Entering the Lion's Den: teaching in a Chilean classroom

The way the volunteer teaching program works is that you arrive at your school and observe classes for a week. Then, after this week of sitting in the back of classrooms in bewilderment, you go into teaching your own classes.  During my observation week I learned a few things.

1. Chilean school days are long. Like really long. Like start at 7:50 and end at 5:15 long.
2. That we get an hour and a half lunch. So suddenly, the time in school each day isn't as long.
3. And that most of our class hours are cut short by masses, celebrations, assemblies, or religious holidays. None of which I am complaining about.
4. But, the days are still long.
5. Its called a "classroom"for a reason.
6. That being surrounded by 1,000 girls from grades 1 to 12 is exhausting.
7. Yupp, thats right. They put the gringo kid from California in an all girls Catholic school.
8. That everything I did would be put under a microscope. Cuz lets face it, I'm three feet too tall, my hair is three shades too light, and I'm the wrong gender to do any sort of blending in.
9. And finally, that my days at Maria Auxiliadora would be filled with selflies and lovely notes like this one.

If only there were such a thing as lean-dough,

then I could eat as much bread as Chileans do, no problem. 

Let me tell you what, in Chile, the word "classroom" is much more accurate than in the states. The "classroom" is actually the class's room, not the teacher's place to teach a class. Here, the students rule the classroom and the teacher is merely entering their domain. The students do not switch classes at the ring of the bell, the teachers do. Entering a classroom that is owned by the students is like stepping on to an opposing team's home turf, under the bright Friday night lights, with the championship on the line, 5 times a day. Luckily for me, I have my own classroom, but this doesn't change the mindset of these bloodthirsty students. Oh, and did I mention that I work at an all girls Catholic school? Talk about claws…

Being 1 of 6 male teachers and the only foreigner at the school definitely comes with its own set of perks and challenges. 1st, the perks. My school is well endowed. Anything that I need, I need only ask for and it is as good as done. The staff is incredibly friendly and looks to include me and help me become a part of the school community. I have my own classroom that is rather spacious as far as a lot of volunteers' classrooms go. And for the most part, the girls listen to most of what I say. Which is a blessing and a curse all in its own. The challenges are a plenty as well. First and foremost, I've got big shoes to fill. The volunteer before me was just short of Mother Maria herself, judging by the praise of the faculty and students. And the only reason she left was to work for the organization that runs the volunteer program. Talk about having a big act to follow up. And, not to mention, I've never taught an actual class a day in my life. So there's that whole learning how to be a teacher in two weeks thing. But I mean hey, if Jack Black can fake it and make a killer rock band while he's at it, I think I'll do just fine.

I officially survived my first week of teaching in Chile. Just barely. My first week went by without any major hiccups. I gave my introductory lessons and in each of them was incorporated a small presentation about where I came from, so my students could know a little bit more about me. The top two questions I got each time after I presented were "Mister, how old are you?" and "Do you have a girlfriend?", to which I answered with, "I am 26 and have a serious novia back at home." So now, not only am I a pretend teacher, but I also have a fake age and a pretend girlfriend. Might as well call me an international man of mystery because by the time this is over, I won't even know what's real or not.

Through all that has been my 2 weeks as a teacher, I have learned a lot. Mainly that in order to keep these girls from talking you have to keep them entertained, otherwise they turn right around to their girlfriends and all of a sudden you don't even exist. In order to do that, my lesson plans will have to be intriguing, fun, and engineered better than a German car.

Well, here's to building that German car of a lesson and using it to safely drive myself out of this lion's den they call a classroom.

Upon Arrival: Initial challenges and impressions of moving to Chile

I started this journey with nothing but an 80L backpack, an airline ticket, and an open mind to what obstacles this teaching adventure might bring. Well, those obstacles made themselves apparent very, very early.

My journey started from San Francisco, made a pitstop in Houston, where we were delayed, and was eventually held up by a missed flight in Panama, where I would spend one night, but my backpack would spend two. Upon arrival in Santiago the next morning, I made it safe and sound but my backpack was no where to be found. This situation promptly fed doubt to my brain and and my brain ate it up like shrimp fried rice. It begged the question "what the hell am I doing here?".  Well the truth is that I really didn't know, but luckily my backpack showed up the next day, and along with it my confidence in what I was doing in Chile teaching English. They both looked like something the cat drug in, but at least they were both there.

The first week was a lot of learning at orientation in Santiago. There was a lot of "do this", "don't do this", and "this is how it works in Chile", and it all would have been rather dry, but luckily our presenters were great and so was the company of the other volunteers. All people somewhat similar to myself. Either doing some soul searching, or just doing it because they could. Together we did a lot of exploring, a good amount of drinking, and and ate an absurd amount of bread and cheese.

The "Hotel" where we stayed in Santiago

 View from the top of Cerro San Cristobal

 Some sweet graffiti outside of Pablo Neruda's house

 Post hike photo with some of the volunteer homies atop San Cristobal

The Virgin

When the day came to leave, there were a lot of mixed emotions. I was excited to meet my host family and start practicing Spanish, but it was also slightly scary leaving the comfort of being with 50 english speaking people from all over the world with a good deal of similar interests. It was like, well, living in a foreign country, for real. And I soon found out exactly what that felt like.

First of all, I do speak a good amount of Spanish, and understand a great deal more. But I swear, Chile should have its own language because it is not Spanish. They have so many different words for things than the rest of the Spanish speaking world, and all of their words run together because they drop the S's and a good amount of syllables. Po and Caxai are some of these words, and I now know that "po" means nothing, they just add it on the ends of words, and that caxai means "ya know?". But, when I first got here, some one would say "Caxai" at the end of some long, quickly said statement that all sounded like one word, and a pretty small but bigger than your average size piece of me wanted to say "No, I don't f#$*ing caxai". But of course I didn't, and instead felt like I was in a fish bowl, where I couldn't understand anything being said to me, and clearly couldn't say anything back.

Luckily, this only lasted a few days in my new home. I got settled, felt more comfortable and stopped caring about sounding like an idiot when I spoke Spanish and just said what I thought was right. So far, no one's punched or slapped me so I think that I'm doing alright.

Well, I suppose that I'm just rambling now, but at least the 3 people that read this will know that if they plan on moving to Chile they better 1) study chilean and not Spanish 2) be prepared to eat lots of bread, with a side of some more bread and 3) know that caxai means "ya know?" and that "po" means nothing, absolutely nothing, they just throw it on the end of words for fun, or to confuse foreigners, whichever you want to believe.

So far Patagonia has been very pedagogical. I've learned a lot. Hopefully my students will learn a lot. And hopefully I'll learn some more. Until next time. Chao (and yes, that's how they spell it here).