English, English, English

If I'm being completely honest, I would have to say that I do not like teaching English. I have an adult English class, and I adore them, and once I am in class I thoroughly enjoy myself, but if the work I did was completely up to me and not a function of community needs I would not teach English. Seeing as every single day about 5 new people ask me to teach them English I think I deserve it to the community to at least offer it a lil bit. I have my adult class (which also has some high school students) and my kindergarten classes and I try to leave it at that...until recently, that is.

These last few weeks have marked the end of summer vacation for the kids here, which means that the new school year is about to begin, which means that anyone who didn't pass a particular subject has one last chance to pass by taking an exam the week before classes begin. Seeing as English classes here are often taught by people whose English needs a lot of work (I give them all the credit in the world for their attempts, but I've gotta tell it like it is), lots of students struggle with the material. Many depend on the "last chance" exam at the beginning of the year in order to move on to the next grade level, and now that there is actually a gringa in town they turn to lucky ducky me.

Most of the students waited until mere days before needing to take the exam, so I was already committed to other work and could not help them, and others came earlier but lost steam after a while and I don't know what happened to them. One student, however, made all of the hours spent on my not-so-favorite topic completely and totally worth it. We will call her Mari.

When Mari first came to my house to study, I could not believe she was about to enter the 8th grade, not because she wasn't smart, because she obviously was, but because it meant she had been taking English since first grade (as do all students here) and appeared to have never learned a single word. I had my work cut out for me. We started going over all of her past tests and I taught her every study skills trick in the book. I often notice that kids here really just aren't taught how to study. The concept of notecards, for example, was completely foreign to Mari, and she couldn't believe how quickly she learned the vocab once we started using them. It was fun for me to watch her progress, and althogh I must admit I was not always excited about another English lesson, her persistance and work ethic inspired and motivated me to work hard for her. I became just as determined as she was to pass this exam, and we knocked out session after session, often studying for 3 hours at a time without stopping.

The day before her exam she came for one last tutoring session. She was nervous and although I certainly didn't tell her, I was too. She had come so far in just a few weeks, but was it really possible to learn all the material from the year in that time? I showed her nothing but unwavering confidence as we put everything away at the end of our session, and told her to go home and relax and not study anymore.

The rest of that day and the day of the exam I was completely distracted, dying to know how it went. In the afternoon she came to my house to deliver the news...she passed!!! She was literally shaking with joy. Not only did she pass, she got a B, which was WORLDS away from the grades on the old tests we studied. Seeing how proud she was of herself after such hard work was a beautiful thing, and I felt every ounce of her happiness. The usually quiet and timid Mari suddenly couldn't speak fast enough as she rattled off all the details of the day, from her nerves and prayers the night before, to her excitement and shock that she only had to look up 4 words in the dictionary during the test, and the anxiety-ridden hours of waiting between taking the exam and finding out her grade. She was adorable about thanking me for helping her, telling me that she was still going to make me something and give me a card, but she couldn't wait until she finished those things to tell me how it went.

I think that maybe after this experience I can look at teaching English in a different way. Even though it is not something I particularly enjoy as a job in itself, nothing is more enjoyable than doing work that affects others in a positive and meaningful way, and if teaching English does that, then how could I not feel motivated to do it? Will this make teaching Enligh my new favorite job? No, but it does help me to stay positive about it.