Trials and Victories

Today was one of the best days of Colegio I've had this year. I've had a more fun day (like the time we played frisbee with Maryam's class, or the time we just played Save the Fox the whole time). But today, it was just a regular English class. I mean, we actually did work. But my students paid attention. They actually seemed to be enjoying it, in an infinitesimally small way. They listened during the listening section, they spoke when I asked them questions, and only one of them asked to go to the bathroom once. When they didn't know an answer, it wasn't because they hadn't been listening 5 seconds ago when I said the answer three times. Everyone had at least attempted to do their homework, and one of the students who always copies his homework, didn't. And one of the girls who I was pretty sure hated me actually made eye contact and smiled. Yes, people, this is a victory.

Lets back up. Lets back up to here, a few months ago. Where it was a struggle to have them actually acknowledge me coming into the class. Where I saw having them make fun of my Spanish accent as a success because it meant they were engaging with me. And we could back up to here, where a student cheated on my test, and compromised it, so everyone had to retake it, which I wasn't even as bummed as I should've been about it because over half the class failed it anyways.

And then this trimester? Tamia doubled her test score. Everyone improved (except, not ironically, the one who cheated). My students will say "hi" to me in passing--or "hola," rather, they still refuse to use English outside of class. I think the idea of staying in class during class, and not taking 15 minute "bathroom breaks" has finally been fixed in their consciousness enough so they only ask me once or twice a class, instead of the 15, arm-tugging, whining times of last semester.

I attribute this success to divine confirmations, my family, and me not losing hope. My mom and dad have both shared a bunch of tips, of which some of the most useful have been written expectations and warm-ups before class. (a thank you as well to some very generous Alaskans who enabled me to buy each student a warm-up notebook, which was the first 100% participation assignment I'd had!) Maryam, too, supports me an amazing amount--I'm lucky to have someone who is going through very similar challenges as I am.

I still feel exhausted after every colegio day. I still feel like a fish swimming upstream, fighting against a school culture of Minimum Effort and a Bureau of Education that says a 55-65% is an "average" student. It still bothers me that a huge majority of the students, a huge majority of the time, do not "Have their Learn On". But this is an improvement, and so I am happy.