At first glance the school looks like it could be in California. Because of the warm climate, the classrooms are open-air style. The buildings are small, containing one to three classrooms only. The buildings are made out of cement and are painted blue. The roofs are made out of tin. They glint silver in the sunlight and when it rains its difficult to hear anything but the sound of the raindrops. Some have pretty lattice cut style windows and others are just rectangular shaped holes with grey shutters. However when you step inside, you know you are not in the US. The walls are covered in graffiti. The desks are long benches that seat five of the younger children and three of the older ones at one time. They are simple benches made from light colored wood, and except for the new ones, they are also covered in scribbling. The floor is covered in dust, candy wrappers, dirty tissues, and broken pens. The students are assigned days that they are supposed to sweep in groups, but many times they do not do it. The brooms provided are traditional-dried palm leaves tied together with a piece of string. Many times there are critters in the room, like lizards or frogs. Sometimes a bird will fly in, maybe even intentionally fying right through the room. All the classrooms are fairly large because they need to seat up to 180 adults (since that's what many of the oldest students are). The blackboard is not in good condition. The surface is so old the chalk will not write on it. In fact, when you try to write on it, the chalk just turns black. Some parts of the blackboard might be separating from the wall. The room is often so large that even if you wrote very very large, the students in the back won't be able to see. Or there will be a glare from the sun blocking one side of the room from seeing, and in another section, its blocking the other side of the room. There is usually a group of at least 20 students who literally cannot see anything thats written on the board. When students say, “Madame, I can't see,” I often go right next to them and look, just to see from their perspective. The board will look like a bright light is shining on it and you can't even tell there's writing on it. The motivated students will go to the 2 foot space in the front of the room between the board and where the desks are and crouch down to copy what's written. Some people in the back stand up to be able to see. Others just copy from someone else that was able to see. All this shenanigans obviously takes a lot of time.
When I walk over to a classroom, the students see me if they are not already inside and they start going in. It takes a few minutes just for everyone to go in, find a seat, cram themselves into a desk. There's usually an argument or two about desks. My sixth grade class, which is known as glorified babysitting, is the worst and the fight usually gets physical. Often the last person to sit down pushes the person on the other end to fall over onto the floor humpty dumpty style. When I walk in I greet everyone good morning or afternoon. Walking in to a classroom of 150 adults stopped being intimidating after about 5 minutes, however its still very exhausting and mentally draining. The students are supposed to stand until the teacher tells them to sit down. Many times people in the middle or back are not standing up, so I specifically go over and say hi to them, and they snap right up. Again, in sixth grade, I spend about 10 minutes walking around the room getting everyone to sit down. There is never absolute silence in my class. I don't expect there to be-there's just too many people and I can't stare at them all at the same time. The first question I always ask is “what's the date today?” I've asked this question every day for 5 months and there's still people that don't know what I'm saying. Then I choose someone to write it in the corner of the board. Not a day goes by when someone writes it on the first try. It's not even that they make mistakes, which they often do, but its because if it is not absolutely perfect the first time, they have to erase the entire thing and start over. There is a large amount of heckling during the writing of the date. Everyone who didn't have the courage to volunteer to write it sits there and comments on every little thing the person is doing.
To start the lesson, I write the heading-English Language on the board. About 100 or so students feel the need to say “english language” everyday. At least they're practicing. Then I write the topic of the lesson. Reading comprehension lessons are the most difficult to do therefore I usually do grammar lessons. I am becoming pretty good at English grammar. Pretty good-not an expert. It's difficult when you know what the correct rule is but you have no idea why it's correct. Reading comprehension lessons are difficult because of course only about 5 or so students actually have a textbook. So you can pay to have photocopies made, write it on the board (which of course takes a long time because they also have to copy too), write it on paper beforehand (which costs money and time) or pay to have copies made. The other problem with photocopies is that they have to share (160 copies is too much money) and they go nuts when there's copies and try to hoard them, hiding them and asking for another. Fights have also broken out over photocopies. Horrifyingly, I think some of the teachers just read out loud passages to the students, who obviously will not understand anything. Except for my seniors, I usually just write a paragraph or two on brown paper for a reading passage because there's not enough time for much else.
