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.

back on the beat

Having stayed home resting yesterday, I went in to teach my three classes today. I'm definitely feeling stronger, and the day off was a good idea. Those three classes are so different.

1-C - These guys are just so unbelievably nice. They're calm, patient, smart, sweet-tempered kids. I had a pretty half-assed lesson plan, but it never matters because we just like each other, so it's no problem to just hang out for however long. And we had fun even with the lame directions game I made up.

1-G - I figured this group would be a harder sell, and they sort of were. They're a lot calmer now that Samuel and Marcelo got kicked out of school for fighting each other. (I asked what happened. Apparently Samuel spelled guerra ["war"] as gerra in some context, and Marcelo started making fun of him for it, including asking the teacher what gerra meant, and some other kind of mockery I didn't understand. Samuel clocked him, and the rest is history.)

I told them to stand up, and about half the class stayed seated; I tried for about 10 seconds, then shrugged, said "Okay," and sat down at my table and started peacefully reading my book. This confused them.

"Are you angry?"

"Nope."
"Annoyed?"

"Nope. I was really sick all last week and I still don't feel great. I have 9 days left here. If you guys don't want to do the thing, I'm not going to fight you."

A couple of kids asked me to keep teaching, but I decided to continue on with the chosen course. I had some nice conversations with smaller groups of kids, and I spent a lot of the time making them laugh (which also amuses me), with all sorts of strange behaviors they've never seen before, certainly not from a teacher.

I explained cognates and false cognates to one group I was talking to. They got a kick out of a couple of the best false cognates: embarasada is "pregnant," preñada is "pregnant" but only used for animals, and perhaps best of all--and let me tell you, embarasada is hard to beat--is excitado, which one might think is "excited" but actually means "horny." (You probably want emocionado.)

1-H - These guys. I did the review for their test next week. They weren't terribly interested. I tried to make sure they knew that they have to actually understand the words they learn, in order to pass the test. Instead of writing stuff in their notebooks, most of them took pictures of the whiteboard with their cell phones. We finished in a half hour and then it was herding cats inside the classroom for 30 minutes. Nice to reconnect with them, though. Well, sort of. They don't sit still long enough for much connecting.

To be clear, I have no teaching energy left. I realize that many times in our lives we strive and work and we discover our limits and we surpass them--see Outward Bound, my black belt test, various other things--and I passed that point a few months ago. So now I'm navigating the experience of being utterly mentally exhausted.

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?

attrition

My school maintains its academic and behavioral standards in part by kicking kids out. Usually the other kids tell me when I'm taking attendance using my popsicle sticks with the names on them--leading to the dramatic moment where I take a student's popsicle stick, break it half and toss it in the trash--but sometimes Oscar remembers to tell me.

"Hey, you teach 1-G, right?"

"Yep."

"Well, two students are gone. Valero--"

"Ah, Marcelo..."

"And Pizarro."

"Karina?" (I have no idea if Karina is in 1-G.)

"No, Samuel." Oscar draws his finger across his throat. "Gone! Bad."

"Aw, but they were getting better with me."

But Oscar is already leaving the room. "Well, good."

They were problematic. I wonder if Samuel saw this coming: instead of his usual dark countenance, he's been open-faced and smiling the past couple weeks.

It's five weeks before the end of the school year. I wonder what happens to them.

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.

on teaching math

From Ben Blum-Smith commenting on Dan Meyer's blog (my emphasis):

The real test of whether a math problem is "relevant" is not "do you use this in 'real life'," whatever that means, but "do you want to solve it?" It's not that you want to solve it because it's relevant; wanting to solve it is what it means to be relevant. The solution to the problem of relevance cannot be aimed at any location in the process of education other than what the students want. We can access various natural processes in causing students to want to solve problems: they are naturally curious, hungry for understanding, they want to resolve cognitive dissonance when it comes up, they want to feel accomplished and mentally powerful, they're drawn in by story, attracted to the perception of a grand scheme, to knowledge surrounding things they're passionate about, etc. Curious is the big one. All these forces are amplified by a sense of comfort and orientedness in the face of a problem, and inhibited by any sense of helplessness or disorientation.

The whole (very long, multi-page) comment is worth reading. I don't quite grasp the full scope of the word pseudocontext, but it represents the pointlessly-contrived nature of textbook math problems, compared to things like this.

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.

it works both ways

I had a nice couple of classes today, where I tried teaching articles ("a" and "an") in a couple different ways: 1-B had already learned the jobs vocabulary ("lawyer," "carpenter," etc.) and I added the articles onto that, and then 1-C hadn't learned jobs yet, so I taught them articles on top of the new words. I learned two things:

1. Learning articles, as such, doesn't take very long. I break the "no explaining things" rule because with 3 sentences of Spanish, they get it, and then it just takes practice.
2. It's really challenging for them to learn both the articles and the new words. 1-C is really focused and good at school, and they had to work pretty hard to learn both at once in 45 minutes. 1-B is kind of disorderly and learns more slowly, but they had articles down in 30 minutes.

Hopefully I can design an effective one-hour lesson with that.

The other interesting thing was that I almost cracked my most obnoxious Javiera in the head.

(UPDATE: I just remembered 2 of the 3 Javieras in 1-G. 1-B's Javiera doesn't come close.)

Now, I'm a little twitchy sometimes about my personal safety. I had really violent childhood relationships with my brothers, and then I went to a violent junior high school, where my quality of life suffered from the delusion--common in my family's demographic--that fighting is never the solution to conflict. It's true that there's almost always a way not to fight, but that's a complex and mature set of skills, and if you take fighting off the table entirely for all time, what you get is being punched in the nose. Aikido has brought on a lot of changes, but I still have pretty deep-seated reactions.

I was passing out candy to 1-B for having an awesome class and for the two teams tying the game we played at the end, and Javiera made a full-body lunge for the bag. Even though I knew she was going for the candy, this set off my safety alarms, and I:

1. Dropped my arms, pulled the bag away, and guarded my body.
2. Threw an elbow towards her oncoming head, in a combination block and strike.
3. Realized what was happening and stopped my elbow a couple inches from her head.

Obviously a good thing for everyone that I didn't clock her. What's really striking for me is that the same training that gave me the "elbow to the head" response also gave me the awareness to notice it wasn't appropriate and stop it.

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 riot act

It was hard to smile today, knowing I had 1-G coming--you'll recall that last week didn't go well--but 1-J and 1-H deserve to have me treating them for who they are, and not what I have to deal with from their colleagues. 1-G's homeroom teacher told me he gave them an earful and they should behave better in the future, but I decided to continue on with my own plans. We only had 5 of the 6 targets today, but I made them stand up and said "We're going to do an exercise in communication."

So, you guys. Since the beginning, since I got here in April, I've been warning you about your behavior. It seems to me like I've treated you with respect [heads nod], and in return, you've taken my stuff, and last week you shut down the class, denying your classmates the chance to learn. So, no more warnings. Now, for you, this [motion to warning system on whiteboard] no longer exists. If you're causing problems, you're going to the Inspector. I've given you chances on chances. No more.

I almost tossed Bruno and Exequiel a minute later, but they (a) looked genuinely frightened, and (b) managed to convince me they were whispering briefly about what I'd said.

And the class got their first star of the semester! They were as good as they can be, which is still way less focused than my other classes. We'll see if it sticks. If they can keep it up--an open question, since Bruno in particular looked physically pained from the stress of controlling his behavior--I will happily throw them a party for being the most improved group.

notes from today

I did have class with 1-A today, but only 4 kids came to school from 1-J: somehow, along with 1-G, they thought the teacher protest was today instead of next Thursday (which is also what I thought, until two days ago), so only a handful of kids came in from those classes. The poor kids who did show up had to stay the entire day, with no classes. I stayed in the room with them as a favor to Marcela, because, hey, why not, she has at least 40 classroom hours per week, and I had no plans for the afternoon, and I just started reading Siddhartha for the first time.

We did have a nice moment in 1-A. Adding to our dialogue questions, we practiced

1. What do you do for fun?

2. I like _____.

and they fill in the blank with a short list of hobbies we learned: things like tennis, soccer, video games. After some practice, I had them get up in pairs and do it from memory.

Kevin: What do you do for fun?

Ignacio: I like you.

Which was pretty awesome, not just because of their insinuations that someone else is gay--I don't know if Ignacio was being sincere, or allowing himself to be part of mocking someone else, as I often do--but because it highlighted a growing flexibility in the students' use of language. For example, I also had them do the entire 4-question dialogue:

1. What's your name?

2. My name is ______.
1. Where are you from?
2. I am from ______.
1. How old are you?
2. I am _____ years old.
1. What do you do for fun?
2. I like _____.

That's how I intended them to do it. Here's what they did:

1. Where are you from?

2. I am from _____. And you?

Somewhere in their past, they learned to respond to "How are you?" with "I am fine. And you?". And now they have suddenly generalized "And you?" to other sentences! It feels like they're actually speaking English, putting things together in a way beyond what I've taught them.

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.