teacher-parent-teacher meeting
On Thursday I went to Christelle’s parent-teacher meeting to do the English/French translation for her parents. The meeting went very well and Christelle received nothing but praise, much to my surprise. All her teachers said she was working very well and that her English was coming on very well after only two years in the school. Having never been to one of these meetings, it was interesting to see how things worked and good practice for my own parent-teacher meeting which, funnily enough, was the following day.
Friday was a weird day. It all started with Jennifer being ill on Thursday and Friday and Philippe getting angry because she was seen at a baseball game on Wednesday night until 11.30 p.m. and then again the next day shopping in the supermarket. One of the parents phoned the school to ask why her child’s English teacher had the time to buy a new bikini but not to give English lessons.
So Friday morning Philippe phones Jennifer and pretty much forces her to come into school to have a word him and give an expanation for why she didn’t spend the day in bed. This soon turned into an irrational outburst on Jennifer’s part in which she declared that the school was rubbish, she wasn’t being treated well, and that she quit and Sarah did too. (All this information is second-hand as the girls still haven’t given me their version of events). The plan was to move out of the apartment and go and live with a Dominican bloke they met in a discotheque until they made their escape back to Canada at Christmas.
Now if you ask me, the whole thing sounds insane. The girls didn’t say a word of this to me and the whole thing was clearly planned if Jennifer knew that Sarah wanted to leave too. What’s more, the other day Jennifer was talking about giving all her stuff to the orphans before she left at Christmas and when I questioned her as to why she would do that at Christmas and not the end of the school year she gave me a puzzled – almost surprised – expression, hesitated momentarily, then quickly corrected herself by saying that that was what she meant all along. She then changed the subject.
Not sure what to make of all this but it turns out (after having a chat to Philippe about it) that they will in fact be staying in the apartment and therefore working at the school until Christmas but that Sarah probably won’t come back. As for Jennifer, I can’t say but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if she left too as she’s given the impression since day one that she didn’t like the apartment, her shared room or her job. In fact, the only things that seems to interest her are getting a tan and going to discotheques.
To add to the weirdness, a student of mine got expelled on Friday for taking a photo up a girls skirt with his phone.
However, my day went on as per usual and at 3 o’clock parents started streaming in for the parent-teacher meeting. I had Christelle at my desk to translate for parents who didn’t understand a word of English. The majority of the meetings went well and it was interesting to finally meet and talk to the parents (some of whom looked exactly like their children) of the kids I’ve been teaching everyday for the past three months.
I left the school at 6 p.m. feeling drained and exhausted. We went to eat and then I spent the evening with Chistelle watching some very funny French comedy; a welcome end to a long and tiring day.
boat ride, exams and faq
Last Sunday I went on a boat ride up the River Chavon with Christelle and co. It was a relaxing break, both for me and my hand, after days of non-stop calligraphy. The trip was organised by a family whose kids go to my school. We had the boat to ourselves and spent a very agreeable afternoon eating, drinking beer, swimming and diving into the river. The boat was big and came fully equipped with a kitchen and one of those portable toilets you find on building sites and at rock festivals – this one, mind you, was clean. All in all an enjoyable experience that gave me a chance to do something a little different and gawk at some astounding scenery. I took some great photos which I might post later on when I’ve finished writing.
The next day I handed in my exams which, unfortunately, were not good enough. Marire-France spent a good part of the next week re-writing all the newcomers’ exams. I was incredibely grateful but also a little disappointed that all my efforts had gone to waste. Either way, the exams are now ready and will start on Monday 11 December. Mine are scheduled to finish on the 13th, two days before I return to Belgium for Christmas.
Now I want to address a few questions my dad put to me in his last email.
To what extent do you move in normal Dominican circles?
The honest answer to that is not a lot. During the week I’m either too busy or too knackered to do anything or go anywhere. I spend most of the day at school and when I get home I eat, read, maybe go to the cyber cafe, then it’s bed time. At the weekend I spend my free time with Christelle and before I know it it’s Sunday and I have 30 lessons to plan for the coming week. I have been introduced to some of Christelle’s friends but don’t see or spend time with them on a regular basis. Having said that, it seems that she is also spending less and less time with them since we’ve been together. The Dominicans I see most are my students, the restaurant staff, taxi drivers and the guys at the cyber cafe. Incidentally, these are the people I pratice my Spanish on.
Is your area typical of the whole country or is it more privileged?
La Romana is a city of contrasts. Some areas are very run down and look very grotty while other areas, for example around the school, are home to relatively well off families that live in big American-style houses that have neatly trimmed lawns with sprinklers running out front. You also see a lot of 4×4s roamning the streets. So the answer to your question is probably no, La Romana is not very typical of the country as a whole.
What’s the standard of living like?
The standard of living for most Dominicans is fairly low. Life is expensive given their relatively low wages and most of them don’t do their shopping in super markets. Instead they rely on huge bags of cheap rice, no meat, and cheap water that comes in family-sized bottles. They are not starving of course but they certainly don’t have any extra cash to buy anything but essentials and pay the rent. The parents of kids in my school are relatively well-off but even some of them have trouble paying the monthly $100 per student. The teachers in our school receive the same salary as we do but must pay rent and feed their families with it. It gives you an idea of just how lucky I am.
writing’s a bore, reading galore
Hand writing exams is a long and laborious undertaking. I made some good progress today but ended up getting very discouraged after making a mistake near the bottom of a page thus rendering the whole page and all my efforts useless. I was writing a fill-in-the-blanks exercise and concentrating so hard on writing well that I filled in my own blanks. Retarded? Frightfully so.
I’ve otherwise been enjoying my holiday, spending most of my time with Christelle or reading. I just finished The Hobbit, which I absolutely loved and only vaguely remebered from when my dad read it to me as a child. I actually brought exactly the same copy here which, fifteen years down the line, is coming to pieces and very difficult to read without whole sections of the book falling out everywhere. It is at times like these that you thank God the pages are numbered.
I’m now reading Number Ten by Sue Townsend. It is a light-hearted and funny book about a Labour Prime Minister who feels very out of touch with the British people and decides to go on an adventure around the UK - dressed as a woman and accompanied by Jack Sprat, the policeman who guards the door at Number 10 - to get a taste of what it is to take public transport, wait in hospitals and do all those things us normal people do everyday without thinking twice. (Phew! Long sentence!)
Tomorrow I’m going sailing up the Chavon River with Christelle and family. We will be spending the afternoon on the boat stuffing our faces and seeing the sights. I mentioned the Chavon River, and the magnificent view I got of it from Altos de Chavon, in an earlier post. Looking forward to that and will report back with a summary of our day and (I hope) some photos. I have a feeling my Flickr account will be closed down if I don’t post some new snaps soon.
holidays, exams and a little romance to go
I am now midway through my week of holiday. It has been a welcome change not to have to get up early or do anything in particular with my days, although I did have to go to school yesterday morning for exam preparation.
Exams start in early December and must be ready by next Monday. I have now written all five exams but have not finished my final copies. I would have done this a long time ago if only I could do them on the computer but alas, this is not allowed. The school insists on hand-writing the exams using caligraphy. This is essentially cursive writing with added squiggles and twiddles to make it look all the more beautiful. However, it is painstakingly slow and difficult to perfect. And you can well imagine, my hand is very likely to drop off or cramp permanently after 30 pages of that. To make matters worse, if I make a single mistake on one page I am obliged to start the whole page again. “Use an ink-eraser,” I hear you yelling from behind your sreens. Unfortunately I can’t because I have to write in non-erasable black ink to make the photocopier’s life easier, tut tut. Where does making my life easier come in to this? Apparently it doesn’t.
Looking on the bright side, all this should do wonders for my handwriting which, for the moment, is something of a disaster. I need to get them all done by Monday but haven’t started yet because I have yet to complete my crashcourse in caligraphy which consists of writing the whole alphabet repeatedly in uppercase and lowercase (until by some stroke of luck I get gangrene and my hand actually does drop off, hence getting me out of writing exams). I joke, of course. I’ll let you all know how that goes next week.
Last Saturday I went to the Iberostar hotel in Bayahibe with Christelle and co. and spent the day tanning on the beach and by the pool. The five star hotel was all-inclusive and that meant I was free to eat and drink as much as I wanted all day long without paying a penny. I didn’t, however, abuse this, which I now regret. Philippe and family went down there to spend the weekend with his mother and sister who came to visit. I was kindly invited for the day at the last minute after my bosses finally found out that something was going on with their English teacher and their daughter. It is the first time I mention this here because I didn’t really want to advertise the fact that I was going out with her without their prior consent.
More updates soon, I promise. I know I haven’t been very regular recently but I will make more of an effort to get my big lazy bum down to the cyber cafe more often. I really enjoy writing this blog and I wouldn’t want any of you to lose interest.
taming the wild ones
Went to a well-timed meeting about discipline in the classroom. Just before the meeting I’d had a class in which a fight broke out just as I walked in to start the lesson. The two boys involved were kicking and punching each other as if they were in a kickboxing ring. This was by far the worst case of violence I’ve ever witnessed in a classroom, both as a student and a teacher. I was shocked and acted immediately to break them up while their other teacher (the one who teaches them everything but languages) looked on in silence without even batting an eyelid - this shocked me too, of course. I found out later that she thought it was my responsibility to deal with the students, no matter what, during English lessons. She’s right, of course. However, under those circumstances I think it was irresponsible, lazy and plain stupid of her not to have reacted to the situation.
As a result, I had to leave the class unattended for fifteen minutes while I took the boys to the principal and phoned their parents. I eventually came back to a class of bellowing ten year old’s scurrying around the classroom without a care in the world while their teacher sat at her desk doing corrections, having made no effort to calm them down in my absence.
We tried watching the end of the film I’d started earlier in the week (102 Dalmations) but I had to stop it because they were still too excited and didn’t even seem to be able to watch it, let alone listen to it. Obviously they were angry with me after that and as I didn’t have anything else planned for them, I made them sit in silence which, not surprisingly, didn’t work. And that is how the worst lesson of my life came to an end. Thankfully, being last lesson on Friday, it was also how that day and that week came to an end. I walked solemnly to the meeting feeling exhausted and defeated.
The meeting raised my spirits a bit as it gave me a chance to hear the points of view of other teachers and allowed me to voice my concerns to everyone. I was given many helpful pointers and was even offered notebooks and folders for my students, which they have for every other subject except languages. The conclusion was that language lessons were too interactive (despite the fact that the school admin and parents want it that way) and that more written tasks should be done to keep the students quiet and under control.
This was written a few weeks ago but I didn’t post it at the time. Since then some of my classes have been going significantly better while others still have problems (or rather I have a problem keeping them subdued).
