School differences

9.14.10

I helped Alba teach a class for a teacher that couldn't come to the school today. When we arrived it was recess and some kids were climbing up on the soccer goals and it seemed pretty dangerous, there wasn’t much supervision. Then a group of students were gathered in a big room to prepare for a drama that they are going to put on this Friday at the high school. This week is cultural week and Friday is the end with lots of ceremonies and presentations. It was interesting to see how the two teachers tried to organize the students because it seemed like the kids were very much in control, and the teachers were not organized in the way they wanted to teach the kids a dance, so there was a lot of down time which caused the students to be very loud and ancy, something normal for their age. The teacher was asking them to be quiet for 5 minutes and then they could start but that didn’t happen. She tried organizing a group and started the song that they were gonna dance to, but eventually it seemed like everyone got tired of trying and all the kids left and the teacher unplugged the tv that was playing the song. The kids were also distracted because there was a little boy who got hurt on the playground (I thought they were supposed to be in class but there were some students still playing unsupervised), and he had fallen from the soccer goal and busted up his nose or something. His mother came to complain but I couldn’t hear the conversation, she was obviously frustrated and said she was mad that no one was supervising the kids. Alba said that each teacher rotates for playground duty each week, but there are 140 students and only one person to supervise? That’s not fair to the teacher and definitely not to the students. I asked why 2 people don't supervise together at least, and Alba just said they have their system already.

We went to the 3rd grade classroom to teach and she taught some math, adding and subtracting. Many children in the classroom said they didn’t have a pencil to write with, and so they didn’t do their work. There was a lack of supplies in the classroom and I thought it was really sad that a child would suffer due to not having something to write with, something that one would think a school would provide for its students. However there is a lack of funding and support it seems for many schools. The class went alright, but a lot of times students are out of their seats and yelling, stealing each others stuff. many needed more individual attention and I wondered if the material they were being taught was over their heads or something. Afterwards a lot of the kids were asking me to say something in english but I said I wouldn’t for the students that didn’t do their work in class! It was a frustrating experience at the lack of organization and discipline, but also the expectation for some of the kids to sit still and just write, instead of doing more interactive activities.