me llamo "el maestro"

Alright everyone, it's now official...I'm a teacher. The kids here call me "maestro," though.

I spent my first day as a teacher at a public elementary school known as "La Amarilla." La Amarilla is located on the outskirts of town--a thirty minute bus ride that includes a scenic ride through La Tablera, a neighborhood described to me as "the most dangerous in the city...just don't be caught there at night. Actually, don't go there during the day either." The funny thing is that the bus route actually ends in La Tablera, so I have to walk through the neighborhood anyway. It's not so bad, though. I got lost there this morning and made some friends while asking for directions.

Anyway, La Amarilla, the school where I'll be teaching for the next three months, has 500 students spread amongst grades K through 6. The school is new and, relatively speaking, is very nice. Uruguay focuses a ton of its funding on education, so schools generally have good facilities and teachers. Education is free here--even the university.

The quality of the school stands in contrast to the surrounding area (including La Tablera), which is where most of the students live. Looking through a window in a classroom on the top floor of the school--a clean classroom that contains a new computer, by the way--one sees the poverty of the surrounding neighborhoods. There are quite a few shacks that look like they're about to fall over. There are also a few outhouses, which I hadn't noticed until a fellow teacher pointed to one and said, "One of our kindergarteners and her family live in that one." Apparently, money was raised to build them a house, but the parents spent it all before the house was built. I haven't brought my camera to school yet, but I'll try to post a picture of this view eventually.

The school serves three meals a day--breakfast, lunch, and a meal at 3:30. Not surprisingly, this is a huge incentive for the children to come to school. I have been told by various teachers that for a large majority of the children, these meals are the only ones they get. When I asked about the weekend, I was told that it is common to see kids eat three servings of their meal on Friday, and to come to breakfast on Monday famished.

This news came as a surprise to me, simply because the children are so happy, energetic, and attentive. On Monday I worked with the fourth graders. Just to set the scene, I should say that all the kids have to wear the same outfit, which consists of a long, white labcoat type robe, with a huge blue ribbon tied at the neck (called a moña). It looks kind of funny at first, but it's starting to grow on me. When the teacher was talking, the students were completely silent. At break time, they told me all about their families and asked me about the United States. One girl dug through a pile of materials in the back of the room and pulled out a poster board. The board had pictures and letters from students in Philadelphia who had been their penpals last year. They remember a lot about their friends in Philadelphia, and were very excited to tell me about them--about parks the students visit, the games they play in the US, and even what their names are.

The fourth graders' English was surprisingly good--one girl told me her name (Victoria), that her younger sister was at the school too, and that her mom works there as a secretary. Then she told me about how someone in her family once visited Maryland. And this was all in English! Most kids at the school don't speak English as well as Victoria, but many of them understand what I say, even if they can only respond in Spanish.

This wasn't the story with the first graders, though. They have only been learning English 2 weeks, so their comprehension is very, very low. Today I worked with the first graders, who had quite a bit more energy than the fourth graders. During most of the class, the main instructor (a 24 year old Uruguayan man named Nelson) spoke to them entirely in English, which made for some funny situations (that I think only I noticed, since Nelson maintained a relatively straight face the whole time). Something that's going to take some getting used to is that the kids don't raise their hands when they have a question--they just walk right up to the teacher. Soon after the class started, a little boy walked up to the teacher and asked, in Spanish, if he could use the bathroom. Nelson asked him, in English, to repeat his question in English. The boy asked again in Spanish, and Nelson repeated his request. In response the boy shouted, "Que?!?" To which Nelson just gave up and told the boy, in Spanish, to use the bathroom.

Halfway through the class, some dark clouds developed, and you could actually see the rain advancing toward the school, across the fields. One of the students, Guillermo, took my notebook and drew his depiction of the event (I don't know what the '23' represents):


I've learned that the younger the class, the more difficult it is to understand what the students are saying in Spanish. This is because younger kids are just so random--with older kids, you can at least try to predict what they're going to say. But not with the first graders. One boy walked up to me and launched into a discourse concerning what sounded like "firmadera." When I told him I didn't understand, he looked confused, then heartbroken. Maestro Nelson soon came to the rescue, and asked the boy what he had said. Apparently he was asking me if I knew where someone could buy a video camera in the US, since his dad will be going there sometime over the next few weeks.

The second time a student lost me in conversation, though, Nelson wasn't there to help. When a girl asked me if there is snow in the United States, I said, excitedly, that there was. Then she started asking me about something I couldn't understand. Eventually, I figured it out--she wanted to know if polar bears live in the United States.

Needless to say, I'm having a great time at the public school. I'm also working at a university, but I haven't really started there yet. I'll have more information on my work at the university in a later post.

When not teaching, I spend a lot of time exploring Salto and visiting cafes, where I have lately been reading and planning my research. Here's a picture of my favorite cafe in Salto, the Trattoria, located across the street from my hotel:


You probably can't see them, but that's Liz and Holly sitting in front.

I have a lot more to share, but I figure this post is long enough. I'll write more in a later post. The coming week is called "Semana Santa," or "Semana de Turismo" (this is a secular country), and is a week of vacation. On Friday, I'll be flying to Santiago, Chile, to visit the family I lived with a couple years ago, the microfinance institution where I worked, and Harvard's regional office. I'll also spend some time on the beaches in Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, working on my tan so I don't stand out so much.

Check back soon!