Life Update (?)
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After three months of working in a Panamanian school, I still feel more like an actor than I do an actual instructor. Although my role in the school varies from co-teacher to consultant to mentor to IT guy to sometimes even a dollar bin speech pathologist, when I am in the classroom I feel as if I am performing an act. A method actor of sorts as I stand with my ironed shirt tucked in reviewing adverb use or frequency adverbs or components of a sentence in English or simple present versus continuous present tense. How much English I plan on these kids learning after two years of me being in their lives, I really don’t know. Improvement seems hard to measure without any real diagnostics or tools. This is not so much a scientific experiment as it is a culturally enriching experience for both them and me. Furthermore, it is not so much that they are Panamanian and I am not that lends itself to this exchange, but more of the fact that I am 22 years old and working day to day with kids when I had no such intention of doing any such work ever in my life.
When I signed up for Peace Corps, I thought I would be out in some harsh country that embodied the stereotypes of the developing world - no easy access to clean water or electricity, much less internet and cable television. My imagination supposed lone dirt roads travelled exclusively by four-wheel drive vehicles out into bastions of where modernization stood at a standstill. The reality of Panama, at least for me, is that my students all have their basic hierarchal needs met and furthermore good portions of them have televisions, computers, and even coveted Black Berries. McDonalds, Dominos, Burger King, KFC, Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers, Katy Perry, Coca Cola, Pepsi, M&Ms, Nike, Adidas, iPods, Canon, Sony, Panasonic – these are all things my students recognize, desire, and to some extent in the same fashion Americans and assorted Westerners worldwide, worship.
My first lesson plans aimed at utilizing their knowledge of the outside world to garner interest. Lessons were based on Dragon Ball Z characters, Eminem and Katy Perry songs, and my own experiences abroad. Now, more and more frequently I am diverging from this original pattern in favor for more substantive lessons drawn to and from their everyday experience. Make no mistake; there is still an active cultural exchange between my community and me. Only now, after three months, it is tacit, facile. One of the biggest victories I have had here is my adult class. Two, sometimes three days a week I host a class for adults in my community. This past Monday we introduced and practiced modal auxiliaries and honestly, there, in my shorts, t-shirt and chalk in my hand, I do not feel like an actor. I truly feel like an instructor imparting my own knowledge and along the way picking up new things.
Every morning this semester I wake up around 6:15am, which still feels incredibly early compared to my usual 8:30am wake up time for my last job, even in a country where the sun goes down right around 7:00pm every night. As I prepare myself for school usually with some sort of soundtrack coming from my iPod I run the schedule in my head. Coming down the hill of my house and approaching the school eager children greet me from the windows, ‘Profe’, or ‘Teacher’ they call and I wave and shout, ‘Hello’ or ‘Good morning’. After clocking in, which is mostly a formality seeing as how I am not a MEDUCA employee; I usually greet the kinder students. “Good morning!” and all their eager faces, about 30 to 40, reply, “Good morning!” The dialogue continues and we ask each other how we are. Every morning I tell them, “I am happy to see you!” Never in my life prior to this have had I ever said to someone in the morning, “I am happy to see you,”as a reply to “how are you?” These kids have my undying love.
And dear Jesus, the hugs. My students, particularly the younger ones, absolutely love hugging me. For those of you reading this who know me, know that I am by no means a hugging type of person. Every morning when I see these children they swarm like moths to a light, and hug me and proceed to shout, all at once, when they saw me in the community be it last week, last night, or three months ago in line at the McDonalds. Truth be told, I love these kids. I love this experience, and even though some days can be absolutely brutal in terms of morale or just wondering what the hell am I doing, the affection, adulation, and trust of something like 200 students is hard to compete with. My original purpose of writing this was to share an anecdote of how a sixth grade class I helped teach reacted to positive reinforcement. Instead, I think I summarized how I have reacted to positive reinforcement from my community.
