Teachers--Don't Complain

Teachers, don't complain! You just don't know how good you have it! It has taken me a week to calm down enough to be able to write about last week and the preparations for the first day of school!

On Monday we had to take a sheet of paper, torn from a spiral notebook, and make a list of supplies that we want for our classroom. I put down pencils, a pencil sharpener, and pens, among other things that I copied from the other teachers since I didn't know the Spanish words for the different supplies. I got 2 pencils, 2 pens, and one of those little pencil sharpeners that the kids buy in the drugstore. The kind where you have to twist the pencil to sharpen it. The children here use spiral notebooks instead of notebook paper. After looking in many stores for some, I finally found a package of 100 sheets for $2.40 (US) and I found 1binder(that is one--not a whole shelf full of binders!)to put it in. The paper in the spiral notebooks looks like graph paper. This school provides a notebook for each subject and they are color-coded by grade. So a child may have 8 or 9 notebooks. This is not so great for 2nd graders who cannot read what the parent has written on the front of the notebook, such as: Mathematics, or Classwork, or Homework, so they show me every notebook and say "Is this the right one? There is no such convenience as saying "Take out a piece of paper and a pencil!"

There is 1 stapler for every 3 teachers and 4 lines of staples; a glue gun and 4 lines of hot glue; 1 small box of tiny paper clips; 1 box of colored pencils. Someone took my glue gun the first night it was in my room (along with my umbrella). I went to Office Depot on Saturday and bought a stapler and a glue gun along with other supplies.

There is a large bulletin board in each room, covered with a burlap-type cloth, a dirty light green. I had asked for crepe paper (because the others asked for it) and I got several sheets of regular long crepe paper. I cut it and twisted red,white, and blue and put it around 1/2 the board; and red, white and green around the other half. I hung a map of the USA on one side and set out to find a map of Mexico on the other side. That shouldn't be too hard, I think, to find a map of Mexico. W-r-o-n-g! I went to several papelerias looking for one and finally found a huge map, made of cloth, that the kids can color. At this point, that was fine. The choices here are usually one, not a whole bevy of choices.

Not having a glue gun until Saturday, I tried to hang the calendar, the Days of the Week, etc. with packaging tape, which I have used in the past at Tadmore. They fell off the wall. I asked to borrow a glue gun and the teacher asked me "How long will you need it?" I hot-glued the letters "A-u-g-u-s-t" above the calendar and overnight, 3 of them fell off the wall and the janitor threw them away instead of picking them up and saving them for me.

The floors of the classroom, the desks and chairs, were so dirty you wouldn't believe it. I have attended the church, associated with this school each Sunday (that will be a blog in itself) and last Sunday, the pastor asked the families to come to the school on Sunday afternoon to clean the school. On Monday, the floors had been swept and swabbed with a rag mop (the only kind I can find in this city) so the dirt had been moved around but was still there.

Although the classrooms have AC, they don't turn it on except during the actual school hours. The rooms have 6 overhead fans which move the air around and make a horrible noise while doing so. So I was working in the classroom, without AC, sweating buckets, which really put me in a foul mood! (However, I notice that the offices have AC all day long!)

I thought the school would clean up a bit for the students but I was wrong. To their credit, over the last weekend, they came in and slapped a coat of paint (school beige) on the walls of each classroom. Much of the paint dripped onto the whiteboard and onto the floor. Until today, when I finally got my new glue gun to work for me, each day that i go into the classroom, something else had fallen off the walls. Today I let the glue gun heat up for 1/2 hour before I used it and I hope, on Monday, the things are still on the walls! The other problem is that when you do have something, it does not work well, even new. (for example, i have not had a telephone, in the house, that works since the first day it was installed. I am still waiting for the repairman to come.)

So the preparations for the first day of school did NOT go very smoothly, to say the least. The administration told us that we had to decorate the walls but it was fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants. I am amazed at what some of the other teachers have done with not much. I am so spoiled and not very creative, I guess, when it comes to figuring out what to do. They expect us to change the decorations every month but do not give us anything to use to change them. Thank goodness for the materials that I brought with me.

And so...enough complaining about last week. But just wait until you get the next blog about this week: the first day and the first week of school.

Part of what is so difficult for me is not knowing where I can buy things, where the stores are, and having to take a taxi (expensive) or a city bus (cheap) to get to the stores. This is all a part of "the learning experience" that I am living. I have learned something from this: if there is a new person in town, help them to learn the town. I can't speak the language well enough to even call on the phone to the stores and ask questions. It has been very difficult to say the least.

Hasta luego.