Going with the Flow

It's been an interesting few days here in Mavudzi-Ponte. Yesterday, I woke up energized and ready to teach my tenth graders about present continuous, only to find out from my friend Vanda that school had been canceled for the day. Why, you might ask? No idea. I hate missing Mondays, because it's the only day I see my tenth graders, but what can you do? Not much. Foi mandado. It was mandated.

Today, I checked beforehand to make sure we were actually going to have class. Yes, yes, Vanda assured me, there's class today.

And yet, lo and behold, when I went to school at 12:30 as usual, none of my 8th graders were in their classroom. They were all in the salão, the big room, for a mandatory anti-drug seminar. Now I'm all for the anti-drug message, but does it have to be during my teaching time?

Apparently so.

I paced the hallway waiting for them to finish -- and once they did, I quickly ushered my kids to their classroom and did my best to cram my 45-minute lesson into 15 minutes.

Next up, I was slated to teach two ninth grade turmas -- the same lesson twice, back to back. As I went to get my materials for the first class, I had (what I thought was) the following conversation with one of my brightest students, Cristiano:

Cristiano: Teacher, can I please sit in on the 9A class today?
Teacher Helena: Don't you have another class to be in?
Cristiano: No, teacher. The Portuguese professor's not here today.
Teacher Helena: Well...I suppose you can sit in on the class.
Cristiano: Can my friend come too?
Teacher Helena: Sure.

Cristiano's a very bright student and shows a real aptitude and willingness to learn, so if he wants to sit in on an extra class, great! After all, 9A is one of my smallest classes, and who would notice just one (well, two) extra students?

Cristiano, smiling, turned and ran to go get his notebook. I went to the sala dos professores, the teacher's lounge, to get my lesson plans. Then, I walked into the 9A classroom to see this:

A sea of students!

"Holy guacamole! Where did all these students come from!?" I thought, "These kids can't possibly all be in 9A! In fact, I know that one there is in 9B... and that one... and that one... wait a minute, half these kids are from 9B! What's going on!?"

At this point, I would like to add, as a disclaimer, that generally my Portuguese is pretty good. I have no problem communicating and  there are very few times these days when I have trouble articulating my thoughts or have to ask for clarification. And yet, sometimes I, too, misunderstand.

This was one of those occasions.

Turns out, the conversation I had with Cristiano actually went like this:

Cristiano: Teacher, can our class please sit in with the other class for English today?
Teacher Helena: Don't you have another class to be in?
Cristiano: No, teacher. The Portuguese professor's not here today, and if we do English all together we can go home early.
Teacher Helena: Well...I suppose you can sit in on the class.
Cristiano: The rest of my classmates can come too?
Teacher Helena: Sure.

You see, Cristiano is the chefe da turma, the class president, and so the task fell to him to ask me if we could juntar (join) the two groups into one. I just didn't realize what he was asking me.

Usually, I say no to these types of requests, figuring that these classes are already big enough -- but at this point, I had about 85 expectant faces staring up at me, having already moved all their chairs and desks into the room, waiting to learn about present continuous.

I decided to just go with it.

And you know what? It was a great lesson. Maybe it was because there were so many of them, and they were feeding off of each others energy. Maybe they were excited to go home early. Maybe it was because my 9th graders are just awesome. (I know I'm not supposed to have favorites, but let's get real here. Who doesn't have favorites?)

In any case, I they all understood the material, they were all participating, laughing when I cracked jokes, working when I assigned them problems, and (for the most part) they were quiet when I was talking. It was a fantastic!

I can only hope my lessons tomorrow will go just as well. I have my two most challenging turmas, and to make things more stressful, I'm being visited by one of the Peace Corps staff. Don't get me wrong, Ramiro is really great, but he's also the one who taught all of our "How to Teach English" classes, so the idea of having him sit in on my classes while I teach is nerve-wracking.

Wish me luck!