signs of progress
SUCCESS! i at last seem to have made some sort of progress with my group of four - who i shall henceforth refer to enigmatically as A, B, C and D. yesterday, gabi came in to the classroom (a series of rocks arranged in a rough circle around a burnt-out fire) with me at the beginning of the lesson and reeled off a 10-minute speech, entirely in spanish. i picked up the odd word, but other than that could only guess that she had grilled them and told them that she expected good results for the end-of-the-world show. after that, the kids seemed rather injured emotionally, but notably more focussed. during one of the 5-minute breaks that seem to occur by themselves when one or more of the kids wanders off up a tree to pick jocotes, i decided to ask them directly if they spoke any english. they shook their heads, but suddenly started pointing to things and asking 'como se dice en ingles?'. a lengthy exchange ensued, in which i translated the names of colours, inanimate objects and other abstract palabras into english for them. in return, they taught me a few useful phrases in spanish, which i'm now using to better direct their learning of the pieces i'm writing for them to perform at the end of next month.
this simple game of 'point/gesture and translate' seems to have brought me down to their level (in a good way), and we are now able to laugh together (although i'm sure they're mostly laughing at me) and, most importantly, communicate more effectively. they still lack focus at times - A and B especially - but they seem to be remembering what i've taught them from one day to the next - even if only little by little - and that's made the world of difference to how i feel about my role as a teacher here. this morning, for example, while they were waiting for me to join them, i could hear them in the distance playing some rhythms that i'd taught them earlier in the week. i'd never have thought i'd be seeing that happen back on monday!
we do still have a lot of work to do. gabi wants us to open the show on the 21st with a 15-minute piece. so far we have about 2 minutes, and it's taken us 3 lessons to get there, and there are only 8 lessons left before the show. hopefully their learning-pace will pick up somewhat with every lesson, but i do think it might be better to have more like 5-7 minutes of quality rather than 15 minutes of embarassing uncertainty.
sally and i still have yet to begin working on our 7-minute piece for the charity performance on the 12th of november. i think we'll be fine once we've started - but we do have to start! our little 'introduction to tap-dance and djembe' duet for los ninos locos last week went down rather well, so i'm thinking that could be a good place to start.
there's a national holiday this weekend - 'day of the dead', amongst other celebrations - which means that we have 5 days off in a row. we're using this time to go to chichicastenango, to the north, and (if we have time) quetzaltenango, to the north-east.
this simple game of 'point/gesture and translate' seems to have brought me down to their level (in a good way), and we are now able to laugh together (although i'm sure they're mostly laughing at me) and, most importantly, communicate more effectively. they still lack focus at times - A and B especially - but they seem to be remembering what i've taught them from one day to the next - even if only little by little - and that's made the world of difference to how i feel about my role as a teacher here. this morning, for example, while they were waiting for me to join them, i could hear them in the distance playing some rhythms that i'd taught them earlier in the week. i'd never have thought i'd be seeing that happen back on monday!
we do still have a lot of work to do. gabi wants us to open the show on the 21st with a 15-minute piece. so far we have about 2 minutes, and it's taken us 3 lessons to get there, and there are only 8 lessons left before the show. hopefully their learning-pace will pick up somewhat with every lesson, but i do think it might be better to have more like 5-7 minutes of quality rather than 15 minutes of embarassing uncertainty.
sally and i still have yet to begin working on our 7-minute piece for the charity performance on the 12th of november. i think we'll be fine once we've started - but we do have to start! our little 'introduction to tap-dance and djembe' duet for los ninos locos last week went down rather well, so i'm thinking that could be a good place to start.
there's a national holiday this weekend - 'day of the dead', amongst other celebrations - which means that we have 5 days off in a row. we're using this time to go to chichicastenango, to the north, and (if we have time) quetzaltenango, to the north-east.