School Visit

Things are getting busier and we have finally introduced ourselves to the school that we will be working at for the next 2 months... The first day was a bit strange. I guess I had no idea what to expect but of course having been educated in the US I had some assumptions of how a school "should" look. We first had to introduce ourselves (in Spanish) to 8 different classes of kids age 12-15. This is made up of 3 grades called "básico" and there really is no age limit, and since many kids drop out, rejoin, help their parents in the field, etc, some kids are nearly 20 or more. After our introductions we were all split up and put into a classroom by ourselves to observe the classes. I was first put in music class which looked nothing like music class to me. The teacher looked to be about 17 years old and sat at the front desk with his laptop flirting with the girls in the class and joking around with the boys. He then explained to me that the students were studying commercial music, and jingles used in advertisement which I thought sounded pretty interesting... He then invited one of the students up to give her presentation (all the while the class is paying no attention and everyone is more or less doing their own thing). This girl stands up, the teacher plays a little jingle on his laptop and she reads an advert from her paper. And this was music class...
I remained in the room to wait for the next class to start and the teacher was about 10 minutes late. The classes are only ten minutes long to begin with so the students pretty much knew at that point that they would be doing no work. The teacher walked in and said he needed some of the boys to come help him move the basketball hoop back to its place in the yard and told the other students just to hang out. He invited me to go along and I still have no idea what that class was actually supposed to be... I watched as a small group of boys swung at the ground with machetes and then moved the huge iron basketball hoop into place. Then it was time for recess.
During recess we walked around a bit and mingled with some of the kids and watched the fútbol game. I noticed that some of the really young teachers were hanging around with the older students as friends and I found this so strange. While some of the other volunteers reported having observed good and relatively well-structured classes, I found my experience to be quite eye-opening. I foresee a great need for patience on my part and I will need to remind myself that I am here to learn as well as to teach. I am really looking forward to getting started as I see a lot of potential here and while the system may be like night and day compared to schools in the US I think we will find ways to be successful here.

Fantastic view from the school. Our volunteer group and four other volunteers visiting for the day.