'Grab Your Pencils! Grab Your Books!'

And don't give Teacher dirty looks!

Make your lunch!  Grab your pack!
Because it's time… to go back!

Back to school!  Back to school!
We are going back to school!!

We started teaching in Week Two!  After being back on the island only a week - one week, people!! - we kicked off 'Bex and Dave's School of English'.  Okay, not the real name for what we're doing here but you get the idea.  And, man, we started this adventure out at full tilt!  This first week saw us working with the kindergarten and first grade classes at the Ometepe Bilingual School; teaching adult beginner classes at two different locations in the village; holding sessions for our intermediate level adults; and kicking off our two high school classes.  

"Whew!" is an understatement!!  In fact, the week went by in a blur, so this will be a short-ish post.

We were going full blast right from the start.  Thank goodness we had some top notch volunteers to help us keep our heads above water.  See All-Star Volunteers to learn about this group!  They were a lifeboat in a sea of chaos.  Poetic, huh?  Our rental house wasn't going to be ready for another week, so we were making do with being in our room at the hotel.  We scrounged up a small table and used it to fire up our new printer.  We got ourselves organized and we were off to the races.  Or the loony bin, depending on your perspective.

Bed as staging area: each stack represents a different class for the day

One thing we hoped to get used to - and fast - was walking around the village.  I think I've commented before how people we talk to assume we have a vehicle to get around.  Nope.  It's all on foot, baby.  This partially explains my shedding of pounds since we've been here.  That, and the sweating.  Lots of sweating.  Some cars/trucks/vans/buses do navigate the crappy road, of course.  But we walk and hoofing it around here is hard on the ol' joints.  Feet, ankles, knees, hips, back.  Sore.  In fact, Bex had a stress injury to the arch of her foot, one that required drastic measures to alleviate.  She had to actually wear real-live, honest-to-goodness shoes!  Truly, a 'gasp' of the highest order is deserved, please!  Thank you.

We're in a place where I call these my work shoes.  Around the house it's flip-flops all the way.  Much to the dismay of my wife, I've already announced that any job I may obtain in the future will have to make a concession to allow me to choose my own footwear.  On the plus side, I'll save money on shoes and these things you non-tropical islanders call 'socks'.

The first graders were all very excited to see us again.  We were here last fall at the tail end of the kindergarten run.  It was amazing to us how much some of them had changed since we last saw them, just a couple of months ago.  Several of them were obviously taller and it was like they had worked on their English over the break.  Seriously, some of them retained a lot of what we had taught them last fall!  It was pretty great!  Hugs all around!

The adult beginner classes started slowly the first week, but quickly grew as word spread in the village.  For this group we had set up two classes in convenient locations at sort of opposite ends of the village, this to accommodate the people.  We wanted classes to be easy to attend, not a hassle to get to.  For the first class at Hacienda Merida we had a grand total of one student - a very eager young man named Juriel, who wants to be a teacher someday.  This class has since grown, of course.  On the other end of town, we hold another beginners class at a friends house.  Sessions at Casa Lorio ranged in size from 15-20+ to start, with a wide age range - students from 8-18 and older.  The age spread makes it a little difficult but the fact that they are all true beginners helps us work up a plan. 

The Lorio's teaching gazebo & Our tropical teaching paradise

The high school classes were the hardest to figure out.  In Nicaragua, high school is split into levels (like grades in the US).  Kids attend high school for five years, levels 7-11.  Our original plan was to have a class for Levels 7-8-9 and another class for 10-11.  True of kids of these ages all over the world, there is a huge difference in maturity and ability, so we thought separating them would be the best way to handle this gap.  What became apparent immediately was that the older group thought themselves to be too cool for school - no one showed up.  So we changed up the schedule, giving the lower level high schoolers more class time, which they really want.  I've said before how much the people want to learn.  A perfect example of this are these teenagers.  Class is scheduled to end at 7 PM but if we wrap up a little early, they won't leave!  They want to fill the time with… something, anything.  Me, looking at watch - 6:53 PM:  "Okay, we're done.  See you tomorrow!"  Students:  "Nooooooo!"

With our intermediate students, we hold two classes during the week and then a special conversation class on Friday nights.  The Tuesday/Thursday classes are more grammar and vocabulary oriented while the Friday gathering is for using the language.  Dubbed Toña Talk™, after the national beer, these sessions are more conversation based.  We provide the topic and some related vocabulary (and the beer, of course), then just get them talking.  Our very first Toña  Talk™ was 'Spies: Subterfuge and Secret Undercover Identities'.  Each of us developed a spy name and a complete back history.  It was a lot of fun and their creativity came to the surface, once they got going.  Heck, we had so much fun we even made up stuff about people who hadn't made it to class!  

Maybe that was the beer talking.  Meh.

Toña Talk™ - held on that porch right up yonder there