What have I been doing? I don’t even know if I can follow…

Finally, I am coming around to giving a little more insight to just exactly what I’ve been up to in terms of teaching these days in Ecuador.

There was the expected...
As I’ve said before, I began teaching in October of 2008 at the University of Machala. I taught an entire semester (up through the beginning of February) at the University. The English classes are actually held at an institute of fine arts downtown which is separate from the main university campus. University students, as well as professionals who just want to learn English, can enroll in the language classes.

The original plan was to teach the first semester and then teach two months of intensive summer school type classes. Summer vacation in Ecuador is February, March and sometimes April. In March and April we were to teach five-hour sessions of beginning English each day for five days a week. I had heard from past volunteers that this was the least liked part of our teaching contract. March and April also happen to be the hottest months of the year and we would’ve been crammed in a room with up to 40 students, for five hours, and in the worst heat of the day.

After summer sessions, we were to teach another semester which would have taken us through the end of July.

And then the unexpected...
Well, seeing as things are never guaranteed here and plans tend to change on a whim, Bryce and I have been lead down quite a different road than what we had originally been expecting. Just as anywhere else in the world, changes tend to occur as a result of change in government and new legislation. I don’t know if Ecuador is always experiencing such political change but it has been in this year that I have lived here. I couldn’t have been here in a more politically stimulating and changing time of year. I’ve tried my best to grasp the reasoning for such changes, especially in regard to education which has directly affected me.

From what I can gather, when the constitution changed in September, it stated that public educational systems would change over to free tuition for students. Because of this change, the country´s finance department had to change the budgeting system for all public schools as far as how they go about distributing funds and who needs what. Basically, a lot of changes created some very large setbacks in the original timeline of things. We were informed that classes could not be held in March and April at the Institute because of the budgeting crisis.

At first, I was in a bit of a panic mode, not knowing what was going to happen. Would I have a job anymore? Would I have to leave Machala? Go back to the U.S.? I had no idea and was very naive to the way things work in Ecuador and how people somehow always manage to get by in these crucial times of change.

Working with the unexpected
Things soon began to look up as I had made many connections in Machala and they, along with the University, were willing to work with us to find some supplemental teaching work. So, we set out, under the direction of another University English teacher, to teach a one-month seminar course on pronunciation. A few weeks earlier, my director had asked me of ideas for topics for native Spanish speakers who are now English teachers. I had suggested pronunciation work. Pronunciation is one of the hardest parts of English to master and it definitely shows. I have had several students who were good English speakers but could be very hard to understand from a native English speaker’s perspective. So, Bryce and I team-taught a pronunciation class that was compiled of high school and college English teachers. It was entirely refreshing to change location, student demographic, and class topic for the month.

Expecting the Unexpected
As March concluded, I began looking for other opportunities in which I could volunteer my time as an English teacher. It’s not hard to find such opportunities here. It’s with no exaggeration that I say, EVERYONE wants to learn English. I found a volunteer opportunity through one of my professor students. She works at an elementary through high school and they were in need of an English teacher. Though, I couldn’t offer more than one month of my time, they were very excited to bring a “gringa” on board. I was under the impression that I would be working alongside the other English teachers for “ reinforcement” as they had told me. I showed up for work on the first day and the director handed me a fully loaded schedule in which I would be teaching my very own classes of first and second graders. After having spent seven months living here, this came in no way as a surprise to me. I took the schedule and prepared myself for what was ahead.

Los Chiquitos
My one month with the seven and eight year old English students was soooo hard but I can’t believe how much I learned in one month! When forced to confront a slightly uncomfortable situation due to lack of knowledge, it’s amazing how fast you can learn in order to proceed. I can now say I have experience teaching kids, which is something I had not anticipated in coming to Ecuador. I think I can also say that I would not want to teach kids that young in the future! I had no idea how hard they can be and I have a newfound and extremely high level of respect for all those elementary school teachers I have had and how they had the patience and kindness to work and teach the youngins. I am a patient and kind person but there’s no better way to test that level of patience than to be thrown into a classroom with 15 little kids who need to learn English but don’t speak much more than a word of it! Wow! What an experience. The kids were cute though and they taught me a lot. I was greeted with warm hugs every day and even when they were mad at me, they would forget after five minutes and be my friend again. They even told me that they were going to bring me a gift on Mother’s Day. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I wouldn’t be teaching them come Mother’s Day.

So, that brings me up to May. Classes have already been postponed but there is a start date in sight. I am writing this blog during my “office hours” where I am required to be at the school campus but don’t have classes to teach yet. Getting there though :)