I’ve now been working at Escuela General Tomás Guardia Gutiérrez in Bagaces, Guanacaste, Costa Rica (whew!) for just over a week. I’ve learned so much just by watching, but there are still so many things I’m constantly learning. I’ve finally cycled through all of the classes I’ll be working with bringing my total up to 302 students in 10 classes: 3 first grade classes, 4 fifth grade, and 3 sixth grade. I’ve decided that learning all their names is a completely unachievable task. The most important are those of the trouble-makers and class clowns. After that, the kids who really like me and will find any excuse to come talk to me. After that long list, I’ll probably end up with a rotation of José’s and María’s for everyone else which, statistically, gives me pretty good odds of getting a lot of kids’ attention simultaneously.
Friday, instead of having classes, the majority of the morning was spent on a school-wide speech competition. The students and all the teachers assembled in the main courtyard area to watch 11 students give speeches in hopes of representing the school in the provincial speech competition. Each of them spoke on something related to why Guanacaste (the province) is great, what makes it special, etc. It was actually a very informative morning for me. I got to sit up with the judges and two other teachers and tally scores and look official. What I realized with the entire student body and staff in one place was rather profound, if I do say so myself: I’m really white. Yep- I’m admitting it- I’m just incredibly Caucasian. I hadn’t noticed how weird I looked to everyone until I was in front of everybody and getting a lot of strange looks. Surrounded by a bunch of dark-skinned, dark-haired, mostly-tiny Ticos, I stood out like an albino gorilla in a schoolyard.
Standing out and generally being weird seems like it’ll be a common theme of my teaching experience. The kids have a fascination with this stranger in their classroom and take great delight in making jokes about me. Unfortunately, my “I’ll just play along” attitude only works so well. It’s one thing to pretend to understand an explanation about something and mimick someone’s facial expressions. It’s another to accidentally laugh along because you don’t understand when they’re making fun of you.
The kids have decided that I don’t actually speak Spanish OR English. They like trying to give me words or phrases in English, usually that they’ve heard in songs and then asking me to translate. But when you take something you hear in a song in a language you don’t understand and then take it out of context and repeat it in a heavy accent, it becomes completely incomprehensible. And since I don’t understand them when they speak “English,” they’ve decided that I obviously must not actually speak English at all. Not that they think much of my Spanish either. I can communicate myself very easily, but can’t understand 20 of them quickly shouting words I’ve never heard at me simultaneously in the midst of a school yard full of screaming, yelling children. And so, apparently I don’t speak Spanish either. But they haven’t given up on me yet. I wonder how long their patience will last.
One of our discussions about music evolved into a conversation about dance. I absolutely LOVE dancing and told them about some of the styles I know. While Salsa and Meringue had some redeeming value in their eyes, what they really wanted to know is if I could dance Reggaeton. (Reggaeton is a super sexy non-partner Latin dance that I have absolutely no inclination to ever learn.) Here are these sixth grade girls, shaking things they don’t have and “dropping” in the middle of a classroom, showing off their moves to music from a cell phone speaker. The teacher I work with was laughing so hard she was crying and they were trying to drag me into it to try. I was trying desperately to convince them that I was completely incapable of dancing like that and that, even if I could, I had no desire to…ever. But here are these little girls with big Latin attitudes having a dance party in a classroom in the middle of the day with a cell phone DJ. While it was really funny in a lot of ways, it was also sad that these young girls have already become so engrossed with such a sexualized cultural element.
In my last class today, the class smart-alec asked me if I liked Coke and I responded using the word coca which is a perfectly acceptable name for the drink. Unfortunately, it’s also the word for the plant that’s used to produce cocaine and within seconds, he’d managed to announce to the entire class that their new teacher likes cocaine. More laughing at Megan ensued. I guess that’s something I’m just going to live with. They’ll continue having their jokes about me, I’ll keep trying to keep up and maybe even teach them some English along the way. Or so I hope.