So a Priest Walks into a Bar...

Last week was a tough week at school. I teach Mondays and Thursday at the school in my town. Thursday being the longer day where each classes is 120 minutes long. The last class of the day was my combined second and third graders. There are about 20 students in this class. I had been having trouble getting them to follow through on the class rules and maintaining classroom management during “communicative activities,” which is a fancy word for games. But, I decided to continue with my planned lesson and “communicative activity.”

It was a disaster. When I ask for silence, I got loud conversations. When I said, "time to listen to instructions", I was blasted with questions and students repeating “teacher, teacher!” When I yelled, the kids just talked louder. I literally was not able to put more than 5 words together in a sentence with out a questions being yelled, students leaving their seats, leaving the classroom, or completely ignoring me and continuing with their conversations.

The first day of class we had gone over the rules and expectations, but apparently no one was listening then either.

I felt frustrated with the class for their behavior and angry with myself for not being able to keep them under control and focused. Even more so, that I yelled to get their attention, which made me feel even more out of control.

The next day, Friday, I went to Pital to interview a priest for the community diagnostic I am writing. As a community leader and someone that people respect I wanted to get his opinion on the town and its needs. I spoke with Padre Gabriel.

Faith, religion, god are all things extremely important to Costa Rican culture and is dominant in rural communities where people are generally more traditional. This is not exactly my cup of tea. I skirt around the questions of faith and god. I stand during prayer time at school with the rest of the students, but am silent and attend mass with my host mother, but only because it is important to her and for the community to see me involved. I was interested to see how the interview with the priest would go- would he ask me personal questions about faith? How would I respond? And so on.

The interview with Padre Gabriel was the best interview I’ve had so far and gained a lot out of his perspective and what he had to say. He was practical, honest, and sincere. When I asked, “What are important 3 things Coope Isabel needs?” I expected an answer along the lines of English classes, improved infrastructure, or new community center. What I go was “family” -Coope Isabel needs to work on their families, their relationships, how people treat one another. That answer made me so happy. It had nothing to do with asking for money or material objects (something I get a lot of), but with love. I think I lost track of that during my diagnostic and  in thinking of ideas about how to improve Coope, to develop its resources, to educate, and create programs. How can the community participate or respect physical improvements to the town if they can’t treat each other correctly? This is brilliant!

Padre Gabriel also asked me how I was doing, how my week went. I told him about my Thursday and how lost I felt with my out of control class. He listen and we talked about what my plans were for the following week and the changes I was going to implement.

The interview ended and I felt really accomplished, which lifted my mood.

Sunday was church like normal. Padre Gabriel gave the mass. Too my surprise he decided to make the topic of his sermon what we had talked about during the interview- How people treat one another and pass on bad behavior to children, the students! No specifics were given but he said… it is a shame that there are people willing to sacrifice and live in this community, who have no other motive than to help and teach, and are received with disrespect… This was in reference to me and the behavior of my students. It felt nice to have someone in my corner, especially a community leader, but also a little nervous to see the reaction of the parents.

After mass some of the mothers walked up to me and told me I have there full support and if I need help they will do the best they can. That was a relief, the parents weren’t upset and actually wanted to participate, which is sometimes like pulling teeth. Over all I felt so much better about heading into Monday classes with a new plan, haven spoken to others about my problem and receiving positive feedback.

MONDAY class with the second and third graders was…AWESOME! I didn’t expect such a change, but there was. I’m not sure if it was that fact that they had the weekend to play and relax, if their parents talked to them, or if I was just more on top of things, but the class stayed completely under control. We started with the rules; I made posters and hung them in the front of the class depicting each rule. We practiced the kind of behavior I wanted to see and played the “silence game.” Also, taught the students “magic words” or please and thank you and told them how much I love to hear “magic words.” I even squeezed in an English activity! I was finally able to enjoy this class.

Happy ending...