Semana Santa vacation is here and Rachel and I are enjoying the time to recuperate and prepare for our final weeks in the public schools, while continuing to give extracurricular classes in the church. In the week leading up to vacation, I was very excited to finally get to work on a project with my students I had been brainstorming for months: “Take a student to work day”.
My goal for the project was to provide my junior high students with perspective on their future employment options, and to show them the alternatives to immigration (potentially, professional jobs in their home country) that continuing their studies will allow them to pursue. I arranged for the students to observe and interview people at work. The students got to choose which profession to investigate, and most of them chose kindergarten teachers, primary teachers or doctors. So far, I have accompanied 6 groups of seventh and eighth graders to Ziquítaro’s Primaria and Kinder to observe teachers with their classes for an hour and then conduct an interview. A similar activity at Ziquítaro’s tiny medical clinic is scheduled for next week. While this exercise mainly took place in Spanish, it is still very relevant to our work here as we are not just English teachers but also cultural ambassadors and promoters of furthering one’s education.
I prepared my students by having them interview me in class to practice taking notes on a conversation. (In their regular classes, they rarely have assignments beyond silently answering questions in their textbook.) I played the part of a person who wanders wildly off topic when asked a simple question and cautioned my students they must be careful to note only the important comments, and not try to record each word. The day of the observation/interview, I provided the students with a handout with interview questions and a space to take notes on what they observed. The students’ assignment is to write an essay about what the learned at the job, including their personal opinions: Is this a job they would like to have some day? If not, how would they like their job to be different? In addition, they will present their investigation to the class with a short introduction in English, as we are also studying job vocabulary and descriptions.
While I will not know my students responses to the project until I read their essays, I was personally very impressed by some of the comments the teachers made in their interviews and the topics they covered in their classes. In the kindergarten, Claudia, who teaches the 5-year-olds, gave a talk about the importance of personal hygiene, such as washing your hands before you eat. Maria Estella, the third-grade teacher, gave a detailed lesson about food safety and assigned her students to speak to their parents about how to prepare foods properly. (Ziquítaro is part of the developing world and I am very pleased that the teachers are imparting practical knowledge to the children.) Cesar, a fourth grade teacher, when asked his favorite part of his job, said he enjoyed helping the students become good citizens. I thought: What a wonderful goal and a wonderful way to express it.
And on to the benefits: we kicked off Semana Santa by accompanying the third-year students and teachers of the Telesecundaria on their graduation trip to the beach at Ixtapa, in the neighboring state of Guerrero. While I am sure Rachel will have more to say about the trip as she is the teacher to this group, for me it was also a very sweet experience. There we were with a pack of teenagers who, mostly, had never seen the ocean and squealed at the little waves coming towards them. When I noticed one boy taking pictures of the sea birds with the same kind of film camera I had in elementary school, I almost cried thinking that these kids will probably carry this memory of the beach as one of the happiest of their lives.
My goal for my last three weeks as an English teacher in Ziquítaro is to give my students (who, at this point are very dear to me, even the impossible ones) all the hope for the future and confidence in their abilities as I can and to convince them to continue studying as long as possible.
My goal for the project was to provide my junior high students with perspective on their future employment options, and to show them the alternatives to immigration (potentially, professional jobs in their home country) that continuing their studies will allow them to pursue. I arranged for the students to observe and interview people at work. The students got to choose which profession to investigate, and most of them chose kindergarten teachers, primary teachers or doctors. So far, I have accompanied 6 groups of seventh and eighth graders to Ziquítaro’s Primaria and Kinder to observe teachers with their classes for an hour and then conduct an interview. A similar activity at Ziquítaro’s tiny medical clinic is scheduled for next week. While this exercise mainly took place in Spanish, it is still very relevant to our work here as we are not just English teachers but also cultural ambassadors and promoters of furthering one’s education.
I prepared my students by having them interview me in class to practice taking notes on a conversation. (In their regular classes, they rarely have assignments beyond silently answering questions in their textbook.) I played the part of a person who wanders wildly off topic when asked a simple question and cautioned my students they must be careful to note only the important comments, and not try to record each word. The day of the observation/interview, I provided the students with a handout with interview questions and a space to take notes on what they observed. The students’ assignment is to write an essay about what the learned at the job, including their personal opinions: Is this a job they would like to have some day? If not, how would they like their job to be different? In addition, they will present their investigation to the class with a short introduction in English, as we are also studying job vocabulary and descriptions.
While I will not know my students responses to the project until I read their essays, I was personally very impressed by some of the comments the teachers made in their interviews and the topics they covered in their classes. In the kindergarten, Claudia, who teaches the 5-year-olds, gave a talk about the importance of personal hygiene, such as washing your hands before you eat. Maria Estella, the third-grade teacher, gave a detailed lesson about food safety and assigned her students to speak to their parents about how to prepare foods properly. (Ziquítaro is part of the developing world and I am very pleased that the teachers are imparting practical knowledge to the children.) Cesar, a fourth grade teacher, when asked his favorite part of his job, said he enjoyed helping the students become good citizens. I thought: What a wonderful goal and a wonderful way to express it.
And on to the benefits: we kicked off Semana Santa by accompanying the third-year students and teachers of the Telesecundaria on their graduation trip to the beach at Ixtapa, in the neighboring state of Guerrero. While I am sure Rachel will have more to say about the trip as she is the teacher to this group, for me it was also a very sweet experience. There we were with a pack of teenagers who, mostly, had never seen the ocean and squealed at the little waves coming towards them. When I noticed one boy taking pictures of the sea birds with the same kind of film camera I had in elementary school, I almost cried thinking that these kids will probably carry this memory of the beach as one of the happiest of their lives.
My goal for my last three weeks as an English teacher in Ziquítaro is to give my students (who, at this point are very dear to me, even the impossible ones) all the hope for the future and confidence in their abilities as I can and to convince them to continue studying as long as possible.
