Another New Journey Begins:
I was scheduled to meet Bernal Cespedes, the Director of the ESL program, at 10am sharp in Heredia. Politecnico a 30 minute bus ride from my house in Rohmoser. Luckily my roommate Evan is a veteran bus rider and had a class that morning. Evan taught me what route to start on and where get off and switch buses. I have been using a “Burger King” as a landmark for my first stop (pull the string at the Burger King). Part of my commute goes past Parque La Sabana, a beautiful park where the national soccer stadium, Estadio Nacional was recently built. The Chinese Government gave it to Costa Rica as a “gift” for establishing a free trade agreement with China instead of Taiwan. Nothing here says “Made in Taiwan.”
The Heredia campus was a former mansion owned by a wealthy coffee baron. He was also an advocate for education and upon his death, the estate was donated and converted into a school. The campus is small but very beautiful.
The staff seemed very happy. I was given a brief tour of the facility and payed close attention to the names of the lunch ladies. Julie and Ana later gave me a heaping plate of pinto gallo y pollo for lunch:)
My meeting with Bernal went great. He was excited to hear that I'm a sports fan because he loves American sports. He listens to “The Herd,” hosted by Colin Cowherd of ESPN, every morning. Bernal briefly explained the guiding principles of adult language learning and reassured me that it would become clearer as I complete my TEFL certification. My certification course is from 9am – 3pm, Monday – Friday. I'll also be teaching part-time in the evenings, as well as Saturday mornings from 8 – 12, at a local high school. Bernal asked me to come back the next day to go over some paper work and start working on a lesson plan.
The next day I went back to school and started going over some information. During lunch with some co-workers, Bernal came up and asked if anyone could cover 2 hours of an upper-level class because the teacher had called in sick. The others had their own classes to teach, so I said I would give it a shot. A few minutes later he returned and asked how my "subject/verb agreement" knowledge was.
I replied, “Pretty strong.”
He said “Great, you can get started in a few minutes."
So I went to my laptop and Googled “subject/verb agreement,” as its apparent from my blog, my grammar is on a 2nd grade level (American 2nd grade).
The class was comprised of future Bank of America Call Center Reps who are fine-tuning their English. I taught the class for 2 hours and had a great time. After we finished subject/verb agreement, I had to explain how Americans use “otherwise.”
I asked the students to pair up and create their own sentences using “otherwise.” When they finished I went around the room , eaching reading their sentence. I came to a pretty dark haired student with big brown eyes, who starred intently at me and said “I don't know how to cook, otherwise I would cook you dinner.” I thought it was pretty funny but showed no reaction and quickly moved on to the next student.
Meeting my Saturday class for the first time was a delight. I will be teaching grade 6, which for Tico's is equivalent to junior year of high school. CoTePeCos has a reputations for producing the brightest students in San Jose. These students have elected to take an extra eight-weeks of English instruction. The class's workbooks haven't arrived yet and the photocopies I requested were all messed up. I had no choice but to improvise Chapter 1 for four hours.
I wanted to meet everyone and rate their English proficiency, so I decided to start the morning by having each design a “Personal Logo” that represents who they are. I then then had each student present their logo to the class. Most were very cute. The girls drew hearts and musical notes, the boys drew soccer balls and weights. My logo was a swan with a lacrosse stick and a football beneath it.
That activity ate up about 50 minutes of clock and the remaining time was quick and fun. The kids laughed everything I said, so it made me feel like a really funny stand up comedian. I wanted to assign homework because that kind of power is easy to abuse, but because of Holy Week I wouldn't see the kids for 2 weeks, so I resisted the urge. When class concluded, each student came up and said goodbye, thanking me. I was impressed, maybe because my only teaching experience thus far, took place in Golversville, NY.
After my Saturday class I was on vacation until Monday the 25th. Then things would really pick up. I had met some other teachers who were going on a "visa run" to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, and thought it a good idea to renew mine as well, while I had sometime off from work.
Other than a six hour bus ride to a third world country I had no idea what to expect. At the time, the thought was very inticing...That story will be posted within the next day or two. But, just as a teaser...My new friends from the UN Sailing Team Andres, Nils, Wilem and Alex, were addressing me as Captain America by the time I left that God forsaken town.
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