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.

Candy? How About Alligator Eggs, Kid.

Halloween is my favorite holiday. If any of you out there have experienced an Oak St Halloween, you can understand why. If you haven’t experienced it, close your eyes for a moment and imagine a world (oh wait, you have your eyes closed…. These two tasks are mutually exclusive). Okay, open your eyes, soften your focus and imagine a world where an entire street is closed down due to the sheer number of babies in winnie the poo costumes hobbling down the streets. Imagine a warm house where families, friends an neighbours (spelled the British way because it is magical) all come together in ridiculous getups, a night in which we are all actors, and we eat chicken tortilla soup (a Corinne specialty), drink spiced cider and mulled wine, and all of the action is over by 9pm.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to experience that marvel this year. Halloween here is seen by most members of Cofradian society as a celebration of the devil, and our kids did not come to school in costume, and no candy was flowing. In fact, I just heard today from one of our students that they don’t trick or treat because there is an old woman in town who somehow implants alligator eggs in the stomachs of kids who go trick-or-treating and rumor has it you can be fine for years and years, without knowledge of any danger, until one day the eggs hatch and alligators claw their way out of your stomach! I guess for the kids, the candy doesn’t really justify all of that hassle. I had a bout of malaria (another story for another day), and multiple experiences with “#4”, the other pottie term (like the term we use with little kids when they have to go to the bathroom and we ask “#1 or #2?” ). Having weathered these trying experiences, I can say that I understand why these students would want to avoid the trick-or-treating.

Once again, I digress. Back to Halloween… We knew that there would be no Halloween celebration in town, but the thought of letting Halloween just pass on by seemed depressing to us teachers and for the past couple of weeks we were trying to figure out how we could honor this American holiday. Finally we figured it out. There is a very nice private American school in San Pedro Sula (the big city about 45 min from us) called EIS. They have 50 international teachers and we have a good relationship with their school because one of our program directors used to be a teacher there. One of their teachers called one of our teachers and invited us to come out and play ultimate Frisbee on Saturday, and then stick around for their Halloween bash.

We jump at any opportunity to leave Cofradia, and excited about our new plans we whipped up some great costumes in a few hours. We took a bus into San Pedro and then a taxi up to their school, which was tucked away in this beautiful mountainous region of San Pedro with a massive wall that surrounded the school like a presidential palace. The armed guard flagged us in and the massive school stood in front of us, with beautifully kept grounds  and new buildings (with windows!.... something we don’t have at our school). This place is the nicest set of buildings I have seen in Honduras and it looked more like a private university than a K-12 Honduran school.

We played Ultimate Frisbee all afternoon on their beautifully trimmed field (I had to take frequent breaks because my lungs aren’t quite up to snuff from the malaria recovery). Afterward, we went back to an apartment complex where 25 of the teachers live. This complex had a 20 foot wall around it, an armed guard, and an electric fence. The apartments were immaculate and had A/C marble countertops, cable and internet and showers with hot water… and it is all paid for by their school! The cofradian volunteers walked into this other world that felt like Disneyland and  wide-eyed like pauper children, we eyed their nice refrigerators and microwaves with a mixture of envy for what we didn’t have and gratitude that we could call these teachers our new friends.. Then we all took nice long hot showers and put on our costumes.

Magical

We had some great costumes. 6 ft 6 Profe Matt found this really incredible unicorn costume that was about 7 sizes too small, but accentuated his nipple ring nicely… a piece of jewelry that all of us have yet to become comfortable with. We also had a nice group of ninja turtles, a Chiquita Banana,  a group of Chilean miners, and I was “Hurricane Mitch,” the hurricane that devastated Honduras 11 years ago. My costume was mildly offensive, but the Hondurans there seemed to enjoy it and nobody punched me in the face. We partied with a group of Gringos and Catrachos (Hondurans) on the patio of this apartment complex to the wee hours and got to pretend for a day that we were not in Honduras.

The teachers that we hung out from the other school were very welcoming and fun people. It was amazing to meet other teachers living in Honduras with such drastically different experiences. They all have cars, live in this beautiful modern place and they complain about their students and their families being spoiled rich and stuck up. We don’t have that. Any of that. And I don’t judge them for it. They are just two really unique experiences. It  did make me start to think about teaching at a nice international school next year. The money is great, you can teach without a credential, you still get to be living in another country, and the life is pretty cushy. This has been a great unique experience for me, but its financially unfeasible to volunteer for more than one year.

Hurricane Mitch

Ok, last blog I wrote about the other side of the river and how I was moved to action. I just want to write a disclaimer that I haven’t forgotten about that experience. But I do think that there is a middle ground that one can meet, making a difference and still acquiring a level of comfort. My godparents, Steve and Lisa are educators in a really nice international school the Democratic Republic of the Congo and just last week they told me of an opening at their school and I am starting to look into it for next year.

So, all in all I had a pretty great Halloween. No babies in costumes, no chicken tortilla soup, no jack-lanterns, but a fun night nonetheless. Luckily, the alligators haven’t started crawling out of my stomach. Yet. But I’ll keep you posted.

Is that a unicorn with a nipple ring over there?

Watch it with that Bible!

In preparation for finals for my science classes, I was nice enough to create a comprehensive study guide of necessary material for the quarter final. It included relevant topics, vocabulary, practice problems, and “things you should know how to do.” It took a ridiculous amount of time and I wanted to make it clear to my students that they must use it (partly because I want them to succeed and probably more so because I needed to justify to myself that the three hours that I spent on them was worth it).

I imparted upon them my intense desire for them to use this study guide by threatening a middle school form of death (aka- a full day of dentention) for not completing the assignment. This was a little heavy handed, but I wanted them to know that it was just THAT important. I gave them this threat and it didn’t elicit the look of fear I was hoping for. Weird. I chose another tactic, and re-emphasized the importance of the packet, telling them, “under no circumstances shall this packet leaver your side. This packet is your bible!”

A look of shock and disgust befell the class as students gasped in unison, “No, Mister!” as if I killed a puppy. Oops, apparently  comparing my worksheet to the bible not an appropriate analogy to be used with a group of 12 year-old Jehovas Witnesses and Evangelical Christians. After realizing my blunder, I backpedalled and said, “ok, ok …. It’s not your bible, but it is your science bible.”

I scanned the room for acceptance and I saw looks of trepidation and a bit head shaking. Then Cecilia nodded with acceptance, “Ok, mister, science bible is ok.” The rest of the class was brought back to baseline. Phew… got by with that one. Somehow through the outrage, I got the point across though. All 41 of my science students successfully completed and turned in their study guides… Something that has never happened for me with any piece of homework I have assigned.

All week I was waiting for the calls from the parents but they never came. I just can’t wait until I get to teach them evolution. Their heads might spontaneously combust. 

"The Other Side of the River"

As part of the 8^th grade “civica” class the students are required to do a community service project. This year’s class did a clothing drive and got donations of bags and bags of used clothing. They needed an extra chaperone today to go with them to deliver the clothes to  a school “on the other side of the river.”

“The other side of the river” is a both literal and figurative phrase for a place on the outskirts of Corfradia of which I don’t know if it actually has a name. At 9:45 this morning (45 minutes after we were supposed to leave… right on time by Honduran standards) the eight graders and I piled into the back of a truck with bags and bags of clothes and stuffed animals and headed to the other side of the river.  We  literally had to cross a flowing river in this truck that was about knee deep, a passage that would not be possible in your average sedan.

This part of town is where the real poverty is and the shift is clear. Houses are no longer made with the Cofradia standard cinderblock, but instead with whatever the residents of the “other side of the river” can get a hand on… wood, a piece of metal siding, some mud. Almost all of the students had never been to this part of town and they too were surprised by it.

We rode in the back of the truck (a liability which no American school would ever take) for about 15 minutes up a winding dirt road until we came upon a little two room school that was probably about the size of my living room in Laguna Beach. The public schools in Honduras only require education up until 6^th grade and due to limited space and resources, kids only go to school for 4 hours in either a morning, afternoon, or evening session. We were there for the morning block and there were kids sitting around the dark rooms with one administrator, not seeming to be doing much of anything.

Our kids were expecting a warm reception in their do-gooding and were disappointed not to have a hero’s welcome. After getting over that initial disappointment, they started passing out clothes to the surrounding kids, trying to match the kids with the right sized clothing. These kids clearly only had one pair of clothing and seemed a bit confused about their sudden luck and they took the clothes and held them in a way that I can’t really describe: as if they were given something sacred, They did not fight over clothing and were not in any way pushy. None of them balked or complained about the colors or the styles, they just held them close to their hearts with a little smile behind their eyes.

Soon the word got out that we were handing out clothes and kids started literally coming out of the forest over to the school. These kids were even poorer than the students at the poor school that we were giving the clothes to. Matted hair, shoeless, with rotting teeth and big eyes, they stood around waiting for us to invite them over to the truck.

I noticed a boy lingering on the outskirts clearly hoping to get something, but too timid to ask. I asked him how old he was and he said 9. With an eye infection, wrinkly skin and a small frame due to malnourishment he looked more like a 6 year old. I was searching and searching for something for him, with no luck. We had a lot of girls clothes, but were severly lacking in the boys clothing. I dug throught the clothes and finally found a striped t-shirt and a matching pair of striped socks. It was a little small, but I thought it would work. I gave it to him and his eyes lit up. He put on the striped socks and gave this incredible smile and said “I have shoes but I have never had socks!” And I smiled back and said, “now you do.”

This experience was powerful. Here I was side by side with the “poor kids” that I came to Cofradia to help, handing out clothing to poorer kids.  It was heart-warming to see these kids who I had perceived as poor giving their things away. The kids at our school, with the exception of a few, are by no means rich. But next to this little boy who has never in his life worn a pair of socks, they live quite lavishly. Poverty is truly relative.

This experience left me feeling sad, inspired, and overwhelmed. I am here trying to help these kids get an education in town when meanwhile there are kids outside of town who don’t even own socks. The number of people in this country that need help is shocking. It feels like we are here shooting a squirt-gun at a forest fire, and it is frustrating.

Above all else, though, what I experienced today was a feeling of supreme gratitude for the life that I have been born into. Why does the universe work in this way? Why was I born into my life and they were born into theirs?

Though I don’t have answers to those questions, I know one thing that is clear: My life has to be about using this status that the universe for some reason or another granted me to help children like the boy with no socks. I think it’s important that we all periodically take trips to “the other side of the river.”

Finales del Primer Parcial

Finals are coming. Next week. I think (I know) I am more stressed about them than my students are. Finals were much easier when I was a student then they are as a teacher. When I was a student I just had to make sure that I knew the material. Now I have to make sure that 41  twelve-fourteen year olds know that material: this task is proving more difficult. I can’t control their studying and I like being in control.

I feel so invested in their success. When they don’t do their homework, I feel so let down. I need to let go of that personal aspect of it. If they don’t do their homework, they probably haven’t been doing their homework for their whole lives. I shouldn’t take it personally. It is just so frustrating because I only have 45 minutes with them every day. The material falls on their shoulders and if they don’t want to learn, then they won’t. That is what gets me.

I have two kids in my 7^th grade class who have D’s. They don’t do their homework. Ever. I sent notes home. I have had the sit down talks. I have taken away privileges, I have tried reward, systems, they have gone to the resource teacher, and I send them to detention. Nothing works. It is so hard not to give up on them. I don’t think they are going to pass this quarter.

This week I am scrambling. I am making review sheets. We are playing Jeopardy review games. I am trying to seek out the subjects they are still struggling with and drive them home.

 Some things they have so much trouble with. My eighth grade Physical Science class is particularly difficult. The material I have been teaching so far (metric system and measurement) has been pretty dry. Okay, it's really dry. I try to make it as fun as possible, but lets be honest, converting units sucks. We all hate it. This class is so hard to teach though. They are a stereotypical middle school class. Laziness, attitude, and apathy plagues them. They are chatty and are always touching one another. They drain me so much.

Today I was teaching a difficult concept in density. 4 of the students totally have it and the rest are struggling. I have been teaching around this concept for  3 days and these kids are struggling translating the science into the the math. They have never combined these two things before. I have taken this subject from many different angles and today I totally got burnt out on it. I was doing a problem on the board, stringing them along, asking them questions as I went and they were slouched in their chairs giving me a blank stare (“Bueler…. Beuler?”). Silvia whined out in that “No, meeeester…..” voice that makes me crazy “I don’t get it.” Exasperated, I yelled, “Yes you DO get it!” Wow, really helpful, Mr. Greene. Nice one... I took a step back, took a breathe, and said, “we’ll take a stab at this again tomorrow. Lets play review jeopardy.”

Finals next week… crossing my fingers.

A Busito, 2 Chicken Buses, 2 Truck Beds and 3 Boats

 

Every three months, the volunteers have to leave the country for 4 days to renew our tourist visas. It’s a bummer that we aren’t awarded work visas for volunteering here, but the good news is that, because of this little problem, we get to leave the country for 4 days.

Cofradia has a special place in my heart, but lets face it, this little town is never somewhere where I would chose to live. Any chance we get to leave makes my heart flutter. Plus, for this visa trip, we not only got to leave but got to go to Belize and lay on the beach for four days. BECA, the organization that we work for paid for it and I have been looking forward to it for months.

We started our journey at 5am on Thursday morning, the 14 of us crammed in a small busito driven by a parent of the school (think of a very small minivan from circa 1983). We rode in this busito for 2 hours, crossed the Guatemalan border, and reached a bridge that was destroyed by the tropical storm that tore through Guatemala 2 weeks earlier. There were buses stopped and parked at the edge of the broken bridge and we waved to the group of  crafty Gautemalans on the other side  offering rides to the port where we were headed. They were clearly taking full advantage of this bridge incident.

Meanwhile we looked down to the rushing brown water and there were men hanging from the bridge pilons, cutting up the tree that took out this massive bridge with machetes. No chainsaws, no cranes… Needless to say, it will probably be a while before this bridge is functioning again.

There is a boat under there, somewhere.

In the meantime, a few locals were making a small fortune, charging people to cross the river. There were only 2 guys with little wood motor boats and we didn’t have too much bargaining power, they grossly overcharged us, we piled in this little boat with 4 other travelling gringos and eased across the river. The edge of the boat was inches above the rushing water and we were careful not to lean too far to one side.

When we got to the other side we were rushed into a busito for a small fee,  and were told we would be taken to the port. After 5 minutes travelling in this busito, packed like sardines with this farmer and his wife, we came upon a stretch of road that had a small river flowing through it. Ahhhh, get sus to Belize.  We were told to pile into a truckbed for another fee! We were sick of being had so we said, screw it, we will walk across the river. It was only about knee deep, but it stretched about 100 yards. We rolled up our pants and took a deep breath, and then a nice guy in another truck told us to hop in the back and he could take us for free for a bit.Twenty minutes later, he took us as far as he could, we hopped out and waited for a bus. Then another truck arrived offering to take us standing up in the bed to our port. We haggled a bit and got onboard.

The day continued this way…. Crossing boarders, fording rivers, haggling with drivers, and paying entrance and exit fees in three different countries. Two more boats later and a chicken bus we arrived at 4:35 pm, travelling no more than 250 miles over the course of twelve hours.

We stayed in little bungalows on the beach and first thing we did when we arrived was drink a cocktail and jump in the water. At that moment the journey was all worth it.

Placencia, Belize is not very far from Cofradia, Honduras, but they could not be more different. White sand beaches, perfect weather, delicious food and friendly open people greeted us and I felt instantly at home. Placencia is a touristy town, but it is the off-season and was quiet and mellow. There were no roosters, or dogs to wake us up, the homeless men there didn’t harass us and the streets were free from trash. It is almost eery to walk into Belize from the rest of Central America, like you have opened the other side of a portal.

I ate a Carribean fish stew, homemade icecream from a quirky ex-pat and laid on the beach for 2 days. For all the negative aspects of colonialism, it makes for a nice place for a four day weekend. But then there was the journey home….

Josh and Norah, a bit slaphappy.

Matt and Josh, mid-journey

Things That Make Me Feel Safe

Safety has become a hot button issue here. A string of scary and upsetting events that has occurred in the last couple of weeks, including some teachers from the other school in town being robbed at gunpoint on our walking route to school and the owner of a local restaurant being murdered, has made everyone in our program on edge, to say the least. So much so that one of our teachers told us tonight that she feels so unsafe that she has to go home.

We are trying to tackle the gravity of this news. It is very disheartening and all of us are feeling such a wide range of emotions concurrently. At the root of it all, we feel a sense of loss. We spend so much time with one another and to lose a piece of this of this puzzle is very disorienting. This teacher has been living in a great deal of fear (more than we realized) and hit her breaking point. We are sad for her, and sad for us. She clearly feels incredibly guilty for making this tough decision and it is not one that she has come to lightly, nor is it one that anyone would like to have to make.

Above all, though, I feel most sad for this teacher’s students. Many of these second-graders have parents in the states, are being raised by grandparents, aunts, or whoever can take care of them and consistency is seriously lacking in their lives. For some of them, school is the only thing in their lives that they can really depend on and in their little world, that consistency has been taken away.

I also feel angry. I’m angry that we all have to fix this with such little notice. We don’t have a lot of time to make this transition (two days in fact). We all feel overwhelmed already and are just finally starting to feel comfortable in our positions, learning what this whole teaching business is really about. At this moment, this added challenge feels sort of like being kicked while your down.

In times like this it is important that one feels safe. That is the root problem here, right, safety? I am taking the obvious necessary precautions (not taking my laptop on my walk to school, staying alert, avoiding travelling alone, we are trying to arrange a bus service), but there are other, more fundamental ways that I have found to help me feel safe. Most of these things are rooted in my “other life”. For example, my sister just sent a care package with dried mangos and Trader Joe’s trail mix. These make me feel safe…  As does peanut butter, following my friends’ lives on facebook, doing yoga on the back porch of the house, escaping into season 2 of Lost and finding new places to go swimming.

For example, two weeks ago, a past student of SJBS took me to a beautiful waterfall in a town nearby. That made me feels safe. Even more exciting, I just recently discovered that there is a pool in Cofradia. The fact there is a pool at all in this little town (where the only places in town with A/C is the evangelical church and a suspicious chinese restaurant) is incredible. It is no normal pool. It is an incredible pool equipped with beer and snacks. It is built from rocks and makes me feel like I am in the Neverland of “Hook”, the movie of my youth with Robin Williams. Roofio, roofio, roo-fie- oooooo… If you don’t know that reference, go rent that movie. Immediately.

Waterfall #1

I digress.  My point is that I am really trying to get in touch with these little reminders of the “real” non-Cofradia world. This town can feel isolating, and these reminders are kind of like the charms in “Inception,” helping me believe that I am real, and that something exists outside of this alternate universe that I have fallen into where I pretend to be a teacher and everyone stares at me. Okay, that might be a little ridiculous.

Today was a hard day for our team. Losing a member of this team (or family, really) plants the tiniest of seeds in all of our minds that packing up and going home is in the realm of possible choices. When down comforters, warm water, and bock choy seem so tempting already, that seed of doubt can undermine the work that we are doing here. Maybe, though, this whole thing can pull us closer together. Either way, I will grasp on to these little roots with all my might.

The new "spot."