Yesterday we learned something new… when a Mexican says a few blocks, it actually means less than a kilometre. We were told to go 4 blocks in one direction to catch a bus to get to the school. Afraid that we were going to miss the 6:12 bus, we woke up at 5:30 and headed out the door at 5:45. After walking 10 minutes and not seeing the bus stop, we decided to turn around and go in the opposite direction. After walking 12 minutes in the opposite direction, we finally found the place, it was literally 500m from the entrance of our apartment it was quite interesting. On the way, we saw this gate that seemed very appropriate for us as we are on our CFE.
The bus came 15 minutes late and the funny thing is that it doesn’t really stop at the bus stop, just approximately where it is. It stopped to let on passengers about 10 metres past the bus stop, and here’s the kicker, it didn’t pull over, rather the driver flashed his blinkers and stopped in the middle of the road. This is yet another story of how different our culture is to the Mexican culture.
At the school, we were introduced to various teachers and I met a Chinese teacher and we looked at each other funny wondering what another Chinese person was doing in Mexico.
The first teacher I observed was an English class, it was interesting because the teacher kept asking me for advice on grammar. It was interesting for me because even though I speak English as my first language, I never realize how much slang we use in casual conversation, whereas here is was very proper English being taught. What made it even more interesting was that English isn’t even the first language of many of the English teachers at the school. Regardless, I was able to help in the class a little. One thing that I taught the students was the difference of using “told” and “asked” when writing. I explained that the implications are different, however using either is acceptable in written English.
Another class I observed was a literature class. Even though the class was in Spanish, and the students were writing in Spanish, I was able to dedicate my time helping one student for the whole class. He told me about his paper that he was writing and ran some ideas past me. He then told me about another paper that he was expected to write about after the current paper was finished. He asked me if I had read the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe. I told him that I had read it ages ago, but was willing to try and help him understand the poem. So I pulled up a pdf online in English and asked him to pull up a Spanish copy for himself. We went through the poem stanza by stanza and discussed what he thought Poe might have been saying. Through his broken English, my almost non-existent Spanish, and our translation apps, we managed to get through one page and get some ideas flowing for him to think about. This class showed me how valuable technology and smaller class sizes would be beneficial for classes with high ELL students.
