I find myself wishing it would rain more… specifically around 5:30, coinciding perfectly with the “sudden” cancelation of my English class. It’s funny how cultural norms are often my God send. Like people’s resolve to not leave their houses when it’s cloudy out for fear that they will “se mojao” or get wet, as they say here in the Cibao region of the DR.
It’s not that I don’t like teaching English, well let’s be serious, that’s exactly what it is. After a year of teaching my native tongue four nights a week, I’m over it. And yet here I find myself again spending every Monday thru Thursday from 6 p.m. to 7:30ish p.m. teaching English. It’s not the time actually teaching that I dread so much, in fact that time is the most enjoyable. Interacting with my students, challenging them to do something they’ve never done before is both rewarding and most often entertaining (for example, teaching the pronunciation of the word “jewelry” has been great fun for both me and my students). It’s the lead-up to each class: preparing classes, researching new games and activities to use in my classes and being a strict and serious teacher (don’t you dare answer your cell phone in my class. I will seriously chuck it out the window. I don’t care if your cousin from “Nueva York,” just sent you a brand new iPhone with all of Daddy Yankee’s albums - I will break it).
As mentioned numerous times before, the DR has the WORST education system in all of Latin America. To be honest, the government should be put in an international courtroom for the disservice they are doing to their people. With no investment by the government on any level and only the richest of the rich able to attend decent private schools, the general population never has a chance to compete.
I see the perfect example of this every day in the new library in the center. Hoping to appeal to the middle- aged-kids, ages 10-15 or so, I bought over 20 young adult books. From Spanish speaking authors to even Roald Dahl’s books translated into Spanish. And even though most of the kids who come to the library are within the 10-15 age range, they barely glance at these books. The books they all read (and I know, because I sit here with them every afternoon), are the children’s books; picture books with simple words and beautiful illustrations. They pull these books from the shelf carefully, open them and read aloud (silent reading, as I’m learning, is not something that is taught here). We’re talking 12-year-olds reading at a first grade level. I try to encourage them to open a youth novel and attempt to read it, but they don’t understand the words or they get bored quickly and turn back to the picture-books.
Here in La Caya, there is only one school for all grades- Kindergarten thru 12th grade. Grades K thru Eight are supposed to be in the morning with hours from 8 a.m. – 12 p.m. and then the high school from 2 p.m. – 6 p.m. Unfortunately, by the time kids reach high school, the number has drastically dwindled as boys go work on the farm, girls get pregnant, families move away etc., and so a high school class usually has between only 10-15 students.
Every school in the DR pretty much looks and feels the same. Classrooms are cement boxes all painted the same boring two-tone green. Every school in this country is “Dominican peach,” as I like to call it. There’s no spice, no life to the color of schools inside or out. All the classrooms are overcrowded with rickety desks and old, damaged goods like blackboards from the year 1975.
Teachers, most often are overworked and underpaid. I’ve been helping a teacher in my school once a week since last school year, and she and I have had some good heart to hearts in the process. Last year she told me she averaged out her salary and realized she’s making about $40 pesos a day. That’s just over ONE American dollar. It’s criminal.
With teachers clearly not being paid sufficiently and never getting the recognition they deserve from the government or other community members, they are often unmotivated and to be frank, lazy. The kids are supposed to have a solid four hours of school a day (which obviously isn’t much), but usually that involves two recesses that are only supposed to last 15-minutes, but are never under half an hour and often turn into an entire hour. This means on average, I would say confidently that the average La Caya student spends about 2.5 hours a day in a classroom, attempting to learn.
And what are the kids doing when they are in the classroom? Having interactive discussions with each other and the teacher? Reading new and difficult literature? Engaging in science experiments that teach them about the world around them? Nope. They are copying things off the board. It’s one reason why kids can write but can’t read. They have been programmed from day one to just sit and copy. Kids come into the center and their homework is to literally COPY two or more pages, word for word from their text books.
In training, Peace Corps called it the “bucket system.” You put information into the bucket and it’s supposed to collect and amount to something. But it never does. It’s like putting sand in a bucket. Unless you make a castle out of it, the sand will always just remain in the bucket as sand.
Often I find myself thinking about my public education history compared to all the kids in the DR. I think about my high school or any typical high school in America. My own high school, Galena, with its nearly official size soccer field (x2), separate baseball and softball fields with lights, a regulation size football field with a track around it, two indoor basketball courts, a theater, indoor and outdoor eating facilities and that doesn’t even include the staff and the fact that the teachers went to an accredited university to actually become teachers.
I daydream about being able to magically teleport the kids from here to a school in America. They would be downright amazed by the luxuries of a typical classroom in the states. To be honest, they would probably be even more impressed with the bathrooms – running water that actually flushes the toilets leaving them clean and not making the entire compound smell like a latrine.
The teacher I’ve been working with at the school is one of those God sends I previously mentioned. She asked me to stop by her classroom today to show me a mural she’s working on. Outside of her classroom, she painted a giant tree (much like the one in my library) with grass, butterflies, caterpillars and other things to spur the imagination. I was so impressed she took this initiative on her own and did something to liven up the dull peachiness (of course she paid for the paint, paint brushes and all materials for the mural herself). She truly is a God send because she believes in her kids and goes above and beyond her duty to teach and encourage them the best she knows how.
More than a year-and-a-half into my service and everyday there are situations that humble me. As I pray for rain to cancel my English classes, the good teacher’s of this island, like my friend, are spending their own money to encourage kids that learning is the best thing they could ever do for themselves. Education - knowledge, knowing and retaining information - is after all, the one thing in life no one can ever take away from you.
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