Tongue Tied

My co-teacher is sick yet again – I feel bad for her. She came in this morning and said “can you believe I am sick again – I am allergic to the Normal School.” I had to laugh at that comment since it is the fifth week of school and she is now sick for the second time (sneezing, losing her voice, and occasional coughing). This is the reason why our lesson plans for today went askew.

Our classes are little bit behind and so we started this week off by trying to wrap up last week’s topic of communication. A topic that is not all that interesting when it is broken down into stages to be examined in a classroom, so to get things started on a good foot, I again suggested playing a fun game – Telephone! Who doesn’t enjoy playing telephone – by the end of the chain, the message is so different that you can’t help but laugh sometimes. That is exactly what happened in my classes. Start out with short messages and then longer ones. A message like “Blue is my favorite color” somehow was turned into “boat for friend.” There was even one that I started, in English of course, but when I asked the last person to share the message, it came out in Spanish – how does that happen?

We were all set to wrap-up communication with a group project I had created when all of sudden Cynthia comes in yesterday and says she was told we had to cover another aspect of communication. She showed me the sheet that she had been handed and my jaw dropped….big words and concepts like syntax, morphology, and phraseology were all over this sheet. There is no way these students are going to understand all of these concepts in English, yet we have to teach it because we are at a teachers high school and must also teach elements of pedagogy along with our normal lesson plans. Cynthia had planned on going home last night and studying these concepts because some of them were also new to her and had planned to make a summary sheet for the students. She, however, got sick and did not get around to doing this, so today, we made stuff up. She asked me if I knew any tongue twisters – I rattled a few off and she smiled.

Instead of starting the daunting task of covering the pedagogy aspect of communication – I covered tongue twisters! Two of my three classes today had to play catch up, so only my last class of the day got to do this and they are my favorite class. I wrote two tongue twisters on the board, thinking to myself that the “sh” sounds in one would be harder than the “p” sounds of the other – wrong. Nearly all of my students mastered “She sells sea shells down by the sea shore” today. I was shocked because the “sh” does not exist in Spanish, only the “ch,” and as native English speakers know, they make different sounds (aka chip vs. ship). The one I thought would be easier, “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” was in fact difficult for them, even for Cynthia too. I made three columns out the students seats and would have a small group of students say one tongue twister at time all together, correcting only the major pronunciation mistakes. After this, they wanted class to be over, so I asked for two volunteers to say each one them by themselves in order for class to be over. At the sound of that, one of my most confident student’s hand shot into the air like a toy rocket ship – he went for the sea shell one with great success. After this, one of quietest students, to my surprise, raised her hand, she stumbled a little, but she also made it through the sea shell one. Class was officially over after this, ending about 15 minutes early, but instead of racing out the door, most students one by one or in a group of two or three of good friends excitedly walked up to me wanting to say the tongue twister by themselves to me before leaving class. Almost every single student came up to me, with some shoving to get to me before one of their friends on occasion, and nearly all of them relayed the tongue twister accurately. I was a happy proud gringa teacher, especially with my quiet students, because to my grand surprise, they were fairly accurate as well! Everyone got a high-five after a wonderful performance of the “sea shell” tongue twister – nobody liked Peter Piper today!

Complicated

“Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?”

No life in Panama has not gotten complicated……not to my knowledge anyway. The line above is a line of lyrics from a song by Avril Lavigne. Last week was the third week of school and our theme for the week was reviewing present tense verbs. In Panama, you can’t really plan for one class period at a time, you just have to plan for the week and keep track of where each class ends so that you can pick up there when you see them again. I had a few ideas rolling around in my head starting on Monday after my teacher told me what theme of the week would be, but the first thing that popped into my head – MUSIC!

I have been waiting to jump at the chance to use music in the classroom. I think with the right choice of songs, it can be a great way to connect with the students, especially my 12th grade teenagers. The first thing we did last week was introduce the song as a warm-up activity of sorts. The song you wonder – “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne. I know some of you are laughing now, but this was a great choice….the kids loved it and my class that is nothing but girls, sang along the entire time. Grammar is not fun, in my opinion, so anything to make it less painful is great. I think I succeeded.

To keep things rolling with the fun times, I had more games prepared for the week and while executing these activities I wish I had had my camera out instead of teaching because it was hilarious some of the things they came up with. The first game of the week – Tell Tale. Thanks to the wonderful Kimmie Johnson I was introduced to a wonderful game called Tell Tale, a game that has double-sided picture cards in a tin can that are used as inspiration to tell off the wall crazy stories because you never know what picture will show up next. I didn’t use it exactly this way since my students are not at that level yet, but I used the cards as inspiration for the students’ writing activity. Cynthia and I split every class in half so we would each have a small group and then proceeded from there. Each student was given a picture card and had to write a sentence for each side of the card and then read it aloud to me – a double whammy activity! Not every picture was normal, which is what made this so much fun. There are pictures of aliens, monsters, witches, fairies, etc. Those were the funny sentences!

Our final fun activity of the week – Charades! When we listened to “Complicated” at the beginning of the week, the kids had to find all of the present tense and present continuous verbs in the song. We made our list, changed the continuous verbs to simple tense, and then let the students look up the meanings. For charades, we used these verbs as the things they had to act out. Each class had two teams and one team would send a person to the front to be the guesser. They would face the class and I would write a verb on the board for the rest of the group to act out while the person at the front tried to guess. Now, the words I needed my camera for – strike, fall, yell, and crawl. Half the time there was so much confusion from all the laughing of pretend hitting each other, crawling on the floor, and boys acting like fools as they fell out of their chairs. It was indeed another a successful activity!

Last week was a fun week in the classroom! To make things even better – first thing Monday of this week, my co-teacher tells all of our classes that in 4 weeks they will be performing “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne for us in small groups! I will make sure to have my camera for that and will find a way to post the videos of my students singing Avril Lavigne.

Escuela Normal…not so normal

Sorry for the delay, but life has been busy and exhausting in Panama over the last two weeks. Yesterday marked the beginning of my third week of teaching at the Escuela Normal. It has been a positive experience so far. On the first day of school, all three of us who were placed at the Normal arrived around 6:50AM to meet the English Coordinator who would then introduce us to our Panamanian co-teachers. Mike and I arrived at about the same time and were lucky enough to meet the vice-principal before she headed off to the gym to prepare for the assembly. I met my co-teacher first and was whisked away to the gym to find a seat for the assembly. My co-teacher’s name is Cyntia Calles and this is her first teaching at the Normal as well; she has been teaching out in the countryside for the past few years. She is very happy that she was relocated closer to a more suburban area because in Panama you do not chose where you want to teach, the government assigns you to your school.

The first day of school assembly lasted forever. First, it started nearly half an hour late because most things in Panama do not start on time…..unless it is run by a foreigner. Then we moved into the pleasantries of the morning with the marching in of the Panamanian flag, national anthem, another song, and a prayer by the school’s priest. Finally, the vice-principal and principal make their speeches, but this was not entirely a good thing. I heard many of the other teachers describe the principal as an airplane during her speeches; she seems to be winding down and about to wrap up, much like a plane coming in for landing, but then she suddenly takes off again and we are off on another long-winded adventure. Despite the fact that I am not fluent in Spanish, I was able to experience this by catching a few words here and there that sounded like she would wrap up soon, but no, her voice would pick up pace again and off we went on another tangent. Once these long-winded pleasantries were exchanged, it was finally time to move around a little. Each department was called up and every teacher had to introduce themselves to the entire school….luckily Anna Maria, who is my English Coordinator at Normal, decided that the English department would use English to introduce themselves this year (phew). Of course the three gringos got a little more clapping than everyone else, what else could you expect! The one thing that made this entire thing interesting was Jessica, another volunteer at my school, and her co-teacher who sat behind me. The students would clap and cheer on occasion for the teachers they liked, especially if that teacher was to be theirs for the year. I heard Nixa, Jessica’s co-teacher, saying either “tomatoes for him” or “flowers for her” for various teachers. This was a fun way of finding out which teachers people liked and didn’t like. If people didn’t like you – you got “tomatoes” and if you were well liked, then you “flowers.” Once I caught on to this, I could help but laugh every time she would say something; it livened things up a bit and there were quite a few metaphorical tomatoes throne too!

When we were finally released, it was to be a normal day at the Normal. Apparently nothing gets done on the first day of school. Each class of students has one their teachers who is also their adviser and the first day of school was spent sitting in the classroom with these students doing almost nothing for almost 3 hours. The only things to be done were to hand each student their $20 check from MEUDCA, the ministry of education, and wait to take them to stand in line to receive their backpacks and supplies, which were also from MEDUCA. That was is; the very long and boring first day of school.

Since the first day, I have been getting used to my schedule of classes (which I sometimes spend a lot of time walking from one end of the building to the other to get to the next class) and attempting to learn my student’s names. I do not see each class every day and there are about 17-22 students in each of my six classes. My co-teacher and I work quite well together, especially since I was thrown into the thick of things quickly. Cyntia got sick on the second day of school and lost most of her voice, so I became her voice. Between Cyntia being sick and having random meeting during class, I taught a number of our classes the first week pretty much on my own. Despite this unexpected turn of events, I managed to stay on my own two feet and now have a great relationship with my co-teacher. On Friday of the last week she brought me a cake that her 20-year-old son had made. For whatever the reason she brought it, I was happy to have a cake! I of course shared with the other volunteers as we met for lunch that afternoon to decompress celebrate the end of our first week of teaching. Although since the first Friday, Cyntia has brought me many presents – pieces of two other different kinds of cakes her son also made and sweets from other parts of Panama. I can not remember the names of everything I have tried, but it has all been very yummy…and fattening too I’m sure. Thus ends my first week of school and what a whirl wind it was!

A Refreshing Start

Now that I have vented my frustration to the world, I can go to enjoying life with my host family and my co-teacher. There are going to be days where I will sound over critical and days where I will having the time of my life, it is just all part of riding the wave. When I got home yesterday I said hello to my little brither who was sitting at the table when I walked in and then I made a beeline for my room. It was 3pm and I was tired. I changed out of my teacher clothes and into my comfy shorts and a tank top, turned my fan on high, and found a comfortable spot on my bed. Two hours later I woke up feeling oh so much happier and relaxed, even the heat did not seem to bother me too much. I went out to the living room and proceeded to watch the news with my host dad – my daily routine for attempting to practice Spanish. After dinner, the family went to visit some grandparents and possibly go to church, but I stayed home. The house all to myself for almost 2 hours. I was going to plug my laptop into an outlet in the living room and watch something on Hulu, but then I realized I could listen to music a little louder than I normally do and sing along too. Opened up Itunes and away we went, listening to my American music, singing along to some songs, and checking email and Facebook. It was nice to not have to worry about if my music was too loud or not for the other people in the house. My music was nowhere near as loud as at the fiesta the other night, but that´s  a cultural thing I will come to deal with. My sensitive ears will adjust and I´m sure by June I won´t shy away from hanging out with the people who sit right in front of the violently vibrating speakers. It has only been a month, so I´m still in the adjustment phase.

This morning I was greeted with a wonderful surprise. After finishing my breakfast at the table, brushing my teeth, and doing a final make-up check, I hear something outside. Every time I hear such a sound, I am always half hoping it is rain, but it has always been the rustling sound of the trees and palms blowing in the wind. This morning was different; my little brother appeared in my doorway and said ¨the water¨ and then motioned in a way that meant falling. I immediately said ¨Rain!¨ I know that the beginning of the rainy season is not pleasant because when the rain stops it becomes humid and sticky, but this was the first rain. The first rain and it started in the morning while it is still cool and made everything appear green and fresh. I loved the smell of the rain, something I always miss whenever I am in a dry climate. I made it to school, where my host mom kindly dropped me off under the side entrance where there is a covered drop-off instead letting me out at the front like she normally does. The school hallways were cooler than usual and had a scent of fresh rain wafting through the air. It was still raining. The rain would pour and then slow down a bit, then pour again. In the classroom I just in, the students closed the windows to muffle the sounds of the rain while the students gave their first presentations of the short dialogues they had written. As I exited the class with my co-teacher, about 30 minutes ago, I noticed the rain had almost stopped. It was a good rain! A much-needed rain! A rain to wash away all the ups and downs of my weekend and to give this week a fresh clean start in more ways than one. Today I love the rain! Ask me again in another month or two I how I feel about the rain, the answer may be different. For now, I am happy that there is moisture in the air again and that there are gray clouds hiding the intensity of the sun´s heat!

Pictures of the rain at school to come this afternoon when I get home to my laptop 🙂

Escuela Normal

For the past two weeks I have spent every day, except for Sunday, training for teaching and making lesson plans for my practice teaching sessions. Starting February 27, I will be at my host school here in Santiago and co-teaching with a Panamanian host teacher during the morning sessions. I have been able to see the beauty of the Escuela Normal many times during training because of various things going on around the country, the museum where our practice teaching classes were to be held was closed and we had to scramble to find to open classrooms at Normal. Looking at the outside of the school it does not look to be as large as it really is. Every time I think I have found the back of the school, I look out another window and there’s more of the school. This place is HUGE and it is absolutely beautiful with its colonial Spanish architecture (which really is not found in this area of Panama).

Once you walk in through the grand doors, you realize why this building is a historical building. The school is open air, with a very large courtyard in the middle of the front half of the school. In the courtyard there is a swimming pool, basketball court, tennis court, volleyball court, and nice paths around everything so you can also enjoy the shade of large trees or the beauty of the flowers. Wrapped around the courtyard are two levels of classrooms filled with students in the morning and filled with another group in the afternoon. This is how they help prevent overcrowding in the schools – make every school into two. The first session is roughly from 7-12 and the second 1-6. The major, especially for any teachers who read this, is that the students do not change classrooms, the teachers do. You have to pack up everything you need for your lesson for the day and carry it around with you to every class – in my it is about 5 classes.

The classrooms have very tall vaulted ceilings, leaving lots of room for echoing, not to mention the addition of all the noise from outside filtering in through the open windows. I have only been in the classrooms in the afternoon, but I am hoping that the outside noise is not as bad in the morning as it is in the afternoon because it is very hard to productive when you can only understand and hear every 5th word someone says. It will be an adventure for sure – team teaching with a Panamanian teacher and lugging lessons all over the gigantic school every morning. Only one week until my first day in the classroom – February 27th. I will be observing the first to get the lay of the land and build a relationship with my co-teacher before I start teaching English lessons to the students. So until Thursday, when the last two days of training begins, I am going to continue enjoying sleeping in and dancing in the streets all afternoon with my extended host family for Carnaval!

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