Practicum Week

I can’t believe training is already halfway over. I only have three weeks left in Diriamba! My ultimate destination is still a mystery, one which will be revealed to me on Wednesday of next week. Not that we’re counting down the days or anything. We had our “programming interviews” with the Peace Corps TEFL staff earlier this week, when we told them what kind of site we wanted. My number one priority was a small site. Diriamba is a little too big for my liking, I prefer a smaller community where I can integrate and get to know everyone. Though I do admit the anonymity can be kind of nice, since I don’t have the social obligation to stop and chat with everyone I see. I told them I had all my camping stuff with me and was looking forward to being outdoors and in the mountains. I know this might eliminate my opportunity to work in a university, which I think would be awesome, but my priority is the small site. Though I know that all of my fellow trainees who are currently staying in the miniscule training town of La Paz asked for medium-to-large sites. “We don’t even have an ice cream shop”, was part of their explanation. Or a restaurant. Or a bank. Anyways, we’ll see what happens at the Moment of Truth next Wednesday. Stay tuned.

We were allowed to venture out of our training towns last week for Practicum Week. I think I’ve lamented before that, despite the impressive organization of Peace Corps Nicaragua, they never tell us anything. So my impression of practicum week was that we were going to be paired with a current Peace Corps TEFL volunteer, whom we would follow around for a week to become acquainted with what our lives would be like. And maybe teach a class or two, for the experience. I was oh-so-wrong. The 14 of us were divided into 3 groups, each sent to a different city in Nicaragua. I was most jealous of Alba’s group, which went to the mountainous region of Jinotega, the only part of the country that is cool. I leant her my flannel shirt, which apparently everyone thought was awesome. Naturally. Caroline’s group went to Leon, which is the cultural darling of the country, but absurdly hot. The volunteers there bring changes of clothes to class with them because they sweat so much they have to change halfway through the day. Yuck. Being a cultural center means there are a lot of foreigners wandering around and that prices are generally higher, but there is also a ton of things to see and do, and lots of opportunities to work with NGO’s. I went to Rivas, a city in the southernmost part of the country. The department of Rivas consists of the narrow strip of land (16 km average width) between the ocean and the massive Lake Nicaragua, and is extremely hot and humid. It serves as a base camp for some phenomenal beaches, which despite persistent pleading we were not allowed to visit. I was disappointed because the other sites sounded cooler, but I enjoyed my week nonetheless. It was fun because the groups were mixed up, so I got to spend time with people other than my Diriamba buddies. I benefitted enormously from the wealth of experience in my group. First there was Brooke, an extrovert from Memphis who has a fantastic southern accent and 5 years of experience teaching Spanish in some tough Memphis neighborhoods. I impressed her with all my Southern expertise that I have picked up from being around Caroline and Alba (example: Georgia is included in the category “Deep South”, but Atlanta is not. And I’ve heard some almost unbelievable tales about Greek life in Tuscaloosa). I’ve picked her brain about classroom management in those types of situations, since it may be a position I find myself in in the suture, and she has been more than willing to share all her tricks and strategies. Then there was Katie, who is an interesting case because she has already served with the Peace Corps in Nicaragua for 2 years as an Environmental Education volunteer, and has decided to extend one year but switch to TEFL; thus she is going through training with us. She has a wealth of knowledge about everything related to Nicaragua and the Peace Corps, and has been a tremendous resource for us newbies. And I was again with Brian, who is interesting to watch because he has a completely different learning style than me; he is what we in the biz call a kinesthetic learner, who needs to do and feel things to internalize them and can’t sit still for long periods of time. So I learned a lot by seeing how he incorporated breaks and movement into his lessons.

The Peace Corps volunteer who was hosting us was Erin, who has been working in Rivas for almost a year now. She did a lot of work for us, making the hostel reservation, typing up a detailed list of suggestions on where to eat, etc, and finding us counterparts to work with. So contrary to my preconceived notion that we were merely going to shadow Erin all week, she actually took the week off from teaching and gave us all her teaching hours. There weren’t enough hours to go around, however, so she had also found a few English teachers at a nearby school who were willing to work with us for the week. Our mandate was to co-plan and co-teach 3 classes, solo teach 1 class, and observe at least two other trainees. My counterpart was named Maria Auxiliadora; she sounded really badass when Erin described her to us, since she rides a motorcycle and can play guitar by ear, but she turned out to be very soft-spoken. She worked in a school in Veracruz, which is an indigenous community about 10 minutes outside of the city by shared taxi. We co-taught and planned two classes: an 8^th-grade class on clothes shopping, and an 11^th-grade class on comparing technology. The 8^th-grade class was a bit of a disaster from my perspective; due to a variety of factors, our 40-minute block (which is so short that lessons feel rushed to begin with) ended up being only 25, then we had a difference of opinion over what parts of the lesson to cut, then the students were totally unresponsive to my activity. Oh, well. My 11^th-grade class went much better. It felt like cheating, since there were only 11 students and they did everything I asked, once they got over their initial embarrassment. I fear I will not be so lucky with class size in my site. However, after those first two classes, the cancellation gods caught up with me; Thursday was the village anniversary, so of course school was cancelled and I missed my last two classes. This is too bad, since I had a really exciting class on telling the time planned for the 7^th-graders. I’m sure I’ll get to use it sometime in the next two years.

It was really nice spending time with Erin and grilling her on every aspect of her life. She’s had a bunch of rough patches but has overcome them. For example, she had to switch host families when her first one tried to take advantage of her by doubling her rent. And I’m not going to go into detail, but she’s had some problems with one of her counterpart teachers and is looking to switch. He also took us to her Community English class and had them interview us. We also had the opportunity to meet practically ever Peace Corps volunteer, in all sectors, in the department of Rivas; they all came to join us for a spaghetti dinner on our last night, then took us out for a beer (there were promises of karaoke that never came to be, alas). I had a great conversation with an environment volunteer about some camps she has organized, and cool recycled arts and crafts projects that she’s done. I talked to a small business development volunteer, since I had no idea what they did, and found out that they work in high schools teaching classes about topics such as resume-writing, interviewing, opportunities beyond high school, etc. These classes are apparently part of the Ministry of Education’s curriculum, which I think is so awesome.