Reading: Standing by Words by Wendell Berry
So I’ve been at site for three weeks now and am finally starting to feel like I’m settling into things. Perhaps this is because I’ve finally reestablished some sort of routine and I seem to be most content in daily monotony that this brings.
My usual day consists of waking up around 5:30am, jogging a couple of laps up and down the 0.5km that is Chimbo, breakfast before 7am and then off to work on the soon-to-be six family gardens that my counterpart and I have been working on starting. We do this until about 11am when I have to head arriba (“up” in reference to the river) to have English class for an hour before heading back home for lunch and then off to an afternoon of harvesting cacao or other random farm tasks. Depending on how horribly hot the day is, sometimes we just spend the afternoon in the Rio Chimbo. The family that I’m living with usually eats dinner between 5 and 6, which is rather early by Ecuadorian standards. My host mom, sister and I then head back arriba to an aunt’s house to hang out until my host brother gets back from colegio in Naranjito. I’m usually in bed between 9 and 10.
I really can’t complain about much expect for the one hour of my day that involves teaching… Now it’s not that I have a problem with helping out in the school. In fact, I think it’s a great resource for connecting me to the community. However, the whole idea of teaching English I feel really goes against the core goals of Peace Corps, at least for Ecuador.
To begin with, it’s less then sustainable. I am only going to be here for two years and learning something like a language like English takes much longer then that to master. Plus, my presence as an English teacher will only effect the group of students that happen to be in my school for the two years that I am here. Since I’m not assisting another English teacher nor can I plausibly bestow enough knowledge of the language to for the people living in Chimbo to continue teaching each other once my time here is done, it hardly seems like an worthwhile endeavor.
Furthermore, the education system here, in my opinion is not conducive for learning a second language. To begin with, I can’t understand why people are so preoccupied with the idea of learning English when they can’t think independently and critically in their own first language. To me, there’s no reason to learn another language if you can’t process and analysis in your own and so I don’t see why an education system that only fosters rote memorization and copying needs to do the same in a second language. I don’t believe that English should be seen as this superior language to Spanish and for any sort of third world development to happen, people need to be competent with their own resources, which in my mind, includes their own language.
Aside from that small rant, I do enjoy working with the students on a daily basis and I hope that I can eventually just turn these English classes into more of a school garden and nutrition project then just English class. Mostly this is because I am even less qualified to be teaching English then I am to be giving charlas on cacao production. The other concern is that many of my students, who are between 2nd and 7th grade, have a very hard time with reading and writing, a factor that makes teaching English, a language, even that much more difficult. Additionally, simply tasks, such as responding to my questions with their own answers instead of just repeating an answer or phrase back to me is very challenging for the average student in the school where I’m working. Consequently, I feel as if I am to be of any lasting influence on these students, I can only hope to provide them with the resources to learn to investigate and explore reason through their own devices and find a means to apply this to their own life.
On a completely different note, I finally found a closet of sorts. It’s amazing how the little things here can make such a difference. I’m also taking a huge liking to fish and oreos…
So I’ve been at site for three weeks now and am finally starting to feel like I’m settling into things. Perhaps this is because I’ve finally reestablished some sort of routine and I seem to be most content in daily monotony that this brings.
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| My student, neighbor, and bestie: Belén |
I really can’t complain about much expect for the one hour of my day that involves teaching… Now it’s not that I have a problem with helping out in the school. In fact, I think it’s a great resource for connecting me to the community. However, the whole idea of teaching English I feel really goes against the core goals of Peace Corps, at least for Ecuador.
To begin with, it’s less then sustainable. I am only going to be here for two years and learning something like a language like English takes much longer then that to master. Plus, my presence as an English teacher will only effect the group of students that happen to be in my school for the two years that I am here. Since I’m not assisting another English teacher nor can I plausibly bestow enough knowledge of the language to for the people living in Chimbo to continue teaching each other once my time here is done, it hardly seems like an worthwhile endeavor.
Furthermore, the education system here, in my opinion is not conducive for learning a second language. To begin with, I can’t understand why people are so preoccupied with the idea of learning English when they can’t think independently and critically in their own first language. To me, there’s no reason to learn another language if you can’t process and analysis in your own and so I don’t see why an education system that only fosters rote memorization and copying needs to do the same in a second language. I don’t believe that English should be seen as this superior language to Spanish and for any sort of third world development to happen, people need to be competent with their own resources, which in my mind, includes their own language.
Aside from that small rant, I do enjoy working with the students on a daily basis and I hope that I can eventually just turn these English classes into more of a school garden and nutrition project then just English class. Mostly this is because I am even less qualified to be teaching English then I am to be giving charlas on cacao production. The other concern is that many of my students, who are between 2nd and 7th grade, have a very hard time with reading and writing, a factor that makes teaching English, a language, even that much more difficult. Additionally, simply tasks, such as responding to my questions with their own answers instead of just repeating an answer or phrase back to me is very challenging for the average student in the school where I’m working. Consequently, I feel as if I am to be of any lasting influence on these students, I can only hope to provide them with the resources to learn to investigate and explore reason through their own devices and find a means to apply this to their own life.
On a completely different note, I finally found a closet of sorts. It’s amazing how the little things here can make such a difference. I’m also taking a huge liking to fish and oreos…
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