Movin' on Up: The Saga of my New Classroom

A blank canvas. The globe was the first thing to go up.

For the past 3 months I have been sharing a classroom with my fellow math teacher, Mr. Brian. We are both very laid back about the space, are respectful roommates and we have made a fine pair. I can’t think of an easier class “roommate” to have. We help each other out and use one another to bitch to at the end of every day, kind of like a married couple.

We got word at the beginning of this year that they were going to build a new classroom and one of us was going to get to have our own room. Although a new classroom is not in our eyes a top priority for the school ,we were excited about the prospects of having our own space and having our room free during our prep periods to legitimately prep (we trade off teaching in the room in a sort of chaotic tag-team teaching frenzy).

From its conception,  the evolution of this classroom project has been the perfect microcosm for how things work in Honduras. In order to understand this, first I must explain that there are two parts to our school. There is the nonprofit organization (BECA) who is based in the states and handles a huge portion of the funding from donors in the states, as well as  the hiring and coordinating of the gringo teachers and millions of other things. They work side by side with the “junta”, a parent organization  of Honduras who collaborated with BECA to make the school. The junta has its separate funds and is responsible for a lot of the financial decisions.

It is a really special model in which the community that we work within has a lot of control in the decision-making process: this is great, in theory. There is no denying, however, that anything that comes through BECA is extremely organized, timely, and well thought out and the projects that come from the “junta” are, well, Honduran.

My new classroom project was the perfect example. This summer, the junta decided that building a new classroom was a top priority. Brian and I function just fine sharing the classroom, but they chose this project instead of paying for textbooks, more training for the teachers or technology upgrades that our school desperately needs. It is so representative of a larger problem in Honduras in that Hondurans seem to conceptualize “progress” only in terms of building physical infrastructure.

Building a new classroom is something tangible and provides instant gratification. They fail to see the larger picture of what the students really need. Just to drive this point home, the last project that they proposed was to build a covered walkway from one wing of the school to the other wing so kids wouldn’t have to walk in the rain on the 10 days of the year when it rains during school hours. Absurd.

So anyway, we got word at the beginning of the year that this project might happen and, like most things here, you never know if something is actually going to happen until the day that it does. In September on one Friday, our principle told us that they were going to go ahead with the project starting on Monday. We were still doubtful. To our surprise though, the trucks started rolling through on Monday and for the next month, four men worked from sun up to sundown, hoisting bricks with a primitive pully system, sawing metal, and laying concrete. They worked all day.  Trying to teach through the construction was like hell on earth. It was impossible to teach over the noise and sparks from a soldering   (yes this is how you spell it… weird, right? I had to look it up) were literally flying through my classroom window. For a full account, of the chaos see a past post: here.

These men worked nonstop for a month and bam, there was a new classroom upstairs, with a roof and glassless windows and everything. Our principle came to me and said, “Mister, the room is done, you can move in now.” Excited, I went upstairs to find an empty classroom with open sockets for electricity without the accompanying wires, no desks and no whiteboard. I said, “Miss, there is no electricity, and no, whiteboard, and no desks, it will be difficult for me to teach here.”

My new classroom! It's.... blue!

She looked to one side, a little confused, and said, “la cosa es que…. (the thing is)” the junta only has enough money to finish the construction and now the money is gone. Are you sure you don’t want to move in anyway?” I gave the perfunctory pause, pretending to consider it, and judiciously said, “I would prefer to wait until the room is really ready.”

After men blitzed to get the room finished working all throughout the schoolday disturbing classes for a month, the room  just sat there empty, waiting for funds for another month. Well finally that day came. The junta somehow wrangled up the funds just in time to get it ready for “Intrega de Notas,” a day when all of the parents come to school to collect their students grades.

I just had my first class in the room today and it is awesome! It is upstairs away from the rest of the school, it’s quiet and well ventilated and is bright blue (awkwardly so, in fact). I asked them to paint it blue because the rest of the classes are of a sort of puke yellow. I was originally requesting to have them paint the inside of the building as blue, but instead, they painted the whole top story blue… lost in translation somehow. It is like teaching in heaven, on a cloud. I have a beautiful view of the mountains of Cusuco out my window, it gets an awesome breeze and the best part is that I have my own water cooler, a prized possession reserved only for principles and “Don’s” in these parts.

So, true to Honduran form, it was built a bit haphazardly. At many points I had my doubts that it would actually go to completion, but, alas,  Honduras has surprised me yet again with the delivery of this beautiful classroom that from its inception only really took 2 months. And I don’t even need to get up from my desk to fill my nalgene with cold water. Awesome.

The view of the mountains of Cusuco from my window.