I can't believe this week is finally over. It's the kind of week that feels like it started a month ago. I never thought it would end.
Monday was pretty normal. Got up nice and late (late for me is around 9am) and got to school by 11:30. I like Mondays, I only have two classes right in a row so I get to go home by 2:30. On Monday nights I like to bake cookies for my coworkers because I have some extra time. I've been doing it for about a month and everyone really appreciates it. I made snickerdoodles this week. The trick is to cook them for about a minute less than the recipe calls for so they're nice and squishy. Okay, so Monday went off without a hitch. Then came Tuesday.
Tuesday was payday. With the new class I've taken on since one of the other gringa teachers left I'm supposed to be making 490,000 pesos a month versus 430,000 a month. And this month I was supposed to get an extra 15,000 for the three classes I picked up the month before. In Chile, if you're not a citizen, you can't get a bank account, which means that you have to go to a bank and wait in an incredibly long and slow-moving line for an hour or two to cash your check. The earlier you can get to the bank the better, especially because banks all close at 2pm (what the hell) so after my 8:30 class ended at 10 I went to pick up my paycheck so I could run over to the bank and cash it.
Shockingly my check was not for the right amount. It was for the previous amount. This is very typical of Chile, but I was PISSED. Until I get that money I'm essentially working extra hours for free. They had over 6 weeks to change whatever needed to be changed in the system and failed miserably. My director assures me I'll receive the money by the 15th. We'll see.
There were a couple things I was preparing for this Tuesday. The first thing was a meeting between me, my director and the director of the major of the class of girls I'd had such a problem with two weeks earlier. (You may remember that blog.) My director decided it would be a good idea for her to meet with them with their director so they could understand the severity of the situation. She sent them all an email that their presence was mandatory. Even so, still, three of them were missing. I wasn't expecting her to lay into them the way that she did, but I have to say it was incredibly satisfying. She told them, in no uncertain terms, that as adults they are responsible for their schoolwork. They are expected to come to class, they are expected to do the online work and they are expected to do outside work and studying. These are three things that we have physical proof that they don't do because we can monitor their attendance, their online work and when my director tried to take the study CD out of a student's book she couldn't even get it out as it had clearly never been used. One of them spoke up and said that their friends in other classes get supplementary material from their teachers and that I should be giving the same stuff to them. My director replied that I was not required to do anything extra for them and that if they had ever logged into their online work they would see that all the supplementary material is there, accessible and available at all times. Another student complained about the fact that I only speak in English (which is just blatantly untrue) but my director shut her up quickly by saying "Guess what, I take a Mandarin Chinese class and it's given in Mandarin Chinese. Sometimes I'm confused, but you will never learn English if your teacher only speaks Spanish to you." This is something I've told them before. I am no stranger to language classes, but at a basic level they are almost always given entirely in the foreign language so that the learner is forced into learning. BUT the only way that works is if they supplement the class with outside work, which these students don't do so it's no wonder they are having so much trouble. My director also pointed out that the classes given by native speakers are generally coveted by students and that many students beg to be switched into those classes because they recognized the advantage. She made quite an impact and my students seemed fairly downtrodden after the interview. While I don't want them to be upset or discouraged these are things they need to know and understand in order to be successful in anything, especially in school.
The second thing I was working on for Tuesday was a presentation. A few weeks back my boss and another woman at Duoc asked me to prepare a presentation, in English, about how to present yourself in an interview and how to write a CV. The presentation was supposed to be part of a three-day series of presentations given by various members of staff. I made a powerpoint presentation and I was also supposed to go through a mock interview with a student. I was really nervous! The last time I made a speech was my 8th grade graduation. I had lots of support in the form of my director and other English teachers. I even met some of the higher-ups in the Duoc family. In the end the whole thing was fine and I got a free Duoc coffee thermos. That Tuesday I was at school for 13 hours. As one of my fellow teachers said "Now you're
really part of Duoc." Thankfully the school paid for us to take a cab home.
Is it only Wednesday?
Wednesdays are pretty easy too. I have to get there earlier than Mondays but I still only have to stay until 2:30. I ended up leaving around 3 because I waited for my friend Emma who was leaving early because she was sick. Wednesday evening was a nice one. I had a chance to go to the gym and met up with some friends for wine and appetizers later at a local bar. I ended up getting home around 1am are few things more depressing than setting your alarm for 6am at 1am.
8:30 Thursday morning I was in for another long day. 4 classes right in a row. The first three were relatively painless, although I was exhausted. The fourth one is one of my favorite classes. But that day a few students came in to tell me that no one would be coming to class because of a project due the next day in their design class. The professor of that class is a friend of mine and I've gotten on his case before for stealing my students. He told me that if they ever do that I am
not to pardon them. I can't really do much in terms of punishing them. I mark them absent but since the attendance policy is a joke it's not much of a punishment. I stayed for about an hour as a few of them trickled in to see their quiz grades and left the classroom at 3:30. On my way out one of the other English teachers caught me and asked if I had time them to do Duoc Talks. Duoc Talks are something I agreed to participate in that basically consists of me sitting with a bunch of Chilean students while they ask me questions about myself. It's an opportunity for them to practice English in a conversational setting. This week it was a class full of guys (for some reason the only people that ever sign up for anything I'm involved in are men) and it was such a bizarre experience. I have never felt more interesting. They literally seemed to be hanging on every word I said. It was a lot of fun, the guys were really nice and afterward Valeska (the organizer), Ximena (another English teacher), Max (design professor) and I had a nice "once" (Chilean tea time). I stayed at school until about 6 that night grading quizzes and then had a horrid trip home on the bus/metro. 6pm is officially the worst time to do that. I got home at 7:30, ran back out to the grocery store, and by the time I was home, fed and ready for bed it was 10.
Oh good, it's Friday. Only 9 hours and 3 classes stand between me and the weekend. After my first class I went down to the first level to check out the project all my design students had skipped out my class for. They had to design boxes for gourment chocolates, showcasing the process and concepts used to create them. Their professor told me that the directors of the Duoc design program were coming "Para ver que onda" which basically means they were coming in to see how the program is going at this campus. The boxes were so cool! My students all eagerly showed me which ones they made. I'm so proud of them! It's cool to see how much they can excel in something they enjoy and are interested in, although that class excels in English too. They're a bunch of smarties. And at the end of the showcase Max told me "no estamos despedidos", meaning they're not fired, so the showcase went well.
My class in the middle of the day on Fridays is another favorite. It's six guys who are all very smart and eager to learn. We went from learning how to talk about wishes in English to me teaching them the rules of beer pong and flip cup. I like classes I can goof around with and talk about things that actually interest them because we can get through the material so quickly.
My last class on Fridays is my dreaded class. I thought I'd make things easier by speaking almost entirely in Spanish because I'm just so sick of fighting them. Even in Spanish they are completely clueless. I had four students in a row ask me what the word "that" meant after I had already explained the direct translation into Spanish. Four of them. I could see the eyes of a couple of the smarter students flicker looks of empathy my way. I think some of them understand that this class is easily just as much of a struggle for me as for them.
I finally got out of there at 6. Home by 7:30. At a Mexican restaurant by 8:30. In bed by 11:30. Maybe today I'll just sleep.
