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Wednesday, 18 February 2009 |
Laura is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio and a 2007 graduate of SLU. She is currently volunteering in El Salvador with an organization called CRISPAZ: Christians for Peace in El Salvador.
 Last year when we opened the Centro de Alcance youth house, my friend and coordinator of the CdA asked if I could teach the English class. I agreed, even though I had never taught English, and began to plan out my lessons. It started out with me pretty much just sitting in front of the computer a few hours before each class and asking myself what topic I could teach. Numbers? Foods? Feelings? Weather? Luckily my students didn’t seem to have a really high standard for their teacher and we got along just fine. My theory was this: the kids spend all morning (school is half-day here) in class and teachers mostly just write stuff on the board that they have to copy down; in my class instead of too much copying or me lecturing, we would be more interactive using games, songs, and different activities. My first few months was a learning process, but I can say that we all had fun and I think most of them learned at least something.
This year our supervisor approached us and talked about the importance of incorporating bigger life lessons into the classes – talk about self-esteem, the importance of studying, etc. I whole-heartedly agreed with this approach and it made me think about revising my teaching method a little. I was never super thrilled about the prospect of teaching English anyway and my great interest in the work we do was workshops around just these issues. I could mix things I’m interested in with the way I was teaching English. I began to get excited. The kids aren’t really going to be able to be fluent in English after speaking to me, but they will probably benefit some from talking about world events, wouldn’t they?
My very first day we learned introductions in English. In my advanced class this entailed teaching the introductions through two pre-written dialogues between Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Clinton and between Mr. Chomsky and Ms Gebara. This way I could ask them: Who knows who Mr. Obama is? What is going to happen next week in the United States (the inauguration)? Why is Mrs. Clinton calling Mr. Obama her boss? AND who are Mr. Chomsky and Ms. Gebara? (No one knew.) I then wrote two Chomsky quotes up on the board. The kids also learned the two very important English words of “linguist” and “theologian”.
 Different attempts to incorporate important themes into English class included: talking about Martin Luther King on MLK day (none of them had heard of him), celebrating the Day of No-Violence, and learning about Gandhi while playing cooperative games and singing “We Are the World” (people love Michael Jackson here) and talking about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during a separate origami workshop.
Now, I personally have begun to enjoy the class more and I feel like the kids have learned something from these “social justice additions” to English class. I also feel like I have accomplished something so that when the class finishes, even though most of them will not be able to conduct any type of conversation in English beyond “Hello, how are you”, at least they will know who Martin Luther King is. That’s something I can live with.
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