Posted on by bethanypasma · 4 Comments

Bethany’s Life in Guatemala, Volume 3: School Has Started!

I know. Last week was already about school. But I’m a teacher, so you should fully expect to read more about school over my year here, teaching in Guatemala!

I need to write about school this week. Because it was A WEEK. An incredible week. A good week. A hard week. So pretty much your typical week when it comes to school. 

On Monday, parents came to pick up packets of work for their children. One thing that is very different from Canada is that students need to pay for their photocopies here. That has been quite a different idea for me to wrap my head around. I’ve had several conversations with Beth, our TEFL director about it. Because my first instinct is to make sure I give the fewest number of pages possible, but giving nothing isn’t an option right now and besides needing students to do work that they then turn in to be marked so that I have grades, students also need to do work to learn. So I will balance thorough, thoughtful sheets with saving space. Beth also reminded me that students expect that cost. At many private schools in Guatemala, students are required to buy books and then don’t really use them, so this is also a way to ensure that students only pay for what they actually need. 

On Tuesday, the halls rang out with the joyful sound of children. Such few children, but what a joy to have children at school! The children of teachers and staff are at the school. Having them doesn’t violate municipal regulations for Covid, it means students can actually be at school, and it means students aren’t at home alone or requiring child care while parents work. 

We started Tuesday the way we always do – with a devotions time full of listening to God, worship, and prayer. I spent a lot of that time crying. I can’t believe how good it was to listen to children sing with gusto. I haven’t been in a space like that since February 2020. It was so good. 

On Tuesday, I also posted my first video in a Facebook group. Still kind of crazy to me that I am teaching and purposely using Facebook. I also received some very cute texts through WhatsApp from students asking questions about their work. 

I don’t have any pictures of students or school, so please enjoy this very cute text from a student! 💕

Tuesday through Thursday, I uploaded teaching videos to Facebook, answered questions through WhatsApp, and TAUGHT REAL STUDENTS IN PERSON!!! I have one student in person in my segundo básico class (grade 8), and two students in person in my tercero básico class (grade 9). It’s so helpful to have in-person students and get to have real interactions instead of just online, and it’s also really helpful to get one data point of information for where my students might be in their English level. 

In typical roller-coaster teaching fashion, classes went really well and really badly. When I finished my last class on Thursday, I came back to the staff room and told my TEFL colleagues, “I’m really worried about my online kids. When you can spend 3x longer explaining the concept in person and they’re still struggling with it… how are the online kids doing when they just have 5 minutes of explanation?” Sure enough, that has certainly been the class and activity that I’ve had the most texts about. When parents come next week Monday and hand in this past week’s work and pick up the next packet, it’ll be very interesting to see how students did. 

In addition to teaching, editing and posting videos, and answering questions, this week we also needed to plan our next two weeks of class. We need to turn in our lesson plans for the coming week by Thursday afternoon before we leave school. To give some context, remember that Guatemala is a country with a chronically underfunded education system. In November, the Congress literally voted to make cuts to education and the health care system in order to increase their stipends for meals. So when teachers aren’t paid a living wage, when no one checks in on their work, when they sometimes live long distances from school… why bother showing up on time? Why bother having lessons planned for the day? Global Shore is consciously different. Teachers must arrive on time for the day or they aren’t paid for that day of school. Their lesson plans must be turned in to be looked over. And those handouts… remember the handouts that get photocopied? You also have to give those to the secretary to make copies for everyone. 

This past week and next week, parents will come on Monday, and classes happen from Tuesday to Friday. But the plan is to change the turn-around day to Friday, so that classes will happen from Monday to Thursday, and on Friday parents will come and switch out materials. That means we actually need to have our lesson plans turned in by Wednesdays and get the copies done. In order to make that turn-around happen, this week we handed in lesson plans and handouts for two weeks. So yes, in our first week of school we had to write lesson plans and handouts for the next two weeks. Another crazy and fun factor is that we need to have 3 “midterms” throughout each quarter, each approximately 3 weeks apart. So I have already planned and made photocopies for a test for the end of week 3 and I haven’t even gotten any student work back yet. Literally who knows if students will pass or fail, if it’s incredibly easy work or incredibly hard work for them?! Not me!

I don’t tell you these differences to critique the educations system in general or the work that Global Shore is doing here. If you understand the cultural differences, many of the differences in how schools run make sense. But I hope that the stories give a little insight into my life in this past week and in the kind of work that I’m doing! 

Posted on by bethanypasma · 7 Comments

Bethany’s Life in Guatemala, Volume 2: Online Education

Last spring, Ontario schools pivoted rather rapidly and unexpectedly from in-class to online at-home learning. Granted, I was actually off of work recovering from surgery during the set-up and first week of implementation, but I came back to work into a system that was functioning well. My students each already had their own Chromebook, and they were used to using them independently during class. It was a given that each home had wifi, and while connectivity might not always be strong enough for the whole family to have great internet access, I could generally see my whole class for devotions each morning and students were able to complete their learning online. It was a definite challenge for students to switch from in-class to online, but they were well equipped. 

My new students in Guatemala will be starting classes this coming week. We were very much hoping that students would be able to come to school in person – restrictions have eased from the very strict lockdown that stayed in place for much of 2020, and the Ministry of Education was requiring schools to submit a Covid plan to be approved before students began their school year. However, we received word this week that because our department (think province) of Sacatepequez is in the red (as determined by percent of Covid tests completed that have positive results), we will not have students coming in person. While we are in the red or orange, students must take their classes online. We anxiously await yellow or green. 

So just what does online education look like in Guatemala? 

My students in Ontario all had their own Chromebook. This is obviously not a given for all students – even in our younger grades, students didn’t necessarily have a device. But JKCS put together a plan to loan out school devices to families for as long as needed. Here in Guatemala, it is even less likely that students have a device. If they do, it’s almost certainly a phone. It’s much more likely that there is a phone or two that parents own and use. It’s already a significant difference to plan lessons and work that will be seen (and likely not done) on a phone. That phone might also need to be shared between multiple students. 

Next let’s consider wifi. I held out for as long as I could before getting wifi for my own home in Canada… and I think I got it back in 2015. It was simply not feasible to live without wifi in my home. Here, I am blessed to have regular wifi access – at home, and throughout a lot of the school. Of course, concrete and block walls mean there isn’t great wifi accessibility into each of the classrooms and offices, but my TEFL colleagues and I have been enjoying the sun and warm weather while working in the courtyard where we generally have great wifi access. Wifi is much less likely in the average Guatemalan home than Canadian. Many of our students simply do not have wifi at home. What they do have, however, are phone plans. My Guatemalan phone plan has 8GB of data a month, but anything that I access through Facebook and WhatsApp don’t count towards that 8GB – they’re basically free. (Let’s save the conversation about the ethical implications for another time… but that would be a very good conversation to have!)

It is quite ingrained in me from teaching in Ontario that students do not belong on a teacher’s social media. I let students follow or friend me once they’ve graduated, if they really want to by then. So please imagine my… culture shock to hear that our main educational resource is Facebook. It all comes down to that free data access. I’ve been added to Facebook groups with my fellow teachers and students. I’ll post my teaching videos there. I’m also a part of WhatsApp groups where students can text with questions as well as sending things like voice memos – a great tool for the English teacher! Parents are picking up an envelope with worksheets for the week, students will complete them, and they will swap out the old for the new on a weekly basis. Considering that my students might need to share a phone among multiple family members, and considering what we know about student engagement and attention span, I’m aiming for a five minute video, with a maximum time length of ten minutes. I don’t know my students, and they don’t know me, and I get approximately ten minutes of one-way video interaction with them a week (two classes), with worksheet feedback on how they’re doing and what they’re understanding. 

So it’s definitely going to be a fun challenge! 

And… if you’d like a little taste of what those videos look like, I’ve added one here for your enjoyment.

Posted on by bethanypasma · 7 Comments

Bethany’s Life in Guatemala, Volume 1

I don’t even know where to start. How do you sum up a week in a new life in a new country in a new job with new friends and etc? I’m going to assume that over the course of ten months you’ll get an idea of what daily life is like here. I’m going to hit you with an overview of this past week and what school will be like. (If you have topics that you really want me to write about, questions that you have, etc, please leave them as comments here or on Facebook and I will address them in future posts!)

Last Sunday we had a whirlwind of an orientation. Breakfast together as a TEFL team, our first ride on a chicken bus to get into Jocotenango, church service, another chicken bus ride into Antigua, the purchasing of Guatemalan SIM cards and phone plans, lunch in a restaurant, a quick sight seeing, and a grocery trip in the famous (infamous) grocery store La Bodegona. La Bodegona is an experience and definitely deserves a post all to itself sometime. For now, just trust me when I tell you that it is An Experience.

My good ole beloved Antigua!

Monday and Tuesday were days with some TEFL orientation for us new teachers. Let me introduce the new cast of characters – they may show up in varying frequency in upcoming posts. Eden and Tegan and I are the new ones, and Max and Matthew are returning TEFL teachers, and leading the charge is our fearless TEFL director Beth. Eden and Tegan and I live upstairs in what is affectionately called Casa Canche, or “house of blondes” (think foreigners or light haired people). Beth and her husband Fred (director of communications for Global Shore) and Baby Ali (cutest little chubby cheeked baby you can imagine) live on the main floor of Casa Canche. Most of the ex-pats working with GSO in Guatemala have historically been Canadian, but with the new opening of GSO USA in 2019, it’s now easier for Americans to raise support and work here. So both of my roommates Eden and Tegan are Americans. As I’m sure you know Canadians love to do, they got quite the lectures and lessons about Canadian culture as we started working together.

I just cannot get over this view. I am constantly amazed by it… it’s what I see when I step out into our porch, or step out of school. It takes my breath away every time!

On Wednesday all teachers arrived. Most of the school staff is Guatemalan, and we had a LOT of people to meet and names to try to remember. We TEFL teachers also received our teaching assignments and curriculum and started lesson planning.

I’ll be teaching segundo and tercero básicos this year – essentially grade eight and grade nine. Básicos is middle school here, and it’s essentially grade 7, 8, and 9, and just like those can be challenging years for students in Canada, they can be challenging for students here. So even though classes are not too big, the students are divided into two sections. So I have four different classes that I’ll teach, two grade 8 classes and two grade 9 classes.

For the first time since my first year of teaching more than fifteen years ago, I have a whole new curriculum to learn and a whole new crop of student names to learn. I’m so used to teaching at least some of the same curriculum and usually know more than half of the students coming into my class. It’s so strange to have everything be new. Strange in a good way – I am up for the challenge! But you can pray for my transition into a totally new job and for my ability to quickly learn names of all my new students.

It’s been nice to have a weekend break. Yesterday, Eden and Tegan and I took the bus into Antigua ourselves – our first solo trip, successfully completed! – and enjoyed lunch in a restaurant, beautiful views of Antigua, and a quick stroll through a very empty artisan market (usually bustling with tourists). Today after church, Eden and I found a cafe and are enjoying some quality drinks while relaxing in the fresh air.

Tacos!

Next week will continue with similar work – staff devotions together each morning, then planning and meeting times. On Thursdays, teachers have to submit their lesson plans for the whole upcoming week, so I’ll be fine-tuning my lessons and starting to prep for the second week of classes.

And then classes themselves will hopefully begin on the 18th. I believe that we still need to find out if our Covid plan has been approved by the government, but the 18th is what we’re expecting right now.

Thank you all for your comments on Facebook and Instagram. It’s great to still feel connected with you! Please feel free to stay in contact with me through any of your favourite methods.