School’s Out for Summer

The school year is coming to a close; this is the last week I will be working in schools until the school year starts again in 2008. Although the last day of school is officially November 30th, it has been difficult to keep my routine in the schools for the past month. It seems that the only time of the year when classes seem to be busy is when they are taking exams the last few weeks of the year. Teachers who once seemed thrilled to have me come to their class to give life skills lessons (so they could leave the classroom and take a break it) have recently been reluctant to let me come even once a week. Almost every time I have showed up on my normal schedule the principal has told me that the students are busy taking exams or doing a project and they don’t have time for me. She assured me this was nothing personal and that they loved their time with me, it just wasn’t a good time. She would then ask me to give lessons in other classes. I wouldn’t have minded this if it was something I had planned for, but on several occasions what I had planned wasn’t appropriate for the random class I had been assigned.

I had been working with 3 different classes and was doing basically the same lessons with all of them but some were farther along than others. One day I came to give a lesson on values to the seniors and she wanted me to give a lesson to the sophomores. I had already done the values lesson with them and she still sent me in the classroom and said “just do anything with them; they’re not doing anything right now anyways”. While part of me was really annoyed that she didn’t understand we had made a plan together and she was ruining it and that she didn’t understand my lessons were things that needed to be prepared for, another part of me was aware that these kids really were just sitting outside under a tree doing literally nothing in their hour of life skills class. If I didn’t pull something out of thin air, they would just sit and play with their cell phones the entire hour, and what was that doing to educate them? These kids have the technology of cell phones in their lives but they don’t know what a resume is, don’t know what HIV or AIDS is and they have never heard the phrase self esteem.

So, it began….every Tuesday and sometimes Thursdays for the last month of school I have been showing up and expecting to be thrown into random classes. I come prepared both for working with the same students I have been working with for months and for students I have never met before. I am like a walking collection of ice breakers and activities. I’ve gotten really good at winging it. It’s been fun and I have learned a lot about working in schools in Paraguay. You have to be flexible, stern, and persistent and know that if it rains, looks like its going to rain or rained yesterday school is probably cancelled. A volunteer once counted how many days of school there are in Paraguay and I think they found out there was almost as many days of school as there were vacations days or holidays. When there is school, it starts late, lets out early and the time that’s spent in class isn’t spent well.

The analysis of the entire problem could start with the teachers and the training they receive. There are very few jobs in Paraguay; teaching is a very secure job with a nice paycheck. This is what draws most teachers, not the fact they love kids or have a talent for teaching. When Paraguay was still ruled by a dictator (until fairly recently) he was the one that chose the entire curriculum. This has surely contributed to the poor quality in education materials. Add that to the fact teachers are trained to copy things from teacher’s manuals onto the chalkboard without any real stimulating lesson plan and we see the result in classrooms.

I see the results in the students, I see the results in society and in this country’s entire way of being. This is what a typical class setting looks like: teacher walks into a barren, undecorated classroom, barely greets students, begins to copy things onto the board. She or he will copy things perfectly, in handwriting so beautiful it looks like it was printed by a machine. She will even use a yard stick to underline things. This wastes a lot of time but she does it because she expects her student to as well. Teacher then instructs students to copy the board into their notebooks. When they are done, the lesson is considered complete. I am not exaggerating. If student’s writing is not pretty enough they will be told so in front of everyone and instructed to do it again.

There is no concept of creativity, reflection, thinking for yourself. This is the school system Paraguayans go through. Most don’t go past high school education, many don’t finish 9th grade. Students aren’t disciplined, they seem to be able to leave and enter class as they please. Absence isn’t ever discussed; it’s almost expected, because there is no roll taken. When problems are addressed they aren’t addressed in appropriate ways. I have seen the principal point out a particular student in front of the entire class and tell me “that one there is horrible, he needs help, even his mother came to school and told me she doesn’t know what to do with him” I encouraged her to talk to me in private about things like that. Then I did an activity relating to self esteem with that class.

From a distance the schools seem fine. The actual school grounds are fairly nice. Students show up in nicely ironed catholic uniforms. Their notebooks are beautifully written, filled with notes. But there is no teaching going on inside schools, no real teaching and therefore no real learning. Most students can’t tell you where The United States is, or where Europe is. When I ask them about things written in their notebooks they rarely can tell me what they know about it.

My job is not to change curriculums, nor teach teachers how to teach. My job is to demonstrate to teachers that there are social problems that exist among youth and that there are things that can be done to address these problems at school. My job is to show up at school and do my activities that will give student skills they will need to survive and get ahead in life. The change that needs to come in Paraguay will most likely come from the youth that choose to fight for a better life for themselves and their children. It is the youth that will hopefully remember that a tall, white redhead taught them how to communicate better with their family and friends, who taught them how to make a resume, who made them think about values and what was important to them and who made them realize that they can’t love or respect anyone else if they cannot love and respect themselves first. This is a change I hope occurs in at least a handful of teens that I am working with during these 2 years.

The school system isn’t perfect and it doesn’t seem to be teaching them any of these things, but it is the perfect place for me to find a handful of minds, gathered, bored and thirsty for stimulation. For this reason, I continue to show up, despite the frustrations. Where there is imperfection there is room for growth and improvement and I know I am helping to make a small impact on that growth. I have 3 months of summer vacation to think of new and better ways to impact that growth and I look forward to another school year, one that will hopefully be a little more consistent and maybe with a few less holidays.