Starting in the Kindergarten

September 20, 2012 6 pm

            I am feeling 150% better – thank God (at least that´s what my host mother attributed my health too).  Yesterday morning, I started my kindergarten placement in a small town called San Salvador, 10 minutes outside of Pisac by collectivo.  It is a much smaller town than Pisac (which is saying something!) and pretty poor.  Yesterday, I was picked up at my house at 9 am by a woman named Yessika who is the Projects Abroad supervisor for all of the volunteers in care placements around the Sacred Valley.  We took a collective together to San Salvador and she introduced me to my teacher and my class.  She also showed me around the school and introduced me to the other teachers.  Today I spent the day at the kindergarten alone.

So, here´s the description of the school:

The school consists of three classrooms that are in one small building with an adjoining bathroom and there is a smaller building perpendicular to this larger building that contains a kitchen (aka a dirt floor, a stove, and some pots and pans).  These buildings look out onto a small playground and some construction – the government has given money to build a new school.  The playground has a wobbly pole, a big rock, and three seesaws that are propped up against a wobbly fence, and the unguarded construction.  The rest of the playground is covered in dirt and woodchips.  It is not a safe area for the kids to play in and most of the time the kids are out there, they are unsupervised – makes me uncomfortable.  My classroom is pretty big with three circular tables, one green, one yellow, and one red, which each fit 6 to 8 students.  There are 18 students in the class and they are all five years old.  There is a whiteboard at the front of the room and a small Dell TV with a DVD player in the corner next to the teacher´s wooden desk.  The walls are colorful with a mural on the back wall and a poster that says, Leer es divertido (reading is fun).  Next to this poster on the adjoining wall are cut out colorful numbers from 1 to 9.  There are also numbers in the front of the room, but they are missing number 6 and 13.  In addition, there is a poster near the door at the front of the room that says Limpio (clean) and has other words for soap, toothbrush, etc.  Good hygiene and nutrition is a big issue in San Salvador and poor communities all over.  The classroom is dark and feels kind of dingy and has a general foul smell.  Most kids have at least one rotten tooth and I only saw one kid that had a different pair of pants on today than he had on yesterday, the rest were wearing the same clothes and smelled pretty bad.

It´s really too early to describe what I think of working in this classroom.  My teacher speaks English, which is nice, but I kind of feel like I am cheating by having an English speaking teacher, but I will still learn a lot because she only speaks Spanish to the kids and none of the kids speak English, I think at least half of them speak Quecha at home.  The teacher seems nice, however she was not there today, so I don´t have much of a sense of her yet.  Today, I showed up and the teacher was not there.  When the whistle was blown and the kids came into the classroom with no teacher, I began to worry but decided she must just come in a little late because the kids all knew to get puzzles and play by themselves for 10 minutes.  Then the kids started asking me things and it is incredibly difficult to get a 5 year old repeat themselves slowly, so I tried to tell the children to wait for the teacher, but that didn´t work.  One boy brought me a DVD of Alvin and the Chipmunks in Spanish to put into the TV, so at first I refused, but after 20 minutes of being alone I agreed.  Luckily, as I was putting the DVD in, a substitute came in.  The substitute is the man that watches the playground and generally helps out around the school.  He doesn´t speak any English and I think we both felt pretty awkward with each other.  The kids watched half of the movie and then we practiced numbers, had recess, had lunch, watched the same part of the movie again (the sub couldn´t figure out how to fast forward), and practiced more numbers – this time learning if 0 comes before 1 or after 9.  Lunch is prepared by a different mother each day.  Yesterday it was a chicken and rice soup prepared by a mother who only spoke Quecha and today it was meat with french fries and rice.  Yessika told me not to eat the food for the first week because of my stomach issues, but then to eat it starting next week…I don´t really want to because the classroom/school feels so dirty.  We´ll see.  The school day is from 8:30 to 1.  At 1:00, I take a collectivo back to Pisac and join my family for lunch.  Then I have Spanish class from 3 to 6.  I am really enjoying my busier days!

There´s so much more to say about the kindergarten, but right now I don´t feel able to put my thoughts into words, besides to say that I am very intrigued by this education system.  It is extremely different from the (overly?) organized and cautious United States education system that I am used to, but a lot of the things they do make me cringe!