Two School Visits in One Week

On Tuesday, August 7^th, we were scheduled to observe at Madre Teresa de Calcuta Comedor y Colegio. It was a rainy day, which I hadn’t realized when I woke up for class at 8am, so my flats were soaked by the time we arrived at the school across town. We were let into the building, and it reminded us strongly of a jail because of the narrow hallways and bars over all the windows, including the interior ones. We were shown into the directress’ office, where the secretary talked to us while the directress stood by. Carmen told us later that because the secretary was male, he technically held a higher rank than the directress, which is why he talked with us! Crazy! He told us about how the school is run basically as a charter school. Parents receive a salary to send their students to school there. On the surface, this sounds like a good way for low-income families to send their students to a private school, but Marcela (our Spanish teacher) had told us in class that parents often abuse this welfare system. Another thing that the secretary told us was that we could take pictures of the students for personal use, but we couldn’t post any pictures of the students online because many of them are in the school through the judicial system and we couldn’t risk revealing the students’ identities online.

When the secretary finished explaining everything in the office, he took us on a tour through each of the classrooms. The students mostly asked us the same questions over and over again, while other students just ignored that we were there. In one math classroom, a little girl named Guadalupe pointed at me across the room and waved me over to her. I wasn’t sure what she wanted, but I went over to her and knelt down by her desk. She said, “Tenés ojos lindos” (“You have beautiful eyes”) which was just so precious that she had even noticed from across the room. In the last room we visited as a group, which was second grade, I walked in first and headed toward the back of the room. As I was walking by, a little girl in the back row jumped out of her chair, blocking my path, and then jumped into my arms for a hug. Once she broke the ice, we were all flooded by hugs from the second graders. 

Dining Hall in Madre Teresa de Calcuta. One of the things that distinguishes this school from others in Argentina!

It was a cold, rainy day when we visited Madre Teresa de Calcuta.

After we stopped by all of the classrooms from 1^st through 7^th grade, the secretary asked which classes we wanted to visit again. Carmen pointed out that since I’m secondary ed, I should go to one of the older grades, even though I was perfectly content going back to one of the primary grades. Mary and I ended up back in a social studies classroom, where the students wanted very little to do with us. We tried to ask them questions about what they were studying (Cristobal Colón, or Christopher Columbus) but they weren’t very responsive. It was also very strange because they asked what our names were, and I told them Raquel because in all the other schools we’ve visited, when I say Rachel my name is usually corrected to Raquel, but these students just looked very confused. Later, we found out that they might have reacted negatively to my name because Raquel is not currently considered a name for young people. Ouch! Not a moment too soon, our visit was over, and I found myself walking home in the rain while the other students went to teach a lesson at another school. I could have gone to observe them, but I was tired, hungry, and figured I could work on my final Spanish presentation. Instead, I watched Whose Line is it Anyway episodes on YouTube. Good life choice.

Our final school visit was planned for Thursday afternoon. We had been hearing a lot about this visit for the last 3 weeks because Marcela teaches 13-year-olds at Maristas. When we walked to the school, I realized I had walked past it a few times when walking along Blvd Oroño. It’s a very pretty school, but the front of the building doesn’t do the school as a whole justice. It’s HUGE. The building is as long as an entire city block. After waiting in the lobby, we were escorted to the directress’ office. She served us soda and dulces and gave us some of the workbooks that the students were using to learn English. Soon after we arrived, she had to leave for another meeting, but she told us that we could go wherever we wanted to observe in the school. She asked what grade levels we wanted to observe, and I just assumed I would tag along with the others to observe the younger grades. Carmen pointed out that I was studying secondary ed (she seems to be really good at that), and the directress told me I would have to wait until 2:30 when the secondary school started. And just like that, I was left alone in the office with a bunch of teachers while the others from my program went to observe the primary grades.

This is Colegio Maristas from Oroño. The school expands behind this front office part!

After standing awkwardly in the office, the teacher I was supposed to go with asked if I first wanted to observe in Marcela’s classroom. I told her I would, especially since I wasn’t doing anything else, and she walked me to Marcela’s classroom. Marcela’s only been telling us in class how rowdy her students are, and I could definitely see that in class. Students were talking over Marcela, and I don’t think she ever had all of their attention at one time. A group of students presented on the Olympics in English, and even though I was sitting in the front row they were speaking so quietly and the other students in class were talking that I hardly heard any of their presentation. I felt bad, but there wasn’t really anything I could do. At 2:45, the first teacher came back to pick me up. As we walked to her classroom, she told me that she had 16-year-olds. She told me I could speak in English or Spanish to them, as they were really excited to practice their English with a native speaker.

There was a totally different feeling in this classroom than in Marcela’s. I sat in a circle with the students while they asked me questions about where I was from, if I liked Rosario, etc. It was really funny because I was explaining to them where Indiana is in the United States, and I started naming off the states around it. After I finished explaining, the teacher told me that they watch a lot of American films and that I speak just like the people in the movies! It made me laugh because I’ve never been told that before. She also asked me to speak in Spanish at one point, and when I was done the students all clapped for me. It was so presh! After we finished talking, the teacher asked me if I wanted to help her teach the lesson. I wasn’t really sure what she wanted, but I said “Why not?” and she opened her book so I could read it with her. The lesson was about writing articles for a school magazine or newspaper. As we read through the objectives for the lesson, the teacher said, “I have to use the toilet. Do you mind teaching the lesson until I get back?” And then she left me in charge of the classroom. I wasn’t really sure what to do, but I had two students read the article examples out loud. After reading, they gave me ideas of what things were good and what things were bad about each article, and I wrote their ideas on the board. Around that time, the teacher came back and added her own two cents about everything. She then announced that it was time for a break and time for me to leave, so I snapped a few pictures with the students before I left. Maristas was a very different school from those we’ve observed in previously. Although it wasn’t perfect and I didn’t get to see a lot of it, they were very excited to have us there and invited us to come back and teach next time we’re in Rosario. I’d be very interested in that opportunity!

These are the 16-year-olds that I taught! They were wonderful students :)