morning conversation

J and I often get some time together while Anna makes breakfast. This morning he was narrating some conflict at his school that he perceived as continuing into his summer camp, even though to my knowledge summer camp is a completely different group of kids.

"...and then I thought, I'm going to get those kids. I'm going to use those two aikido techniques on them."
"Well, aikido is really for when people physically attack us. For everything else, we use talking."
"I made them up, so they're not real aikido techniques."
"Even so, we use talking."

J growled and stuffed his head inside the pillowcase.

"I'm sticking my head in the pillow so I can't hear you saying things that try to make me use talking."
"Aw, kiddo. I just want you to live in peace with everybody else."
"Grrrrrr!"

Anna called him to the table for breakfast.

"Grrr, I'm so mad about what you said, I don't think I can eat breakfast."
"Do you remember what I said?"
"No."
"So does it really matter?"
"No!"

He gets up to go to the table.

"You don't own me, you don't get to decide what's important to me."
"That's absolutely true."

It's amazing what happens when you raise kids to communicate. It shouldn't be surprising when that's what they do, but it sort of is.

the underwear goes on before the pants, buddy

J is 6, so of course he has adults constantly telling him what to do.

I wondered if he might understand that everyone telling him what to do is just a phase; that once he learns to do these things, no one will be telling him to do them.

Then I was thinking about why these things are important: taking bites instead of gnawing food while holding it in his hands like a squirrel, washing hands and face after meals (because of the aforementioned eating like a squirrel), asking politely before escalating to shouting demands, Angry Hands[tm] are not okay, on and on. My initial answer was "It's our responsibility to help you grow up to be a happy, civilized human being."

What's "happy," exactly? Aren't we just pushing and prodding him into unquestioning conformity with cultural norms?

One of the WorldTeach volunteers--this one, in fact--tends to use the word "happiness" in a very situational sense. For her, happiness is the outcome of circumstances, and she will often exclaim "I am so happy right now!" by way of appreciation.

I tend to view happiness differently: as a transient state like sadness, annoyance, hunger, or warmth. My inner monologue was imprecise: I thought "happiness," but I meant "contentment." For that aspect of contentment, I think I mean this:

Our internal state is in harmony with the external state of the world around us.

That means a couple further things:

1. As best we can, we're accepting the reality of events. For J, this would involve abandoning his conspiracy theories about how I failed to bring the iPhone in the car because Mama and I don't want him to have his rightfully-earned time playing games.
2. We're interacting with other people in a way that they can listen to and feel as comfortable about as possible. This commonly means not punching them (though not universally, even here), but also, in our culture, taking bites, using silverware, and not walking around with food covering your face and hands.

To achieve even the minimal definition of success in our society, you have to put your clothes on in the right order; can't go around punching or shouting at people; and you can't push food at your mouth and gnaw it. So, yes, we're forcing him to conform, but not in how he thinks: just in elemental behavior.

Good thing, too, since the odds of him conforming in thought are roughly zero.

(continued)

We had a lovely small welcome-home party tonight. I'll get around to seeing everyone, but it was good to start with a small group. I think for the next phase I'll try an outing to La Fiesta, since they do a guajillo-sour cream sauce that's on my list of things I've missed.

It was nice to see people, including my friends' daughter A, who, like J, is now huge and looking very grown-up at 7 years old. We cracked open a bottle of 1996 port they gave me a while back, and had delicious spicy food--Ann brought a Burmese curry, and William made a spicy Thai soup. I made some challah, which came out very well. I'm looking forward to buying a good-size stand mixer to help with baking: I'd like to make bigger batches, but I'm not really interested in mixing up 6 cups of flour by hand.

My hip is misaligned and bugging me badly enough to keep me off the mat. My Oakland chiropractor, Elizabeth, has shuttered her practice (personal reasons, not economic), and some research found me a guy in San Mateo in the same modality. It's called "bio-geometric integration," and on a gross level it deals with the fact that our bodies are tensegrity structures, where (for example) you push down on a shoulder and a hip moves. There's a whole deep system to it that I don't understand, involving energy connections and such, and lots of BGI practices are called things like "Awaken Chiropractic" and "Radiant Life Chiropractic" and such. It's a very California thing, and yet it's a very gentle way of physically adjusting the body, and the energy work isn't crap, either. I have no idea what Paul was doing, but eventually he snapped the air in front of my chest and there was a chunk of emotional release. I think it's a bit more apparent with him than with Elizabeth because I haven't had an adjustment in 9 months, and a lot of physical and emotional cruft accumulated during a long, stressful experience. That's true even as other stuff cleared up during that same experience; complicated, no?

I have 2 phone interviews next week! It feels very sudden, but then I'd like to start a job in January, so it's time. I'm actually surprised anyone's doing anything this close to Christmas. It sounds like tech hiring is binging again, so my timing is good for once, and I shouldn't have any trouble picking up something. At the very least I'm pretty sure a friend's company will hire me, since they need someone with precisely my skillset and experience; but they're in Santa Clara and not near the train, and while I enjoy writing code in Perl, I'd like to branch out into other languages.

This has been a child-enabled couple of days, so the re-entry is focused on family time, time with the boy both alone and with Anna, and finding ways for me to be in the house but not completely enveloped by the chaotic noisy kid-space. Life here continues to not feel strange, except as I'd expect from my poor sleeping. This is where I'm supposed to be.

in sight of land

My plane leaves in 36 hours, which is sort of mind-bogglingly close. On Tuesday I get to see Anna, but then also on Wednesday and Thursday, the week after that, and then, so far as we know, the weeks and months after that. After so much time apart, it doesn't seem real; but it's true. My being away has been educational for both of us, but we haven't liked it. Our lives are better together.

Now, too, since we have an unbounded time to talk things out, we can start some longer-running conversations without worrying that we won't get it settled before we're on different continents again.

(Confidential to AF: I'm happy to talk about the bunny suit, but I think that thing with the goldfish crosses a few of my boundaries. Sorry.)

Then there's also the kid, who will be very happy to see me. I'll be happy to see him, too, though I find him, and our relationship, perplexing. He's known me for quite a while now, and he's decided I'm a very important person in his family--at some point I developed into my own category, so when we were Skyping earlier this year while Anna's father was visiting, he told me, "Me and Chris went to the park," when he was talking about his grandfather (who is not named Chris). I haven't done much caretaking with him, and he's usually playing with Anna when he's with us (and we only lived together a month), but I guess it's enough that I treat him like a person and he sees me and Anna in action.

Did I mention I get to be with Anna again?

so tiny!

A big welcome to Planet Earth to my newest niece, born this week. She appears to be adorable, if understandably confused and tired. Being born is a rough transition, to a big cold world presumably less comfortable than the womb.

That leaves me as the only one of us who hasn't spawned. I already acquired a 6-year old the easy way, though--I skipped the diapers-and-colic phase! but missed him learning how to talk--so I'm not in a hurry.

the end of teaching

I haven't been writing as much, at least compared to a month ago. Fewer things are happening, as my time here winds down. I'm cleaning things up at school and trying to force myself to plan my traveling.

• Tomorrow is my last day at school, with a good-bye party at a teacher's house at 6:30.
• Saturday I go to aikido one last time.
• Saturday night is a barbecue at Heather's in Quilpue.
• Sunday I go north to La Serena and Valle de Elqui.
• Wednesday the 25th is the WorldTeach End-of-Service, which is a 4-hour meeting followed by a party.
• Thursday the 26th is the English Opens Doors closing ceremony, which will probably be boring.
• Then I go south to Castro, Chiloe, and putz around Chiloe for a while.
• Then I go to Puerto Varas.
• Then I go to Santiago for a couple days, then home.

I have no bus tickets or reservations yet. Need to make some calls tonight.

Meantime, I'm saying good-byes to my students.

This is Elizabeth. Every time we worked with the weather cards, she'd get really excited and say she wanted "Pablo Neruda!", the Chilean Nobel Laureate who wore hats and berets like what I drew (which I copied from one of last year's volunteer's lesson plans). Following my custom of giving things to people who want them more than me, I gave her the card.

Only 1-C and 1-J have thrown me parties, which correlates with how well-organized and studious those classes are, and how well we got along. A "party" at school might involve soda, but definitely involves chips and cookies and other snack foods on plastic plates. 1-J also gave me little presents: a pencil case and little box that say "Valparaiso," and a framed print of a Valparaiso scene. They were working really hard to keep me out of the classroom while they got the plates ready: their stall tactic was to insist we needed more photos, so we have lots and lots of photos.

This is my main souvenir from this adventure: it's a sign for the 702, the bus that runs past the house. It turns out the same guy has been making bus signs for Region V for 27 years, he's really nice, and his shop is a shack about a mile from here, downtown. It was about US$22 to get it done, with both sides painted. It's huge and I don't know where it will go in a small apartment, but I'll figure it out.

I really am just mentally exhausted, and I don't know that that's interesting to read about. I'm not sad yet, because with me that comes later. Right now I'm just...done. It's interesting to watch how I am when I have no resources left: less patient with students being obnoxious, but still listening and letting them know I care. The cold a couple weeks ago really knocked me down, and it feels like I'm not physically well enough to bounce back from it.

Tomorrow's my last day at school. 26 days until I'm home.

testing and tears

1-J had their test scheduled for today, and yesterday they started campaigning for me to delay it. They claimed they had my test, another test, and a Biology project due all today, and the rules said they don't have to have more than two tests in a day. We had a similar rule in college about exams, but of course I don't have the language skills and contextual knowledge to know when the kids are trying to con me--although they usually are. They were genuinely distraught; yesterday I told them I'd think about it, but they should be ready for the test. I said they should talk to the U.T.P., the Unidad Técnica Pedagógica, which is literally something like "Educational Technique Unit," and I translate as "Curriculum Director," because they're the school's academic overlords. A couple girls said they'd do that.

Today they campaigned harder, and of course no one had actually talked to the Curriculum Overlords (perhaps thinking they had a better chance with me alone), so when they came to my classroom, I said, "Okay, let's go talk to the U.T.P., the rest of you hang out here." I don't know the rules of the school very well, it'd be a pain for me to delay the test, and I didn't like the power dynamics of me making the decision--of either giving in to a silly student demand (they knew the test was coming and we prepped for it last week), or of their perceiving an injustice if I remained hard-nosed.

Funny enough, the three students went in to talk to Uberlinda, the Power-That-Is, and when I showed up a few steps later, her assistant Claudia basically blocked the door and asked how she could help, so I had to say "I'm with them" to get in to watch the conversation.

Uberlinda told them they were SOL: that yes, they can only have two tests in a day, and that's all they have, the Biology project is something they're supposed to do at home, well before the day it's due. So we went back to the room and crushed everyone's hopes and started the testing.

The test was two parts, equally weighted: give me the English words for 10 pictures, and then ask me 3 of the 4 questions we learned (things like "What do you do for work?" and "What's your favorite food?". I'm pretty generous by American standards, and I try really hard to help the kids get at least partial credit, by prompting them with initial consonants and stuff. Even so, we had a few bad results and one set of tears, and several requests for a way to raise their grade.

In a school where their learning experience were reasonable (especially if I were creating it), I'd say "tough," but...a lot of these kids already have lousy grades in English, and if they don't keep their grades up, they'll get booted out to another school. I know for a fact that these are smart kids, and most of them aren't any lazier than normal 15-year olds; and I know that between the huge, untracked classes and bad curriculum, their overall English-learning experience is crap.

Maybe they'll succeed under the Chilean system, maybe they won't; but I think I want to help them as much as I can while being fair to everyone and still insisting that they be assessed on what they know.

a transplant experiment

I stayed at a certain hostel here where the manager is a middle-aged American woman. She runs an outstanding place, and has lots of interesting stories, but she's one of the majority of non-corporate expats who have...issues. Vaguely defined. It takes certain personality traits to go move yourself permanently somewhere else; for lack of a better word, expats who aren't set up by a big organization (e.g. company job or diplomatic corps) are usually somehow flakey.

She had brought her teenage daughter here some years ago and put her in a Chilean public school. I could barely conceal my shock: my eyebrows rose, as though possessed. I'm not of the opinion that you have to sacrifice everything to give your children the best of everything, but I am definitely of the opinion that you should sacrifice as much as you can to give your children the barely-adequate of everything. Choosing to put your kid in a Chilean public school, when you have better options, doesn't qualify.

I got my eyebrows under control and continued the conversation.

"Well, I wanted her to experience being around kids who didn't have as much stuff."

"That's a good idea. How did that go?"

"She came home one day and boasted that she was getting sevens." (Chilean grades go from 0 or 1 up to 7.) "I said, 'How are you pulling sevens? You don't even speak Spanish.'"

Ooookay, so you put your child into a barely-functional school system where she doesn't speak the language and there's no facilities for teaching it to her.

"So what happened?"
"I took her out of the school when she came home one day and said she had to go meet her friends to graffiti some stuff."

I say "parenting fail," despite the broadened cultural horizons. (As of our meeting, the daughter hadn't been heard from for several months, which Mom thought meant she was dropping out of college, possibly not for the first time.) What do you think?

best description of me this year

From Anna. (J is an extremely smart boy and swiftly approaching 6 years old.)

J and I have been talking about two-dimensional versus three-dimensional shapes, and today he wondered what one-dimensional things were, or if they were. I thought maybe a point, but I wasn't sure, so I said, "Oooh, we should google that. Or ask Chris--he might know." J started laughing with joy and said, "Yeah, Chris is like a google, but one we can skype!! And he knows a lot of stuff, but not all of it!"

Awesome.

aspects of comprehension

Today's English sentences I'm glad my students can't understand:

"Jesus Christ, stand up, you lazy bastards." (1-G)

"Holy crap, you guys are assholes." (1-A)

Don't get me wrong, both classes have been far worse. The rough-housing from 1-A is easier to deal with than more disruptive stuff.

I do get surprised. Students have varying levels of ability and comprehension, but I have to teach to the beginner level, because even the ones with better comprehension can't say much. In a more functional system, there would be assessment tests and students would be sorted out by level, but Chile's not there yet.

Gisselle rattled off something in Spanish for me, and I said, "Mas lento [slower]. If I say something long and fast in English, you're never going to understand it, are you?" And of course she got the wide-eyed complete-confused look that I had after her Spanish.

Suddenly the girl next to her, Jennifer, leans over and translates.

"Wait, you speak English?!"

"Mas o menos." More or less.

"No wonder you're always bored."

"Que?" What?

We chatted after class, and apparently her mother has always spoken to her in English and Italian. "No wonder" was beyond her and she wasn't inclined to demonstrate her speaking, but her understanding is obviously pretty solid, especially for Chile.

Who knows what else my kids know? And I'll never find out.

the news from chrisland

I thought the week would return me to normalcy after my week off, which it has inasfar as most of the week is canceled: Monday was a holiday, today was a half-day due to a teacher meeting (I haven't seen that half of 1-H in 5 weeks), and Friday is off for Teachers' Day. Plus tomorrow night is the Teachers' Day dinner, and then Friday night is another asado at Bennett's in the country, starting at 9pm. I'm hoping to rent a tent, actually, so with my sleeping bag I'll have a place to crawl into away from the party, and go to bed before 5am.

It has been more or less nice to be back in the classroom. I'm essentially teaching the same lesson I figured out last semester, with different material plugged in. The kids were getting bored with it, but having some time apart cleanses the palate, and reminds them how much more fun I can be than their regular classes. It helps me to have a lesson plan that I know works; the kids' response combined with my lack of training has generally discouraged much innovation.

Rodolfo in 1-G is one of my favorite and most talkative students, and started chatting when I went to get them from their room.

"Hey, how come we didn't have class last week? Were you stressed out or something?"

"Kinda, yeah, I was tired, so I took a break."

"You can do that? Just...take a break? For being tired?"
"Well, it was only because Marcela was out. Technically I don't have to work when she's not here." [Not exactly true. I don't have to take the entire 45-student class. I'm supposed to work if there's a substitute or if I can take half the class with Marcela gone.]

He told this to Marcela, who just chuckled.

"But Rodolfo, I have different rules than the regular teachers. They don't actually pay me: I'm a volunteer."

Bafflement. "Wait...what? How do you support yourself?"

Which led to a conversation about my savings, small stipend, host family, and then he asked:

"What do you do in the United States?"

Someone else said, "Duh, he's a teacher."

"Actually, I'm a software engineer."

More bafflement. Rodolfo: "Uh...uh...how did you end up here?"

A conversation for another time. I'm good enough at teaching that they have a hard time imagining I'm not a teacher by profession, which is kinda cool, though it barely survives my self-criticism.

All of Chile is united and obsessed with the miners: people actually got up at midnight to watch the first of them get out, and stayed up watching for hours. I don't follow Chilean news much, so I only know what I get from the newspaper headlines on the street, and from Chileans asking me if I've seen the news. For the past couple of days, the house grandmother has had "Los mineros" as her muttering-of-choice as she goes about the house talking to herself. (She's always muttering something.)

My second aikido class yesterday went pretty well. It's really hard without even one really experienced person. Also, I was teaching in Spanish. Also, a new guy showed up mid-way and wanted to know about the art and then wanted to join the class. That worked out well because whatever his story is, he's ready for aikido in a way that not everyone is. So he fit right in and I think he'll stick. Maybe I should give myself some credit.

Updates are sparse this week because the "wireless" part of the house's wireless router has died again. It turns out I've been pretty dependent on it for feeling connected and busy; hopefully it fixes itself like it did when we got here. Otherwise, I'll see if Anna can bring my spare router when she visits in a couple weeks. Meanwhile, there's...uh...whiskey. And pisco! And cookies.

Oh, fine, I'll go read a book.

it's nice to have an impact

A trio of the friendliest girls from 1-C (which is saying a lot) caught up to me in the hallway today. Javiera started peppering me with questions.

"Teacher, you're leaving in seven weeks?"
"Well, in seven weeks I finish teaching. Then I leave Chile three weeks after that."

"And you're not coming back?"
"Nope, it's time for me to go home."

Javiera switched to English. "I miss you. I am sad."

"Aw, thanks. And hey, good English!"
"Yes!"

Daaawwww.

finding a suitable carrot

Not intentionally. But I'd been considering what to do with 1-G, now that they've acquired The Fear[tm] and become more manageable. They're the last class on Monday, when they don't want to be there, and frankly I'm not thrilled about it either, if I'm just going to spend an hour trying to keep them acting like human beings.

At the beginning of class, I told them, "Okay, if you guys concentrate and work for a bit, we can all go home early."

There was much rejoicing, and Nicolas asked, "If we behave, how soon can we leave?".

"Hmm...forty-five minutes, maybe forty."

There was a little bit of grumbling until Nicolas did the math and helped his classmates understand that forty-five minutes is significantly less than an hour, which produced nods of upbeat agreement.

They accomplished more in 35 minutes than they usually do in 60. We all got to go home early and they got to see an immediate positive consequence for cooperation. I think they had an assumption that we were going to spend the whole hour regardless of what happened, and changing that opened up new possibilities for them. They were still Chilean schoolkids, but they stepped up to being only as much of a pain as my other classes.

Here's to more short classes in the future.

talking to Chilean English teachers

On August 25th, I went to speak to the local group of Chilean English teachers. Stephanie, from the 4-month WorldTeach group, spoke first, but she's only been teaching a week and she's kind of quiet, while I've been teaching for a few months and I am...not quiet. This is, more or less, what I said, speaking unprepared, after Marcela introduced herself and me. It's long and rambley, because I made it up as I went along. I'm pretty sure I sounded more eloquent than this at the time.

Hi! My name is Chris Doherty, and I teach at the Instituto Superior de Comercio. I teach six cursos of primero medio, and we split the cursos in half, so I have twelve classes. I'm from the same program as Stephanie, WorldTeach: they have two programs that coordinate with the Ministry of Education's English Opens Doors, a 4-month program and an 8-month program. I'm on the 8-month program, so I arrived in Chile on March 17th, and in Valparaiso April 7th, so I've been teaching here for...four months.

I teach six cursos [classes] of primero medio [first-years]. We split each curso, so I have twelve classes. They're all at a very, very basic level: some kids know more stuff than they get to use with me, but often they're not able to make sentences, or if they can, they're not willing to. A lot of them believe they can't, because the English they've had is impossible. For example, Page 1 of the Ministry's English textbook is completely covered in long paragraphs of text with big words and complicated sentences; I have a couple of books from the United States, where Page 1 says "Hi, my name is ______. What's your name?" and nothing else. My students may or may not want to learn English, but many of them think they can't, because they see these pages filled with complicated text. It's like if you showed me a page filled with Russian--I'd give up, too. That may be the biggest problem: the students have little to no English, but the classes don't teach to their level.

So a lot of what I do is just to have a relationship with them. In reality, the amount of English I can teach them is very small. I see each student for an hour a week or less--classes are canceled for one thing or another. I can't bring them up to a conversational level in the time I have. But I can show them that English is possible for them, that if we start with basic things, like introducing themselves, they can learn. I treat them as individuals, and even with the students who cause problems, I take the time to help them pronounce and understand things. So even with the problem students, I have a good relationship. To see them for who they are, and to show that we think they can learn, might be the most important thing we can do as teachers--the most important thing any adult can do for a child.

I have only basic training as a teacher: in the United States, I'm a software engineer, so this is a little different. The way I teach is by having them use English. I don't explain anything, I just teach them the words and the meaning and then they practice using them. Explaining things doesn't work: with the educational culture here, if a teacher is talking, they don't associate that with something that might be important to them. In the United States, there's a real sense of hierarchy, with the teachers and then the students. Here, the students are much more on a level with the teachers, in a way that I think interferes with learning. I don't mean to say "No, Chile is bad," because it's a complicated question, and it deserves a complicated answer. The educational culture here doesn't come out of nowhere, it's very tied in with Chilean culture and history, how Chilean families are structured, and the effects of the dictatorship. You all face that every day, and you know more about it than I do. But I think it doesn't work very well for helping kids learn.

How do you deal with discipline in the classroom?

I have three boxes in the corner of the whiteboard, with one, two, and three frowning faces on it. The third box says "Inspector." This mostly works because it provides a predictable ladder of consequences: their name is up on the board, so they can't forget. It helps them to remember what I expect of their behavior. It mostly works...some kids only behave when they're a step away from the Inspector's office, so I've learned to put them there earlier in class. Also, I'm very lucky in that my school, the students want to be there. They may not want to work, but they want to be there, so if they behave really poorly, they might get kicked out.

the week so far

Anna made it home safe, with a long list of non-catastrophic travel mishaps. This was all easier with her here.

You can tell you're settled in Chile when the Mandarin teacher at school (who's Chinese) can no longer understand your Spanish because of your Chilean accent.

1-B today decided to reach into territory normally occupied by 1-G, with a similar but seemingly spontaneous refusal to do the choral repetition when I said anything. Still burned out from 1-G yesterday, I stopped and sat for a minute, and we talked briefly. Unlike 1-G, they were able to communicate that they're bored with the routine, and to the extent they listened to what I said, they were surprised to learn that the exercises I'm willing to try with them are severely limited by their behavior.

Teenagers are idiots.

I said I'd try and do something else, and they said they'd behave for it, and we got at least a little bit done with the lesson I had. I was incredibly happy to see 1-C afterward, which is virtually trouble-free. They also learn so fast and so well that I can hold the reins pretty loose with them, which feels nice. I gave them candy at the end of class just to say "Thank you" for being awesome.

(Of course, that led to them begging for another piece, which I refused, but Sonia G. actually offered to buy some, which was just sort of weird. It's a kind of candy called Frugele, and it is incredibly delicious, but it's shocking how it reduces students to begging like starving street urchins.)

There's a teacher protest on Thursday! I was pretty pleased with myself for being able to pick that out of the union president's speech before confirming it with my friend Sara. Classes stop at 10am so the teachers can go protest in the street, which means I don't have any classes. I'll go skulk around downtown and take pictures from a safe distance and try to avoid getting hit with water cannons.

Another day.

that's enough of that.

1-G crossed some lines today by, among other things, refusing to talk. You'll recall that our last class (2 weeks ago!) was more than a little problematic. This may have been their retaliation for my writing up the girl who took stuff off my desk, which turned out to summon one of her parents to come chat with the school staff about it. When I started doing the choral repetition, one of the usual ringleaders (Bruno, Exequiel, Nicolas, or one of the Javieras) would say "Sssh!" and then when it was their turn to talk, they stayed silent. Anyone who crossed the picket line (by repeating what I said) got booed.

That lasted about 10 minutes, and then when class finally got going, there were 5 or 6 kids who just kept being disruptive. I put one of them outside for a little while, wrote names on the board, but they kept being uncooperative. Finally I said (with lots of silence and pauses):

Look, this is a communicative English class. I can't actually do anything if you don't participate. We can do something else, like sit in silence and write stuff down. I realize it's the last class on Monday. It's hard for everybody. But if we do the work, we can leave early. Otherwise, we stay the whole time.

That split the instigators right down the middle, with Bruno and Exequiel saying "Okay, let's do the class." Things got better still when I finally sent one of the Javieras to the inspector, but it was still a mess.

The more I think about their behavior, the more annoyed I am. It feels a little self-promoting or something, but honestly, I put a lot of energy into teaching them. I work really hard to give them chances to change their behavior, and to treat them as individuals and take the time to help them learn. So this level of disrespect really bugs me.

I have a plan. I'm changing the rules, just for them.

They don't get any more chances.

If they disrupt the class, they give me their cell phones and they sit outside the classroom. If they fail to do either of those things, or if they don't stay outside the classroom, I send them to the inspector.

I may preface this new policy by making them do some impossible, boring task that's more like what they have to do outside my class.

Either way...enough of their bullshit.

cold, like snowboarding.

Whether it was because Anna was there or because Student X was missing, the little bastards in 1-B were fantastic today. Also, last time she was here they chanted "UN BESO! UN BESO!" and this time it was "ONE KISS! ONE KISS!". Not something I taught them, but hey, I'll take it.

They did call me out for lying to them last time about whether Anna was my girlfriend. I wish I knew how to say, in Spanish, "It's because I knew you little ******s would waste ten shouting minutes of class time on sexual innuendo and trying to get me to kiss her, just like you're doing now," but I had to settle for something simple and polite. Which they didn't listen to, because hey, it's just a teacher talking, it can't be that important.

Anna took some video, which I'll upload soon, and pointed out a lot of cool things about how much better I am at teaching and how much the kids have learned, and how much more comfortable they are when pronouncing English. As she put it, "They seem to understand that there are English sounds to make English words, instead of using Spanish sounds." On the videos I also get to see more of their reactions than I can when I'm teaching. Verdict: I'm pretty funny and they like my class.

We had a near-injury during a game of Slap. I put two chairs in the middle of the room, and one student from each team takes a turn. I say a word, and they run up and hit the picture on the board. While I am often awed by the destructive power of Chilean teenagers, today we had the smaller girl hit the larger girl with a full-on body check to keep her from reaching the board first. The larger girl bounced off the wall onto the floor, tripping the smaller girl so they both ended up in a laughing pile on the ground. We, uh, lost focus for a few minutes. (No major injuries. Smaller girl has a sore knee and a scrape on her leg.)

One of the words they learned was "snowboarding" (we did Hobbies), which I'd pointed out to them is a lot like "snowing," which we learned last time. At the end of class, with a mixed English-Spanish discussion about who Anna was, someone asked if we were in love. I translated and and Anna said, "No, I don't like you." I made my sad face.

(During the whole "ONE KISS!" nonsense, Anna had been talking to Juan next to her, who was pulling out everything he'd learned to have a conversation with her: "Where are you from?" "How old are you?". When I said Anna didn't like me, he alarmedly leaned over to her and said "False?". SO CUTE.)

Raquel, one of the girls who often Will Not Shut Up, but who likes English and is more willing to talk than most, said, "Teacher! You two...no sentimiento [warm feeling]...you, uh, cold! Like snowboarding."

okay, that was adorable

The Prop 8 Trial Tracker folks got an actual lawyer to answer people's questions about the trial. I'm not entirely satisfied with his answer about Baker v. Nelson and other prior decisions--he dodged significantly--but the short version is "it was 38 years ago, it was a summary dismissal rather than an actual decision, and there have been a lot of decisions since then supporting gay rights and tearing down gender discrimination." We'll see, then.

Theoretically I had four classes today. Yesterday I sent Marcela a text message asking if we would split the classes like normal today, and she said "Yes"; but in fact, my latter two classes, 1-H and 1-G, were taking the test that somehow they didn't take with the other Monday classes last week. This happens a lot, where it doesn't seem to occur to her that it makes a difference to my level of preparation whether I have to actually teach the class or not. From talking to her and other teachers, I think that Chilean teachers do not do "lesson planning" as I have been taught to recognize it. My sense is that they teach by explaining things, so they just have the material they're going to explain, and how they're going to explain it. Students, for their part, are not in the habit of thinking "Oh, the teacher is talking, this might be something I should pay attention to," so an ordinary class would consist of teachers talking and students ignoring them.

One of my kids from 1-J, pregnant until a couple of days ago, brought her newborn in to visit her friends and teachers. SO TINY. She gave him to me to hold and I carried him around the classroom, eyes wide open. He was convulsing periodically, which Anna tells me is what newborns do before they get the hang of pooping: they try clenching everything, not yet used to having to clench some muscles and relax others. Did I mention SO TINY?

Because I found out 5 minutes beforehand that 1-H was testing instead of having a class, my room was still arranged in a U, so I told them to move the seats into the testing configuration (sort of grid-like, with lots of space in between chairs). Then I told them again, that they could move the seats while I wrote their vocabulary words on the board. I started writing, and heard chairs dutifully moving behind me.

I turned around, and they had moved all of their seats into a single clump in the middle of the room, with just an inch in between them. They sat there, smiling, as though I might actually start handing out the tests.

They were checking for a reaction, so I milked it a bit, with half-smiles and pauses. Finally I said, "I don't tell you guys this often enough, but...I love all of you."

Then it took 10 minutes to get them moved, but sucking up test time was their problem, not mine.

They're a sweet-tempered bunch. I like them.

wishing I could mix it up a little

Anna got me hooked on Scandinavia and the World, which is a fine, fine webcomic about international stereotypes and viewpoints. I'm still waiting for an emblematic-but-not-prurient one to send to Mom.

I've been trying to do some slightly different things with teaching: I have a few exercises that have worked really well, but the kids would like to do something different, and I wouldn't mind either. Unfortunately, every time I go and look at lists of ESL exercises, it highlights what an incredibly restricted environment I'm working in. I feel like Mister Negativity every time I read an exercise and see why it won't work...

• It's like pulling teeth to get the kids to stand up and move around. Not worth it, except for very limited exercises.
• I see them once a week or less.
• The educational culture doesn't expect a whole lot from them, by American standards. They do more for me, but not a lot more.

And I'm struck by how 30 minutes is too little for our communicative teaching style, but 60 minutes is too long. 45 minutes would be just right. I have 60.

I might actually try a writing exercise soon, just for something else to do.

calling a time-out

I stopped class with 1-G today. The speaking exercise was getting sort of disordered, which is normal for them, but a couple other things happened.

A major part of my classroom management is a corner of the board that has three boxes, with one, two, and three frownie-faces in them. That last one also says "Inspector," the last step on Ye Olde Ladder of Consequences. The inspectoria is the school's disciplinary arm, and because this is a select school, the inspectores have a certain amount of power that they don't necessarily have elsewhere--too much disciplinary trouble and they'll be kicked out of a school they tried reasonably hard to get into. Kids usually take the board reasonably seriously, especially if they're one step away from getting booted instead of two.

As happens occasionally, one girl went and erased her name off the board. It's one of those signs of the lack of hierarchy and authority in schools. I'm not sure what they're hoping will happen, but I just kick them up to the next box.

Then I noticed that another girl, instead of holding one index card, was holding a stack: she'd taken the cards for the next exercise off my table. She also didn't give them back immediately, like a really obnoxious child (which, for this particular moment, she was).

Clearly we all needed to have a chat. I had everyone sit down, and I thought for a minute, and then sat on my table. This is unusual, and gets everyone's attention.

"Okay. I don't know exactly how it is here in Chile, but in North America, taking someone's stuff is disrespectful. Here, too?"

Nods and murmurs.

"Good. Now, do you guys know why I have that box in the corner of the board? Why I don't just send you to the Inspector immediately?"

"To write down who's bad?"
"Hmm. Not exactly."

Bruno speaks. Bruno, who's usually a step away from the Inspector, every class. Last week he came up to me after class, looked me in the eyes, and shook my hand, and he's done it since, every time I see him in the hall.

"To give us an opportunity."

Awesome.

"That's right. To give you a chance. Now, all these activities we do are ways for you guys to practice and use English. The way English is taught here--"

"It's really bad."

"Right. You don't learn a lot of English in your classes here?" Nods and murmurs. "That's why I'm here. To help you guys practice so you can learn. A lot of you say 'I can't, I can't,' but I know you can, because I gave you a test and I talked to each one of you, and I'm really proud of all of you and everything you worked hard to learn. Think you can keep going with class?"

Nods and murmurs.

And off we went.

I like my kids.

Also, I appear to have the patience of a saint.