First Days of School

Classes started this week, and on Monday I went to two of the four school inauguration ceremonies that were happening simultaneously. I asked the director of the first school what time the ceremony would begin. He said 2:00. I asked for clarification, “Everything in Guatemala starts late, so what time will it really begin?” He replied that with rural parents you never know. So I showed up at 2:30, which is early for most events (here things start an hour late).

I walked into the auditorium to see all of the students already lined up, a handful of parents seated, and the director and teachers on the stage speaking into the microphone. I tried to sneak in without drawing attention to my tardiness, but one teacher announced, “And here we have Seño Katalina! Please come on stage so that the parents can see you and applaud your work.” So much for disappearing into the floor. At that school I felt a bit like a show pony being trotted out in front of the masses (“Look! We have an American from Harvard!”). That school is not invested in Life Skills classes, but a gringa looks good on paper and impresses the parents.

But at the next school inauguration, where I feel like a part of the staff, the teachers passed the microphone to me so that I could give advice to the parents and students. I gave the same two recommendations that the principal of the Community Charter School of Cambridge always reiterated to parents: turn of the TV and do your homework, and READ. The director of the school latched onto my “¡Hay que leer!” mantra and reiterated the same advice to the parents later in the ceremony.

Next followed the chaotic first days of school. Everything happens late in this country (except, somehow, that first inauguration), and so parents were still enrolling their kids on the first and second days of schools. The teachers didn’t have their teaching schedules, but the students did, so the teachers went classroom to classroom asking the students, “Am I with you guys? No? OK, I’ll check the next class.” Even yesterday, five days into the school year, the teachers still had not figured out their schedules.

Predicting chaos, my lesson plans for those days were flexible. For the students entering middle school, I asked, “Today is your first day of seventh grade. Is it too early to talk about high school scholarships?” The message of the lesson was that their grades matter starting NOW if they want a scholarship. Too many of my ninth graders last year were counting on the proverbial scholarship to pay for high school, only to realize that three years of mediocre or failing grades disqualified them. With the incoming students who have a clean slate, we set three study goals for the quarter, and I’ll check back in with each section at the end of the quarter to see how they are progressing.

With the eighth and ninth graders who had me last year, we started a unit on teamwork and leadership. In groups the students tied themselves into a human knot, and then they had to work together to straighten themselves out again. Then we meta-analyzed the process of how they worked together. In the upcoming weeks we will continue to look at what makes a good team member, and how to be effective leaders.