Lovely Students

So, last Saturday in my fanaticism for Xelaju the city soccer team, I made one too many a tripod with my fellow fans and tore several ligaments in my ankle. Needless to say Xela is less than handicap accessible so I've pretty much been kickin' it at home, Luckily I have the best boyfriend in the world with the best students to BOOT.
I feel so very lucky.

CARNIVAL!!!

This past Tuesday was perhaps the most fun workday I’ve had since I chaperoned a group of 25 kids to Six Flags last year. It was Carnival. You know… parades, beaded necklaces, scantily clad Brazilian ladies…well, not quite. Guatemalan Carnival (at least the kiddie version) is more like a mix between Halloween and a countrywide game of tag using confetti filled eggs (cascarones con pica pica).

Rather than my typical button-up shirt and jeans, I chose a slightly more bold ensemble, a rented gorilla suit, which complimented Alyssa’s homemade puppy costume quite well. Unfortunately I didn’t realize quite how hideous I looked with my mask on until I saw pictures of the action afterwards, which explains why so many of our students recoiled in terror and fled upon seeing EL GORILÓN or the “monster gorilla”.

Some of Alyssa and my official duties on this special day were to judge the annual eggshell art contest, announce the winners, dance in full costume in front of a group of approximately 200 kids and 100 parents in order to encourage our students to do the same, and to smash dozens of confetti stuffed eggs on the heads of our students, their parents, teachers, administrators…etc. Quite fun indeed!

Anyway, this was how we celebrated Carnival in the morning, with the preschool-6th graders. The afternoon, which is when our middle and high schoolers are in the building, took on a much more awkward vibe. I was instantly transported to my middle school days at school dances as I watched the students try to bust a groove as inconspicuously as possible, given the fact we had turned the school’s patio into an impromptu dance floor, replete with reggaton blasting at full volume.

Naturally the older students were far too cool to wear costumes to school, which made me feel a bit ridiculous wandering around in full gorilla regalia, so I eventually ditched the garb and went back to my normal, email writing, google document sharing development officer self for the rest of the day. What a pity!

Magic School Bus

So this last weekend we took a trip to Guatamala city or Guate with some friends in a camioneta, otherwise known by the gringo community as chicken buses. As you may have gleaned in my last post, camionetas are your 1970’s American schoolbuses reincarnated in Guatemala, fixed with a truck hood and pimped like you wouldn’t imagine. The more Jesus decals, stuffed animals in the widow, basically the less visibility you have, the better, mas gallo (macho) and just plain rockin’ your camioneta. So being the hip cats we are, we got on a camioneta with our friends that had about an inch of usable window space to return to Xela.

The entire ride I was transported back to 6th grade when I had just moved to a new school (read: only had one friend) and had plenty of time to observe the dynamics of the bus. Well last Sunday I learned that in Guatemala they’re no different—just some slight modifications for the adult world and a lot less space. Remember when you sat three to a seat in second grade? Well think four grown ass adults to each seat with one person cramped in to the space between.

So just like Daniel Peterson, the kid who ALWAYS fell asleep within five minutes of the class trip beginning you have your SLEEPERS. Inevitably the heaviest Guatemalan or gringo woman or man on the bus will fall asleep—and find a home on your shoulder for the rest of the veering windy ass ride (forcing you to hold both their weight and yours)

Next comes the MUSICALLY INCLINED—as in the chick that was constantly on her I-pod singing along to the song you least wanted to hear. In 6th grade it was Britney’s "Hit Me Baby One More Time". Here it’s the twenty three year old dude singing along to the High School Musical Album.

And then there’s the NUDGER, you know, the person who slowly nudges you more and more so that you have less and less space (space being an especially precious commodity on a camioneta ride). Gotta love the nudger.

At the back of the bus it’s the BADASSES. In 6th grade that kid was my boyfriend (briefly), and boy did the bus driver hate him. He smoked pot and blew it out the window, threw paper airplanes to the front of the bus, and sang the most obnoxious songs known to man. And on this particular bus ride the ‘basasses’ happened to be our friends…they whistled as the driver rounded extreme mountains curves, pushed each other all to one side as the bus turned and in general shocked the last category of bus goer….

The TATTLETALE. In elementary school this was Miss Ana-never-a-hair-out-of-place McQuin whose mom was a teacher and who was guaranteed to get at least 5 busers in trouble each morning. As Guatemalan’s are extremely passive—the tattletale usually takes on a more moderate approach—but no less effective. In other words, deadly, heart stopping stares of disapproval.

And what am I on these little adventures? Same as in 6th grade, the READER, who befuddles everyone with my bus activity.



Til next time chillins,

3.8 EARTHQUAKE HITS CHICAGO

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/us/11chicago.html

Look who's got all the seismic activity now! And to think folks from Northern Illinois are scared to come to Guatemala because of the earthquake risk...ha :)

A Few of My Favorite Things

The best parts about walking to work in Guatemala so far?

Every day is like a first grader’s fantasy….

Psychedelic rainbows everywhere you turn

.........and the MOST PIMPED school buses you could never have imagined!

But my absolute favorite part? I can look up any time and remember I climbed that.

A la gran... A primer in Guatemalan Slang

Hello all, in this first installment of "A la gran..." I want to share a few insights I've learned in the past month living, working and communicating with Guatemalans. More particularly, I'd like to shed a bit of light on what differentiates the Spanish spoken here from Spanish spoken in the rest of Latin America and certainly from what we gringos learned in school.

BTW, for this post, I will assume that readers will have at least a bit of familiarity with Spanish.

So, to begin, the most important difference between Guatemalan Spanish and the Spanish spoken in say, Mexico or Puerto Rico, is their use of what's known as the voseo. This basically means that they have an additional, more casual, form of saying "you" (in addition to usted and tu). This form is used among friends of all ages, but particularly young people (i.e. our students). Lucky for gringos and other folks who are trying to learn Spanish, once you get the hang of using Vos instead of tu (which exists in Guatemala but isn't really used much) it's actually easier because there aren't any irregular verbs in the present tense (woo hoo!)

All you do to form the "voseo" is take the r off the end of the infinitive, replace it with an "s" and accent the last syllable...always. For example instead of worrying about stem changing verbs like venir and tener, which would normally be " tu vienes" or "tu tienes", all you have to do is do like I said and make "vos venís" and vos tenés". IT'S THAT EASY!!! The only tricky (i.e. irregular) verb is ser, which instead of "tu eres" is "vos sos"

And just so you know, Guatemalans aren't alone in their use of voseo, its used throughout Central America (Honduas, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica) as well as in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. So it's useful stuff to know!

Anyway, enough conjugating, let's move on to the fun stuff, for example, the name of this blog post.

A la gran... Basically this is the all purpose expression meaning "awww crap" (or stronger depending on what comes next). For example, if you say:
A la gran puchica, that's pretty harmless-meaning something along the lines of "oh shoot" However if you want to kick it up a notch, you can finish it with

A la gran puta, which means something along the lines of "oh shit" (or worse)

In a similar vein, the word puchis means something akin to "wow" or "awesome"

Perhaps the ultimate Guatemalanism is the use of the phrase Chapin, which means Guatemalan. For example, Soy 100% puro chapin= I'm 100% pure Guatemalan.
Unfortunately I'm not too sure why the word Chapin is used to mean Guatemalan, I've heard everything from the fact that 17th century Guatemalan oligarchs wore shoes/sandals called chapines when they travelled to other countries in Central America to the fact that Chiapas was once a part of Guatemala and it sort of sounds like "chapin". If anyone does actually know, please enlighten us.

To end today's post here's one more useful phrase that has an interesting history to boot. For example, if you're stepping out in traffic, trying to cross the street despite
the fact that every single driver seems like they're either training for the Formula 1 or trying to get bonus points for hitting pedestrians in some warped real-life version of Carmageddon II: Carpocolypse Now, you're likely to hear the phrase "aguas"-- most likely as a huge chromed-out 1970s school bus nearly conks you with its side view mirror, which proudly exclaims: VIVA JESUCRISTO: REY DE REYES, or something similar.

Anyway, aguas basically means "watch out" or cuidado/ojo in Spanish. According to numerous unconfirmed sources, this odd phrase stems from the colonial days, well before flushing toilets and other related luxuries. Basically after taking care of business in the nearest bucket, earthen vessel...etc, folks would carry it over to an open window or balcony, yell "AGUAS" to warn any passersby and toss their undesireables into the street/alley below. So, due to linguistic convenience, in the last few hundred years the phrase has been generalized a bit from "watch out for this huge bucket of urine and feces I'm about to potentially throw on you" to simply "watch out!!"

cool huh?

hasta la proxima,

Chris

For Those Who Dare to Read: Freire Unwrapped

Paulo Freire, the Brazilian philosopher and educator, can be extremely hard to unpack sometimes. But, guys and gals, the man is worth it—and I say that not just because he inspired the teaching methods that our current job uses but because reading him and learning about him will COMPLETELY change the way that YOU think about education, specifically your own education.

So with my shoddy BA philosophy training, I’m going to try to break down Freire here as best I can in a series of blog posts. Though Pedagogy of the Oppressed is his most famous, I want to start out with some of the practice behind his theory which he details in Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to those who Dare to Teach, as I think it puts the theory in better context as we start to learn about it, and also applies directly to our jobs, fancy that!

Freire makes 10 main points in his series of letters:
1. A teacher is also a learner
2. “It is impossible to teach without a forged, invented, and well-thought-out capacity to love (23)”
3. Teaching cannot be identified with parenting because it undermines the capacity of the teacher to protest, and as a legitimate, valuable, and absolutely necessary profession
4. Reading is intrinsically linked with writing and vice versa
5. Teaching is not a last resort profession, but rather must be considered a profession of the highest calling and most significance
6. Teachers must practice humility (or 'armed love' p.74) paired with tolerance, as Freire defines tolerance--- “Tolerance does not mean acquiescing to the intolerable; it does not mean covering up disrespect; it does not mean coddling the aggressor or disguising aggression. Tolerance is the virtue that teaches us to live with the different. It teaches us to learn from and respect the different (76).”
7. Good teachers who are true to their calling must have the ability to admit when they are scared and wrong to their students—namely that they are human.
8. The relationship between the educator and learner must be of respect and mutual learning, never authoritarianism—in its most basic sense this means listening to each other
9. Discipline must be a conversation between students and teachers about what is acceptable to both for the best learning environment possible
10. Teachers must recognize that students have ‘unschooled’ skills and knowledge that they learn from practice rather than theory (i.e. skills that they've learned in their community, on the streets, by observing daily life in their home)
11. Respect for the cultural identity of both the students and teacher is paramount

I’d be very interested what your responses are to these theories---for me they were a revelation. Freire made me realize why I endlessly battled with my high school English teacher (her discipline was never a conversation but rather a feigned superiority) and why Teach for America teachers that I know do and do not enjoy the experience. Mainly though it makes me so very thankful for the teachers (including my parents who are English professors, and my most influential teachers) that I have had, good and bad because they truly taking on a profession of the highest challenge and most difficulty.

On that note, shame on you Obama (and your administration) for cutting government spending on education when we need it the most and making teachers jobs across America even harder.