Well, now seems like as good a day as any for me to reveal the realities of teaching in Chile. I am having a very hard time at my site, and each day at least one thing happens that nearly sets off my temper. It has been a really good exercise in self-control. As my friend Andrew said to me the other day, it feels like every moment of this nine month experience is one giant lesson. I now understand what my program directors meant when they told me to have low goals.
Today was Dia de los Alumnos at my school. I asked everyone I came across what we were celebrating, and I am still not sure what the point of it was. All I know is that all my classes were cancelled, the students were running around outside making a lot of noise and jumping around, and all the teachers were either watching the madness or hanging out in the teachers' lounge. I was really disappointed because, after much work on my part, I finally got my coteacher to grant me a regular schedule, and was supposed to work with one of my favorite classes this morning. Also, tomorrow our WT assistant field director is coming to visit my classroom and observe my teaching, and I am highly irritated because one month in to my assignment, I haven´t done much teaching.
As mentioned previously, I almost had a serious fit last week, and it was due to the conflicts I have been having with my coteacher. One reason it has taken me so long to sort it all out is that I didn´t know at first if the trouble I was having was due to cultural differences, or personal differences. I have since decided that the differences are personal, and have become much more direct in my manner and tone. While this has led to me getting more classroom time with my students, I still feel like I have to battle every day to get to the bare minimum of what I am supposed to be doing here, and even then, quite often something like Dia de los Alumnos comes along, and I am again feeling like my time has been wasted.
One thing that has been really difficult for me is adjusting to different approaches to time and scheduling in Chile. As an American, I am very accustomed to things running smoothly, appointments being kept, there being a reliable school calendar with vacations clearly identified. One day at school I was standing around waiting for a meeting to start. I asked someone when it was going to start, and they told me "soon." About an hour later, the meeting actually started, and in that hour I grew more and more impatient. Today, I was working with my teacher on lesson planning, and she thought nothing of getting up in the middle of our meeting and disappearing for fifteen minutes to make copies, even though we were only halfway through our planning. I always feel like my time is being wasted here, and it has been really hard for me to adjust my thinking and turn the wasted time into something productive. I always have a book with me now, and as a result I have read some fine novels in the past month...almost double the books I read last year in the US alone! I also try to use all the extra time I have to chat with coworkers and practice Spanish, or to hang out with Ruby, the Chinese teacher at my school who miraculously speaks English! However, these moments do very little in the long run to ward off my inward eyerolls when someone has not informed me that classes are cancelled, or we have a day off, or me coming all the way back to school after lunch for a debate team meeting that only two students show up to.
I have turned into someone who lives for the weekends, more than I ever lived for the weekends in the United States. I have never been so unhappy and so unproducitve in a job before in my life, and the thing that irritates me the most is that I feel like I could be doing so much more, that I have so much to give and share with the students, and I am rarely given the opportunity. And the thing is, when we are actually working together, it is amazing what gets accomplished! Last week my youngest students did skits, in English, about bad classroom behavior, and it went really well. I gave the same assignment to my fourth-year students, a class of unmotivated, sarcastic, and rude girls (with a few brilliant exceptions), and they couldn´t handle it. They did nothing in their groups, even when I walked around and tried to work with them, they would just stare at me with blank eyes. I have no idea how to motivate them to learn English. Pucha!
Our program directors tried to warn us about this in a speech they gave us about having low goals. Low goals is the antithesis of how I like to live my life, so at the time I just brushed it off, like, yeah, well, we´ll just see about that! However, I now realize it is about being realistic about what you can accomplish within the system you are working in. While I would love to be a grand revolutionary, reform the way students work and are taught in my classes, and have brilliant and fluent students at the end of my time here, that is not a possibility. I am just beginning to learn the intricacies of how things work here anyway, and it is not my place to come here and say, "The American way is better, you need to learn how to keep to appointments and schedules, you need to hold the students accountable!" Because while from my perspective that is what needs to happen, who am I to say that to anyone? I am a guest here and came to learn, so I just need to find a way to do what I can with what I have. Like I said, every day is a battle.
The thing about all this teaching business, though, is that in the big scheme of my life here in Chile, it is really quite small. I dislike my job and going to work every day, but I love my life here. Mama Emma put it in perspective for me last Tuesday at onces; she reminded me that I am here for three reasons, number one to learn about Chile and the culture, number two to learn Spanish, and number three, to teach English. She told me that if one part of three is not going so well, to focus on the other parts and realize that I am doing good things even if things aren´t going well in my classroom. I really needed that reminder.
The other day, I realized that I can´t have it all. I am used to being able to fix my problems and have control over situations, and that is not possible for me here. I have an amazing family and social life here, and really, it just feels greedy to expect that my professional life be amazing too. While it may sound defeatist to say that, and I would bet most Americans reading this blog would protest at the nature of this attitude, or say that´s not the Tiffany they know...trust me when I say it is the attitude I must adopt to avoid completely losing my cool every day at work. Low goals. It sounds like a contradiction, but right now, I am clinging to the idea.
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2 comments:
i don't object to that attitude. low goals is where it's at. i'd probably still be teaching if someone had given me that advice.
dearest little muffin head,
i wouldn't say you've adopted low goals. i think it sounds like you've adopted realistic goals and prioritzed them well. 'member that time you said you were proud of me? well, i feel the same way about you. maybe when you get back we'll both have grown past being control freaks. but then what would there be to discuss while in bed with sheet cake?
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