A typical Day

Now that the school year is almost out, and I gave such a basic sum-up of all my time here, I thought it would be nice to share a typical day here in Loja, with a few commentaries to give my insights into life here.

I live in an apartment in downtown Loja, which I pay too much money for, but I love the location and my neighbours. My son has made friends with the upstairs neighbours, the next door neighbours, and all of the across-the-street neighbours. Those of you who have spent time in Latin America know that there is no shortage of kids here, so it really is an ideal place to bring a family, contrary to what many people might think!

I wake up at 5:30 am (ugh!) and get my son up around six. If we make it to the corner on time, we get a lift from one of my students´mothers, and if not, we either take the bus, or, if we´re really running late, get a taxi. A taxi here costs one dollar. The bus is 25 cents. Yes, it all seems really cheap, but don´t forget that I make four dollars an hour! So, if the taxi driver tries to take advantage of my foreign-ness and charge me an extra fifty cents, better believe that I call him on it!!

So just before seven, a siren sounds and all the classes have to assemble in the main patio for ¨formación.¨ Whichever class I start with that day is the one I have to control. The lower grades have small classes, and the junior high and high school grades have more students, like around 25. The students are supposed to stand quietly and listen to the school director as he gives a motivational talk or else reprimands them for bad study habits or whatever. Sometimes students who have won various competitions get to come forward to be applauded. Mondays we have the flag raising and the students sing the national anthem and the school anthem.

One thing I should mention is that the foreign English teachers don´t really carry much weight in terms of authority at this colegio. It is something that has frustrated me all year, that I will ask and then tell students to be quiet and that they will just continue talking and messing around until another teacher comes over or one of the administration. But, regardless, we get through it and then it is time for class.

From my experience with Latin men, it seems that they learn at a very young age how to flirt with women. Seriously, some of the things that fifteen-year-old boys have said to me, actually make me laugh because of how audacious they are! But still, to be on the other side of 35 and have young men flirt with you can give life just a bit of a kick, no cierto?

So, getting into details about how I manage to teach in this school, which is actually a prestigous private school, where the students can´t seem to sit down and be quiet for more than thirty seconds at a time... I discovered very early on, that any of my ESL training and  experience with teaching at English Language schools, does not apply here. We cannot do fun speaking activities because they pretty much won´t do them, and then the class turns into a very noisy recess, with kids running around, and administration coming in to see what the fuss is about and why on earth are the students not sitting neatly in their rows?

Also, I have figured out, that most students here, although they take English at school their entire school life, pretty much don´t know anything unless they have taken after-school English classes at academies, like Canadian House Centre, or the other one here, which is called Fine Tuned English. The result is that students are in levels that are much too difficult for them, so I have students in high school whom I´m teaching Gerunds and Infinitives along with the Passive Voice and how to write essays, and they are asking me things like ¨What does WHEN mean?¨ and what is ¨WAS?¨

So, I just stick to the book, and report misbehaving, non-working students to administration who threatens to expel them, although always gives ¨just one more opportunity.¨ Truth be told, I´m not sure if any of my students have learned anything this year, but I really, really hope that maybe some of them will remember even just a little bit. Also, I do a Speaking English part the first fifteen minutes of class, and reward them with points if they can tell me a little bit about their weekend or whatever. The main problem though, is that those who are not speaking to me at the time, turn to their classmates and have loud discussions in Spanish and I cannot even hear the person whose turn it is!

anyway, I don´t want to sound so negative, because really, in my heart I love all of my students, even the one who took my cel phone while I wasn´t looking, read all my messages (some rather intimate, romantic ones from my ex-boyfriend) and was on the verge of responding to one of them when I caught him. And even the one, who started chanting my ex-boyfriend´s name in the middle of class the next day, so I would know that the entire class knew the contents of my messages (!!!!) Both of these students had visits with the Director and were given yet another ¨last opportunity!!¨

My son is in the Segund Año in the same school, although in Canada, this would be Grade one. He is actually a very badly behaved boy, but is lucky because he´s also extremely friendly and everyone likes him, most of all his teacher, who is something like the Ecuadorian Mother Teresa. I am often called over to his classroom to ¨talk to him about behaviour issues, so between him and my students, you can imagine how much patience I need to get through the school day!

Oh, one of the biggest advantages of teaching here, is that I speak Spanish 80 percent of the day. I never in my life dreamed that I would improve my Spanish so much by teaching English, but here, if you speak English to the students, they pretty much ignore you. And then when they go home with bad marks, they tell their parents it´s because they teacher doesn´t know how to speak Spanish and the parents come into the school all angry because how dare a teacher who can´t  explain everything in Spanish try to teach their poor, confused, hardworking children?! (LOL) So, one day, I even told the students to thank their parents for me, for paying their children´s tuition so that the English teacher could learn so much Spanish. They thought that was pretty funny and then offered to give me quizzes!

Pretty much all of the teachers at the Colegio are awesome- really warm and caring. I get along super well with the three other English teachers as well. Actually three of the original English teachers from the beginning of the year gave up at some point in the year, so I am the only original one left! The teacher´s association organizes lunches and parties throughout the year. The best was definitely at Carnaval, when we had a day-long party at the Director´s Finca in Vilcabamba. a finca is like a country home, outside of the city, and they usually have a swimming pool, tennis court, what-have-you. Since I teach rich kids, most of my students´families have them. anyway, at the Carnaval party, we danced all day long, drank beer and whiskey and were repeatedly dumped in the swimming pool and sprayed with the hose! (yes, Carnaval in Ecuador is a week-long soak fest!)

The school day finishes at a quarter to two, and my son and I, and maybe one or two of my colleagues go for lunch. I used to teach a kids class at the Canadian House, I did that during the first half of the year. I taught a class of 5 and 6 year-olds, and we pretty much sang every song I ever learned in my childhood from school, camp and whatever I happened to make up in order to teach vocabulary. It was difficult for me to control them at first, but from my experiences with the Colegio, I managed to pull a few tricks out of my sleeve, mainly involving checks, xes and stickers!

Now, that I don´t work in the afternoons, we take it pretty easy in the afternoons. We visit with neighbours and I try to get my son to do his homework. The great thing about living in a small city is that you always see people you know, and I love that.

As I mentioned before in my last post, we are moving to Cuenca in a couple of weeks. I´m nervous about starting again, and, honestly, my son is not happy about going. But, I really think it will be better as it´s a bigger city, with more stuff for both of us to do, and I have to say, I fell in love with Cuenca the last time I was there. With the colonial architecture and parks, the river, just everything, it´s very European, I find. Anyway, people here are very nationalistic about their own cities, so all the Lojanans think I´m crazy to want to go to Cuenca. All the Cuencanos think it´s fantastic and that we will never want to leave once we are there!

• Canadian House Center
• Loja
• travel with kids
• Teaching English
• classroom management