One of the things that I have really been enjoying about my work, as petty and small as it makes me sound, is that I can do all of it during the school day and I don’t take school stuff home with me here in Guatemala. If you read my earlier post about my routine of school work, you might be a little surprised by that. Preparing and teaching both online classes and in-person classes and then marking all of that work – it is a lot of time. But our jobs are designed to be done during the school day. And this isn’t “our” as in just the TEFL staff – this is “our” as in all the teachers here. We leave at 2:30, and we do not generally take work home with us. This is particularly helpful when a not insignificant number of the staff are also pastors in the church network and can do their pastor work outside of school hours. It also allows teachers to spend time with their families and have real lives. (I have to say, after the gift of such a manageable workload for a year here, heading back to a Certain School in Ontario will be a difficult transition! 😭)

If you read my last blog, you are now familiar with Julianna, the director of Global Shore Opportunities. Julianna is Canadian by birth, but she’s lived in Guatemala since 2004. As my TEFL director Beth put it to me, Julianna would say that she’s here by choice, but what about her kids? They don’t have a choice about whether to live in Guatemala or Canada. They’re all very happy to be living in Guatemala… but what about if they want to go to university in Canada in the future? So in addition to attending the school here and taking their classes in Spanish, these kids also do some homeschooling curriculum that ensures that they will be prepared for a Canadian university if they so choose.

This past weekend, the former homeschooling teacher returned to Canada. At the end of this month, our one Guatemalan TEFL teacher will return from her maternity leave and my roommate and colleague Eden will take over as the homeschooling teacher. But for the month of March, Beth and I have divided up homeschooling responsibilities as a sort of stop-gap measure. For the past week and for the next three weeks, I’ve taken over the homeschooling of two young boys. I’m only seeing them for a total of four hours a week – it’s not like actual full homeschooling would be, given the aforementioned stop-gap nature and, you know, the fact that I already have a job to do here. 

So, homeschooling. It’s quite fun! I have two young boys, grade 1 and grade 3, and we do a lot of reading together. We do Bible work and history work and language arts, and we always take a movement break. Otherwise it would be a lot of sitting! We race around the soccer field or have a jumping jack competition. I usually lose, but in the end when we go back to class and we’ve gained the ability to sit and listen again, I’m the real winner in the end. 

The homeschooling adds some more hours of work to my already busy week, but I feel like it does use my skill set very well. Seriously – taking a pre-planned curriculum that’s reading based and making it relevant and accessible to two kids? Easy. Coming up with comprehension questions on the fly (since the pages for our particular book are missing from the binder)? I feel like I could do that in my sleep after 15 years of prior teaching. Sprinkling in little mini-lessons to teach reading strategies and vocabulary? I’m a natural. 

On the workload front, it was a squeeze to fit in the extra responsibilities, but with a lot of very intentional focus and continuing to work while eating instead of taking actual breaks for food (teachers, I know many of you know what I’m talking about!), I did manage to fit almost all the work into my work day. I did head into school 10 to 15 minutes early most days, but that didn’t really feel like giving up much. The real challenge will be this upcoming week: we are heading to the city on Friday to renew our visas*. We still need to get all of the same work done… just in four days instead of five. We’ll see! 

*Visa renewal allows us to stay in the country for more than our allotted 90 days that the visa we entered with permitted. We’re already in March – how have two months already gone by?!