Classroom Observation

It's been a busy week, busier than normal, and we've had a few curve balls. On Monday when I went to pick up Evie for our outing I was talking with Ms. Mariana the English Coordinator for a bit. This has become a regular check-in; I've really appreciated Ms. Mariana and her help for our family as we learn to navigate this new school and system. I've asked about ways I can help at school. Most of the schools here (from what I've observed and heard) don't make much use of the parents, and the parents don't try to help. Part of this, I think, comes from many of the schools being tuition-based. There's a perception that since payment has exchanged hands, responsibility has as well. One of the things we liked about the school we chose for the kids is that the philosophy is more open to parents. The reality, though, is farther behind. I've been able to go in a few times to read to classes, but for the most part there's little request for my help. There is a chance that I'll be able to work in the library, so I've been pursuing that.

However on Monday my question as to whether Ms. Mariana knew more about the library possibility took a sudden shift. Suddenly we weren't talking about the library need; we were talking about a new need--an English teacher for Evie's class. Apparently that day was her English teacher's last day. My heart dropped, because I liked Ev's English teacher. Ms. Mariana assured me, though, that this was a good thing. Apparently things have been difficult with this teacher from day one. I knew Ev had really easy assignments for this class, but I assumed it was because it was lower level English. It seems that more of the problem was that the material wasn't being covered.

"If you have any connections," Ms. Mariana said, "Anyone who could teach, please send them our way!" Now, technically I'm qualified. I have a graduate degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages. For an instant my heart leapt and I thought, "What a chance!" But then sense took hold. I can barely stay on top of things as it is, much less work a full-time teaching job. Yikes! However I could offer help now and then, and I could pass the word along to one of the teachers in our apartment building who has TEFL certification.

My offer to help ended up with my going in this morning to hang out with Ms. Mariana as she taught Ev's class. It turned out that my primary job was to sit against the wall and look pretty, but I also got to help with one of the exercises and read a couple books to the kids.

It was an interesting experience; I'm not sure how much I can put into words yet. The classrooms are small, and while the class size is also small, the room is cramped. Each room opens onto an outside corridor and students are constantly coming and going along it.

The walls and floor are concrete and tile, so every sound bounces...and there is a lot of sound. My kids have mentioned a number of times that the students here are *loud* and don't respond to teacher requests for quiet. It's true. They're cute kids, bubbling with energy and inquisitiveness, but they haven't learned or been taught the art of attending.

I felt like I was back in college when I had to do classroom observations. My brain whirled with opinions, ideas, comparisons and contrasts. I've seen a lot of my kids' classes back in the States, but usually on party days, so I didn't have a good frame of reference for how the lesson was taught today. It did seem to be a question/answer style. I had to remind myself, too, that this wasn't just an English class; this was English as a foreign language. Some of these kids are still struggling with the basics of English, and Spanish flowed alongside the English. Would I have run things differently? That's the question I can't answer right now. I knew some things could be done more effectively, but I didn't have enough of a framework to be able to say how.

We wrapped up the morning with a visit with the class to the school library. I was so thankful when we looked at schools back in June that this school had a library. Some of them don't, and it seems more important at the kids' school than it does at other schools. It is very small, though. They're in the process of building it up, and I'm hoping that I can be a part of that. I'll take on that job before I take on a classroom of squirrelly second-graders.

And that is all I've got at the moment. I had the roots of some deep pedagogical observations that I was going to make here, but I think I'll end as is. For now, I'll keep observing.

Skipping School with Jon

This morning when I was done with Bible study I headed up to the kids' school and snuck Jon out for the rest of the day. Well, okay, I admit I got him out all fair and above board. I'd told his teachers I'd be coming, and I signed him out in the office, but Jon didn't know I was coming, which was fun.

He's in kindergarten this year, and so it's his first year with school every day. On top of that, it's full days, and on top of that half of his day is in Spanish. The adjustment has been huge. He has two sweet teachers, but both are extremely young and have never had a second-language-learner in class. This has led to a few notes home asking if we could help motivate him to speak Spanish in class by speaking Spanish at home for maybe an hour a day. (!!!!) Thankfully the English coordinator understands the language-learning process better and so has been able to help me talk with the teachers. 

At the same time, though, we do want to encourage Jon with Spanish. He experiments with words at home, but additional helps were needed. I posted a plea for advice from teacher friends and those experienced with language-learning and kids. Among the great outflow of help one theme repeated--songs. Find Spanish songs to listen to. A local friend pointed me to a music store that has a good selection of kids' music, and today Jon and I pointed our noses in that direction. Miss Mariana, the English coordinator asked for pictures of our adventure, and I realized it would be fun to chronicle it.

First, we swung by home so Jon could change out of his uniform and we could get some lunch. It's never smart to start adventures on an empty stomach.

Once substantially filled, we headed down to the car, and hit the road.

We've driven this particular route before, but I realized how much I like having extra eyes in the car. Jon noticed things I never would have. At one point he spotted sprinklers taking care of the lawn of an office complex, and later squealed with excitement at the sight of a circus tent set up in a lot. Within a couple minutes his eagle eyes spotted a little yellow bi-plane soaring overhead. 

When we reached the mall where the music store was, things got even more exciting. For one thing, there was a massive fountain out front. Jon posed in front of it, of course, but since I've given you a couple pictures of him already, I thought I'd give a glimpse of a local mall in Guadalajara.

The two of us scoped out some of the local restaurants. We haven't been to this mall, but we've been to another one nearby and it struck me that they tend to be magnets for restaurant chains we see in the States. Before we got inside we had passed Carl's Jr., P.F. Chang's, The Cheesecake Factory and Outback. Just inside the door was Applebees, McDonald's, Chili's, and Starbucks.

It was like stepping into any mall in the U.S. Kind of freaky, to tell the truth. The other mall we've visited here had more of a Mexican feel despite the plethora of U.S. chains. It's central swath is open to the sky, and there are koi ponds and gardens. This mall on the other hand, had the closed-in center like I'm used to in Michigan, and the shops opened their gleaming faces onto it. Jon slipped his hand into mine and then pointed excitedly at a work in progress. It turned out Christmas prep is in full gear and we were witnessing the beginnings of Santa's Workshop. We rode the escalators to the top of the mall and looked down on the Christmasy view. 

Eventually we found our store, Mix-Up, and were directed to a batch of kids' music cds. Of course, I had no idea who any of the artists were, and could only guess at a lot of the songs. I was hoping to find an album with a Spanish alphabet song, but no such luck. However, I pulled one that looked like some traditional Spanish play songs and another that seemed to be all about different kinds of transportation. Jon agreed that those two were good choices. He was leaning toward some Thomas the Train songs, but I steered him toward some that seemed more grass-roots. 

As soon as we got back to the car, Jon wanted to hear the music, so we tried out our new cds. The traditional songs turned out to be an excellent children's choir and has some great tunes. The one with transportation songs had a good variety of music styles, good singing voices, and best of all, very clear words--we had fun listening for the words for different transports: "coche" (car), "tren" (train), "helicóptero" (um...helicopter), "avion" (plane), and "camión" (truck). Despite Jon and my pleasure in these, the girls nixed this one for car-music as soon as they were picked up from school. Ah well. The first cd, however, was a hit for all of us. Now we just have to figure out more of the words!

It was a lovely afternoon with my Jon-boy. I've been spoiled rotten with this kid, and I hope this outing fed his heart a bit--enough to hold him over until Saturday. It was so fun that I know I'm going to be doing it again. In the meantime I have some planning to do for some young ladies in my life. They are way overdue for some one-on-one outings, too. Besides, everyone needs a little brain-break from the craziness of a whole new school world.

Spanish Lessons

This morning in our Spanish lesson, our teacher delved into irregular verbs and I geeked out. It's the truth. While I want to learn Spanish so that I can communicate clearly with people here, the reality is that when it comes to languages my true love is their structure. I'll blame it on four years of Latin in high school, then some Koine Greek in college, and four weeks of Russian in Ukraine in '93. Talk about languages with structure....

But Spanish has its verb conjugations, and I'm never satisfied unless I know them. One of my greatest frustrations in trying to speak Spanish is not knowing past and future tenses (let's not even get into past-perfect, etc.). I want to know them and I want to know them now! So yes, I was quite excited to get a long list of verbs today and a lesson in irregular verb groupings. I also learned the word for the root of a word: "raíz". This made me very happy. It gives me hope that some year I won't have to puzzle out the strange sentences that Google Translate gives me when I type in sentences from school notes and the kids' textbooks.

Kraig and I meet with our teacher, Christina, every Tuesday and Friday morning over on the university campus. There were supposed to be four of us in the group, but due to circumstances Kraig and I ended up with personal instruction for which we are very thankful. Christina is fluent in English and Spanish, so she can translate things when we need her to. However she makes a point of primarily using Spanish in class, which is a style Kraig and I both like even though it makes it tougher to follow things. It's been good and stretching. And I grab my structure nuggets when they come, because most of the time we focus on practical conversation skills. 

Some days I can immerse myself in the class and get things easily. Other days I'm at sea and my brain is in a fog. This, I assume, is pretty normal. Sometimes I come away feeling like I learned a ton (like today) while other days I wonder if I'm ever going to get the hang of things. 

In the meantime, I shall press on and look forward to learning past and future tenses. Because, you know, in real life we use them.

Communication Skills

I do not know Spanish.

I can boast of lots of language exposure, and I know a lot about how languages work and how they affect culture, but I am not fluent in any language.

And now we are living in a country where Spanish is key to survival. Sure, there are plenty of people who know English, but even then there are times when things are easily misunderstood because of the way language works, assumptions that are made, and there are unfamiliar cultural procedures. If I use Google translate to figure out how to say, "Can you show me an example of this?" I may be using words or turns of phrase that are not used here, and I certainly won't follow the whole response given. 

We realized this full-force as we entered the education system for the kids. Not only was their registration a full-onslaught of sticker-shock (How much does a uniform cost?), but since it was all in Spanish I had to go through things line-by-line to try to translate. I ordered the uniforms and books online, then got the school supply list printed so we could start our collection.

When it came to the school supplies, I tried to be thorough. One evening new American friends came for dinner, and I had Jeannie sit down and go through the list with me. She's a teacher here, so has more experience with the system, plus she knows Spanish. I learned a few vital details from her, such as when the instructions say "label all items with the child's full name" it means all--every pen, every crayon, every eraser. And when they say "child's full name" this means first name, middle name, last name, mother's maiden name. Do that with "Warnemuende" a few times....

After these delightful discoveries, I still needed to clarify a few items on the list. Each child needed multiple notebooks (a particular style, which, we discovered, costs about three times as much as your typical spiral notebook) and these notebooks needed to be covered with certain colors of paper. We now have a lovely collection of colored paper that I plan to use for gifts down the road. Oh, and don't forget clear contact paper, too.... Anyway, armed with my questions which I'd figured out how to ask in Spanish (I hoped) I went into the office at the school. The staff is very helpful, and some know more English than others. We played a fun game of "find that item" so they could show me examples of different things. Once this was accomplished, the kids and I started our hunt at stores in the area. Supplies were bought and stashed in the cupboard, waiting their colored covers and name tags.

Well, the other week we were told our school order had arrived, so I went into the office to get them. The uniforms were delayed, I found, but we did have books...a few piles (How will they get through these texts? I don't know. That's a story for down the road). And we also had--Ta Da!--school supplies!!! 

There, neatly organized and fully labeled in two beautiful boxes were all of Clare and Evie's school materials: the notebooks, the rulers, the pens, the pencils.... Everything was there, covered and labeled. Apparently these items were included in the list of books that I had ordered online, but the staff had only noticed this the previous day. There was much apologizing that they had just caught this, and Jon still needed his items, but there it was. It was done. 

To say the least, it was one of those moments where I had the choice to laugh or cry, and thankfully God helped me take the laughter route. I kept thinking how much money we'd spent--Yikes!--and the fact that Kraig's paycheck was still nonexistent, and that I'd heard it was often hard to return items here. But still, laughter was the response despite the frustration. It was so obviously a miscommunication involving language, assumptions and culture. Evie kept asking why this all had happened--she was almost in tears, poor girl--but we managed to see the bright side. We'd learned a lot of Spanish vocabulary and we'd learned the area better as we'd traipsed to different stores.

We headed home with our supplies in hand and I pulled all of our purchased stuff out of the closet, thanking God that I'd only covered one of Clare's notebooks and nothing had been labeled. We sorted out a few things we needed to keep for home or had already opened, then I pulled out receipts and bagged the returns. While home, my sister-in-law called and we got to chat for a good long while and she let me vent (and laugh). As we wrapped up, she said, "Hey, let's pray about this now," and she took our situation straight to God to handle. Smart woman . We said goodbye, and the kids and I headed back to the three stores to do returns.

And we did it! Each store took our items back with no questions, and handed me cash refunds so we didn't even have to deal with in-store credit. We also were able to knock off a couple more of Jon's needed items and we got a bunch of groceries. Thanks to my sister-in-law's encouragement and prayer, there was no question in my mind that God had helped us in the process. 

This won't be the last time this happens, I know. Stay tuned for more cultural faux-pauxs.