Long-Haul Teachers

So as I sit here in my hotel room, trying to keep a straight line of thought going long enough to get this episode up for Don and the gang, it occurs to me that this profession we’ve chosen, we teachers, really is some kind of perpetual motion machine. Because while I am physically very tired, I am emotionally energized like nobody’s business by the things I saw today, the things I keep thinking about, and the interactions I had with students, educators, and others. It was a very good day.

Natalia and I hit the road at 7:40 to go to the liceo, or high school. (Today was the last day she’ll come get me at the hotel; tomorrow, de ida y de vuelta, I’m on my own.) We walked to the proper bus stop – all the way down Paraguay, to where it starts to curve, and stop at the bus stop across from the gas station; then take the #148 bus – and rode in to work. She had three or four classes at the liceo (I forget), and then three classes – two 90 miutes long, one a full two hours – at the instituto. I would be presenting to all the instituto classes, and most of the liceo classes.

We first hit the teachers’ room, which is really more of a staging area – all they do there is pick up their attendance books for the class they’re about to teach from a big cupboard built for the purpose, and perhaps drink some mate. (The adscriptos, or teachers’ aides, always get a hot thermos of water and a packed mate ready and leave it on the table for whoever needs it going by.) Keep in mind that the teachers kind of run around the small campus when they teach – they go from room to room, by and large, while the students tend to stay there. Then we were off to present. Natalia picked up the key to the classroom she was going to from the teacher who’d just been there (it’s on a wooden key chain with the number of the room carved on it), and used it to unlock the room, then lock it again once the passing period had ended. She took roll, then introduced me, and the fun began.

Most of the groups spent the first part of their class – several had two back-to-back English classes – asking me questions that Natalia had had them prepare. Following that, I would fire up the trusty MacBook Pro and show my Power  Point on Massachusetts. It’s funny how the culture of an individual class works; some groups that she had expected to be the worst-behaved, least-motivated, were the very best, and vice-versa. Not that there were really any behavior problems – overall, I have to say, I am very impressed with the maturity, composure, and bearing of Uruguayan students. They rarely appear to abuse any privileges; the small cantina in the middle of their courtyard appears to have had no vandalism or any other purposeful damage done to it, pretty much, ever, and the campus itself isn’t littered with trash or anything like that. The students carry themselves with a real, quiet dignity, I find, and it carried over into how they treated me in the classroom.

Their English level was sometimes quite good, sometimes a little less so; as often happens, the most-motivated ones asked the most questions, while others sat back and tried to hide. But we had fun; they liked the story of Quinn pretending to be a Jedi when he would open the doors of the supermarket. Nothing's as universal as Star Wars.

We did Natalia's classes, and I spent an hour observing a class where kids who are not having as much success in school as they'd like are helped out by a psychologist, who leads them in a sort of group therapy-cum-tutoring session. Again: There was absolutely no surliness whatsoever. The kids participated very willingly in even some activities that to me seemed kind of hokey or embarrassing - but the teacher sold them with such earnestness and conviction, that these kids just lapped it up. 

I was called away to present again to Natalia's classes, and things went as before: questions for me, followed by presentation. The classrooms are cold; the whole country is kind of cold - very rarely does a building seem to actually fire up the central heating. Restaurants do; hotels do. But schools, offices, gas stations, hardware stores, etc. just suffer in the 45-degree (I'm guessing) cold. It gets to you after a while. School children, as you can see above and below, sometimes stay the entire day in their coats and scarves. I think the overall cold isn't as intense as in Massachusetts or Wisconsin, but the fact that you have to be in it all day makes it a much bigger part of their lives than in those places.

Once finished at the liceo, we walked the 15 minutes or so to the Instituto, where Natalia taught one class from 3:30 to 5:00, another from 5:00 to 6:30, and finally one from 6:30 to 8:00. It was quite a haul. But the first group was this one:

That's everybody. They were 16 and 17 years old, and very eager students, ready to ask lots of questions and super-attentive during my presentation. The time flew by. As it did in the next group - those kids were 13 and 14, and had done the posters you can see above behind the students - without Natalia asking them to! - about Williamstown, Williams College, Massachusetts, etc. There was one on the wall opposite them that focused on Jiminy Peak! It was an ideal audience, and we all had fun, in all three classes, including the last one, which was of adults - well, two 17-year-olds, a 26-year-old, a man in his mid-thirties, and a nineteen-year-old (I think). Great fun.

I wanted to include the above picture because it's funny. This is on the walk between the liceo and the instituto. The guy holding the mate above is a player on the Uruguayan national team called "el loco". He does some wild stuff, takes some crazy chances on the field. The ad says roughly, "Change my brand of mate? What, are you crazy?" He's from Minas, the town that Natalia's parents are originally from.

On the way home we passed the "fuente de los candados", or fountain of the padlocks. Local legend has it that if you lock your and your sweetheart's padlocks together on the fountain, your relationship will stay strong forever, or something similar. 

But tonight I used it as a landmark, because just down the street from there, if you turn to the left when you get to the fuente, there's an all-you-can-eat vegetarian buffet. After so many days of asado and chivitos, it was a welcome change.

Long day, and another one tomorrow (though not as long). Off to bed!