curriculum and instruction up to snuff. Thus, a major part of my job is to train teachers to move beyond Remembering and Explaining questions into ones that ask students to Apply, Evaluate, and Create (any teachers out there have a background in Bloom´s Taxonomy? I´ll need ideas!). Day to day, this means I spend my time advising teachers, editing English classroom materials, observing and evaluating faculty, and somehow designing a curriculum workshop for teachers in whatever free time is left.
But Chris, you may be saying, didn´t you study Spanish and Peace Studies? Don´t you have absolutely no training in Education and only a few months of practical experience? What the hell were they thinking when they hired you?!
I agree! What nonsense! I equally doubted their good judgment (and thus my own, for accepting a job I wasn´t sure I could handle). Now that I´m here, I see (a bit) more clearly why they asked me to come. Education in Ecuador and many countries, including some schools in the US, is typically based on rote memorization and regurgitation. At best, this lets students skate by without thinking. At worst, it´s just plain boring. Sadly, ´´regurgitation tests´´ are oh-so-easy to grade that many teachers gravitate towards them. They´re also the kinds of lessons that most of our Ecuadorian-educated teachers grew up with, and asking them to teach the students to think critically is simply a non-concept. It´s not that they don´t want to try (well, some of them don´t) - it´s that they were never taught what ´´Compare and contrast...´´ and ´´Evaluate the validity of...´´ mean.
But, educated by parents and teachers who just loved Socratic questioning, I understand this by experience in a way that most teachers here don´t. My job, then, is to reflect on, read about, and analyze the pedagogy I´ve benefitted from and train others to use it as well. So yes, I´m in a little over my head, and certainly over my training. And I love it. What a challenge!
Thanks for your interest in my world. Please share yours, too.
(Note for educators: As your reading this, if you think of any books that would help me do my job better, please send recommendations. Thank you!)
Ok, you were all right - a blog is a better way to keep in touch. To those who kept up with my previous blog during my first tour in Ecuador, the link still works, but I haven´t updated it. Come here for news.
For a first entry, I´m posting the initial email I sent to all of you in early November as a reminder of what I´m doing (it´s a little unorthodox - I forgive you if you forgot). I´ll follow this with another post to give updates. From November:
*********
In the last few weeks, I´ve gotten enough emails saying, ´´Hey, I´ll be in Chicago soon - can we get together?´´ to make me think I haven´t properly informed most of you about my current job and recent move. So, time for a catch-up.
I lost my job in July due to State budget cuts that eliminated my position (and half of the funding for social services in Illinois, which thankfully is now almost completely restored). Less than a week later I found out that the bilingual school where I taught while in Ecuador had lost the head of their English Dept. After a few international phone calls, I packed my bags and headed to Guayaquil.
On September 28 I flew down to Ecuador with Jake, my boyfriend of a year, and have spent the last month absorbing and producing as much as possible with LOTS left to do (exciting!). Our school year ends in February, but I will likely stay in Ecuador through the winter vacation and continue at Mundo until July 2010.
And, dear friends and family, please continue to share your lives with me while I´m away. Homesickness is an ugly foe and getting updates from you softens its force, helping me to be more present both here and there. You may deem your life ´´boring´´ next to my ´´adventures´´ in Ecuador – I label your world familiar, inviting, and, most importantly, yours. I want to participate in it as much as possible. Write! About yourself! Please!
Lastly, thanks to all of you for your endless support that energizes me enough to do things (like move to Ecuador with little notice) that push me to think and grow. Every one of you had a hand in forming who I am, and I´m grateful to you.
Below I´m including a little more depth on what I´m doing here. More to come soon, including the requisite, ´´You won´t believe this crazy thing that happened to me in South America´´ stories. Peace be with you!
Un abrazo,
Chris
P.S: If I forgot anyone you know who would like to receive messages from me, please let me know.
My job. I supervise 16 teachers in Language, Business, Psychology, History, and Computer science in grades 7-12. The school, Unidad Educativa Bilingue Nuevo Mundo (or ´´Mundo´´ in all subsequent emails because the name is painfully long), just applied for and received International Baccalaureate certification, but they need some help getting curriculum and instruction up to snuff. Thus, a major part of my job is to train teachers to move beyond Remembering and Explaining questions into ones that ask students to Apply, Evaluate, and Create (any teachers out there have a background in Bloom´s Taxonomy? I´ll need ideas!). Day to day, this means I spend my time advising teachers, editing English classroom materials, observing and evaluating faculty, and somehow designing a curriculum workshop for teachers in whatever free time is left.
But Chris, you may be saying, didn´t you study Spanish and Peace Studies? Don´t you have absolutely no training in Education and only a few months of practical experience? What the hell were they thinking when they hired you?!
I agree! What nonsense! I equally doubted their good judgment (and thus my own, for accepting a job I wasn´t sure I could handle). Now that I´m here, I see (a bit) more clearly why they asked me to come. Education in Ecuador and many countries, including some schools in the US, is typically based on rote memorization and regurgitation. At best, this lets students skate by without thinking. At worst, it´s just plain boring. Sadly, ´´regurgitation tests´´ are oh-so-easy to grade that many teachers gravitate towards them. They´re also the kinds of lessons that most of our Ecuadorian-educated teachers grew up with, and asking them to teach the students to think critically is simply a non-concept. It´s not that they don´t want to try (well, some of them don´t) - it´s that they were never taught what ´´Compare and contrast...´´ and ´´Evaluate the validity of...´´ mean.
But, educated by parents and teachers who just loved Socratic questioning, I understand this by experience in a way that most teachers here don´t. My job, then, is to reflect on, read about, and analyze the pedagogy I´ve benefitted from and train others to use it as well. So yes, I´m in a little over my head, and certainly over my training. And I love it. What a challenge!
Thanks for your interest in my world. Please share yours, too.
(Note for educators: As your reading this, if you think of any books that would help me do my job better, please send recommendations. Thank you!)
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