The School In Pachacutec

School in Lima is very different than back in the US. Kids here go to school in the morning or in the afternoon. This limits the time the teacher has to teach the kids. At the school in Pachacutec, it always seems as if the kids are running free, just doing there own thing. Ask them why their not in class, and you will probably just get a shrug. Every school here has uniforms. Right now, most of them consist of sweat suites with the school logo on the breast or on the back. Even the poorest public schools seem to find a way to get the kids in uniforms.

Our job is to teach English. We get each class for 30 to 45 minutes once a week. This is not enough time for them to actually learn English. With the coming and going of volunteers, the organization of the teaching program has disintegrated. When I came into the program, there was and still is not a set curriculum. The volunteers are expected to come up with lessons on their own. Giving a volunteer with no teaching experience the job of making and teaching lessons, does not end well. I get the impression that the spanish classes have evolved into singing the "ABC" song and "Head Shoulders Knees and Toes" over and over again, which does not teach the kids much English.

The teachers are not too keen on having English classes for their kids. You might ask why not? We see English as something that will help them in the future. Not having the teachers support, makes it hard to teach. But, I understand why they think our classes are a waste of time if we are just singing with the kids. Without their support, there is no way we are going to get more teaching time. And without a curriculum, we are not going to get the teacher's support.

In the time I've been here, there have been a few people who really seem to care about the way the program is going and about the kids. One guy who is a spanish teacher back home, wrote a very rough outline of a curriculum. It is very basic, and only consists of a list of points to hit throughout the year. Another volunteer who is still here, has been helping me and other volunteers write lesson plans, and is helping Lidia, the pogram director, come up with a more in depth curriculum. I think the ideal point that they need to get to to benefit the kids the most is to have a book with lesson plans for each week already written, so that each volunteer can take the plan and teach it. That way, there would be continuity throughout the English classes.

In the past two weeks, since I have been teaching, we have been having concrete lessons. No more singing for thirty minutes. In this time, I reallly think that the teahers have become more welcoming to our presence in the classroom. I hope that if we can get a good solid curriculum, we can then build better relationships with the students teachers, and then maybe one day we could have more time for English. It's a work in progress, but it's happening!