la mitad
(the middle)
1.5.2018: El principio de la mitad (The beginning of the middle)
It's another year and I almost wrote the date above in the past. I wonder what I was doing, this time last year, 1.5.2017.
Regardless, I know where I am now. I know that my second cycle teaching in Quito will begin on January 16. I also know that I'm going to make changes to my methodology -- like adding more group work, more rote practice, more variety.
I included these elements in my first cycle teaching, but not nearly enough. I think I overestimated the English proficiency of my students and just spent too much time talking, lecturing. Even though I am teaching a college course, and at a relatively high level -- "Superior Writing" -- this time, I am not going to let that seemingly hegemonic title stifle my student's progress. Even maestros benefit from going back to the basics. Even virtuosos need to practice.
And on top of that, even teachers need to be taught. Below, find a recent WhatsApp message from one of my former students.
1.18.18: Out of the office
This appeared on the copier/printer at work today. Not sure if it's saying to not use the thing for 2 hours (but how will I know when the 2 hours ends, because I don't know when you put it on, man? The time specified is relative, dude. All time is relative. Just ask Alb.), or if it's a snide quip at people who are sometimes copying things for what seems to be two hours.
Also, how did you post this PRINTED note on an apparently off-limits printer? So many questions.
1.23.18: The things you find while planning classes
found here.
1.25.18: Punctuation is more than rules
In my first cycle teaching English to native Spanish-speakers, I found punctuation to be one of the hardest topics to convey. The rules differ between the two languages, and hey, let's face it -- punctuation doesn't seem like the most exciting thing, at least at first.
But in my mind, punctuation is to writing what sarcasm is to speech. The words can be whatever -- what's essential to the meaning is how you space them, where you place them, when you write them.
In this way, punctuation is the physical experience of writing -- it lets your brain know when to breathe, when to STOP, when to raise that inner-reader's voice to that end-of-a-question lilt. While words may tell it what to think about, punctuation tells your brain how to think about it.
I wanted to communicate the physicality of punctuation to my students, so I decided to turn writing class into art class. My students' task was to pick their "favorite" punctuation mark ("favorite" for whatever reason -- for example, I love semicolons because I think they add a mysterious, almost romantic element to writing. Semicolons almost say stop, but then recede, and let you know that the first independent clause is important to the second, even though they are separate. I also prefer the oxford comma.)
After they chose a "favorite," my students were to draw and decorate the punctuation mark on a sheet of paper. Above, you'll find one of my favorite drawings -- the comma, the referee: connecting complimentary with principal ideas.
And whoever depicted the semicolon in their mind in this way -- you and I are totally vibin'.
Click here for a cute video.
2.2.18: The things you pick up
When traveling to and living in a new place, bring a portable skills with you.
2.3.18: Beat it
A few days ago, I was robbed at knifepoint while walking to work. It was around 6:15 a.m., and I was watching the moon – unusually large and bright that morning, maybe due to that "Blue Blood Moon" thing I was hearing about – over the mountains.
This walk, to me, has always been peaceful; it may be early and you may be exhausted, but you feel like the first one in the world. With its briskness, the sierra air quietly urges you to awakeness; its frío is not too cold, just enough. You lower down the hill while exulting in the mountains.
But this time, I decided to make my walk a little less tranquil, and the world followed.
Thinking that I should speed up to catch the bus, I started running. Now, I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't run – would I have seen my thieves earlier? Would I have gotten that gut feeling sooner, and decided to avoid them by dipping into that one tiendita open that early in the morning? Would I have avoided the trauma entirely?
It feels melodramatic to call it a trauma, but hey, I couldn't sleep that night. I have and will have trouble walking home for a long time. It happened on my street.
There were two men and the one with the knife approached me directly, hand held high, next to his head, with his elbow bent into an acute angle, ready to throw it into that 180-degree line.
I was lucky; my body's first reaction was to just fall down out of fear. I didn't scream, call for help – that could have turned a loss of $20 worth of items into a stab wound, or worse. All that came out of my mouth were the words, "I'm sorry."
Now, petty theft is pretty common in Quito. I'm from New York City, so I'm trained in street smarts and pavement pensamientos – but NYC, especially Manhattan, is generally much safer than Quito. I've never had to worry about walking around that great Big Apple at midnight, even with headphones on – much less at 6:15 in the morning, while walking to work at dawn.
But I probably look just like a tourist to most people, and this makes me a target. My thieves (I call them "mine," because it helps me feel more in control over the story) were probably hoping for a laptop or iPad in the backpack they ripped from my shoulders. Well, joke's on them.
If I've learned anything in Quito, it's the phrase ponte pilas and all that it can mean. Literally, "put on your batteries," ponte pilas urges you to be alert, to protect yourself, to be responsible. I never walk around with anything conspicuously valuable, except my life. So thieves, keep coming and thinking you've hit the jackpot with a 6-foot-tall white woman. I'm too pilas for you, and unfortunately this whole misunderstanding is a product of world history, of colonization, of neoliberalism, of poverty, of racism, of corruption. I'm sorry you saw me as the symbol my body can represent.
This morning, when hanging my sheets underneath the sun, I started hitting them. This spontaneous act of sábana violence gave my host mom, Aida, a great idea.
Tome este palo, take this broomstick, y gólpeela! Hit your clothes, hit it, beat it. Qúitele de todo los ladrones le hicieron, rid yourself of all those thieves did to you.
She took the pictures. ^^
2.7.2018: A tasteful video for introducing journalism
*Note for TEFL teachers: Play it in slow motion; it movies quickly.
2.18.18: Reading poetry when you are on another continent from a lost love
Let's get more personal today.
I had a huge break-up before I came to teach English here in Quito.
Supposedly, he broke up with me because I was coming here.
It would have been to loooooooooong-
distance. Too long of a time.
Uh-huh. I thought differently.
But in my free time here, I get to writing poetry.
Many of my poems help me process him, and I laugh at the fact that I'm better able to do it when I'm on the other side of the world,
of the word.
It's pretty poetic, like that – being on the other side of the world helps me use my words to cross over from him.
Por cierto (Anyway).
I was reading some Rupi Kaur
a book of hers that my mom had brought me when she visited:
I wasn't sure if I really dug it in the beginning.
But as I get deeper, I find more gold.
Por cierto.
Here's a poem that Kaur's work got me to writing. I am still working on it, and the italics denote Kaur's words. Mine follow the triangles:
response to rupi kaur
yesterday
the rain tried to imitate my hands
by running down your body
i ripped the sky apart for allowing it
- jealousy
∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆
it’s funny to joke about poetry like it’s
the daisy growing out of a skull
quips at the whole claim of being “experimental”
overly sweetly sentimental
but when you leave a page to breathe
partly blank
there is a hole opening up for you to
fill with your own dirt
daisy
maybe. yes
i am the con-
text that he nixed and
he, to me, the blank space
he will never open the book while i stare into it into
him into it
i run my fingers over the page and wait for them to itch
so i can get to writing this
at least they are now squeezing his sternum
extracting his memory
pinching the peripheries
by their own volition
2.22.18: Mid-Cycle Evaluations
As a teacher of teenagers and/or adults, you should always make time to ask your students how you're doing -- what they like about the class, what they would change.
It may be harder to get constructive responses from younger students, but who knows -- kids know more than we think, or are just aware of different things. So, let me revise that; you should always make time to ask for advice and impressions, no matter who you're teaching.
Below, see a few anonymous notes from my students. The two questions I asked them to respond to were:
- 1.) What should Teacher Sarita keep doing?
- 2.) What should we change?
Regarding the second question, I'm planning on heeding my students' advice and incorporating a few lessons on verb tenses. I'm also planning on using new techniques to motivate students to participate in class.
When students write, "we shouldn't change anything/you're perfect/I love you/blahblah insert nicities here," I feel flattered, while still aware that there is always room for improvement. You feel it every day as a teacher -- the need to do the best you can, and then better.
2.27.18: This is just fantastic
Beware: You are about to watch a video that this teacher is currently geeking out about.
2.28.18: In a position such as this
It's such a privilege
to be able to teach poetry.
Today, I played Robin Williams
in Dead Poets Society.
Their homework tonight
is to read a selection of poems
and respond to at least one
with a simile or
metaphor.
Below, you will find two of the poems.
Please read at least one.
“The New School” by Lara Bozabalian (found on Rattle)
Lara Bozabalian
THE NEW SCHOOL
Do you remember, Nancy,
when we sat in the Creole restaurant
and glanced up at the television to see students running
with their hands in the air and photographs
of two young men?
Their angular faces. Trench coats.
We didn’t understand what was happening,
our brains felt like mush, it wasn’t the wine,
it was like being in a foreign country,
on the street corner, at a hospital,
struggling to understand or be heard.
This morning, on the way to work,
the radio announced another shooting.
The commentator said it was the 8th this year,
and I stretched back to that dinner we shared,
huddled in our booth, mouthing gumbo
and blackened alligator, feeling safely exotic,
friends at the end of a university adventure,
so much left before us,
even the tragedies we didn’t know about
—fractured hearts, burials—
were still adventures to be experienced.
But never this,
we never ran from classrooms
with our hands in the air, shoulder to shoulder,
screaming or crying and trying not to slip in the blood.
We never had pop pop pop trigger-stitched into dreams,
saw how buildings could be transformed into cages,
that we then had to walk through for years,
pretend that algebra mattered in,
obey in, eat in, drive by, graduate from.
Annamaria didn’t even pause when she heard the news.
I have done that, surely, Nancy, through some of the last 25.
Because the number snuck up on me,
like a birthday you gazed at from the kids table (so many candles),
and couldn’t, even in your wildest dreams,
imagine reaching.
—from Poets Respond
February 20, 2018
Note from Lara Bozabalian: “This poem was written on the morning after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, dictated into my phone as I sat in my car outside the high school I teach in. It had occurred to me that, since the first fateful and incomprehensible Columbine shooting, we, the public, had actually learned to digest these events as news. It struck me as a tragic metaphor for schooling.”
3.1.18: My favorite creative writing prompt
CW Prompt: Write a diamante poem.
A diamante poem is made up of 7 lines using a set structure:
Line 1: Beginning subject
Line 2: Two adjectives describing line 1
Line 3: Three progressive verbs describing line 1
Line 4: A short phrase about line 1, a short phrase about line 7
Line 5: Three progressive verbs describing line 7
Line 6: Two adjectives describing line 7
Line 7: End subject (a perceived opposite of the first subject)
love
warm, tender
bubbling, cuddling, laughing
the heart of things, the emptiness of heart
graying, sighing, sauntering
mediocre, nonchalant
indifference
3.5.18: "I Will Never Forget Your Tears"
For their creative writing assignment, a few students decided to turn in a collection of poetry. Strikingly, many of those who did accompanied their poems with images; some appear as if they're hand-drawn, and others totally computer-generated.
Some of the photos are mawkish, especially the one below -- and I love it nevertheless.
Those tears of pain,
that you spilled that night ...
Those, your tears of bitterness,
that rolled on your cheeks,
and on earth, roses formed.
I have not been able to forget them.
Because they were like two thorns,
that stuck in the bottom of my heart.
I wanted to talk ... I wanted to talk...
And I could not!
I wanted to tell you that I love you,
more not find the words.
I can only do it with my handkerchief,
dry my wounds,
and with a kiss heal them.
I hold it tight against his chest,
and I went to sleep.
3.13.18: My new favorite meme
Caveat: Except under special circumstances, like when you want to affect the speed at which the reader reads, or you're writing stream of consciousness or something --
3.29.18: Fanesca and La mujer como yema
La Pascua, Easter, is just around the corner. I wish you a happy holiday, chocolate eggs – whatever suits your fancy. But in Ecuador, we traditionally eat something called Fanesca. Read more about it here.
On another note, I'm humbled to announce that one of my poems, in both Spanish and English, has been published in the Journal of Latina Critical Feminism.
Echa un vistazo aquí. Hint: Go to pages 8-9 ;)
3.31.18: On La Sarita Approaching A Fanesca
Photo and recipe thanks to Laylita
4.3.18: Very proud of this PowerPoint
4.5.18: The third trimester (not talking about pregnancy)/Phrasal verbs
So, I was looking at my blog today, as well as thinking about time. I realized I should probably create a "third trimester" section, because I only have about four months left here (for now, at least). So, after this post, I'll get right on it.
First, I wanted to share the fruits of the previous post. Look up. See that "Click here" thing? Ok. Click it, and then come back.
You're back, good. Now, here were my students' guesses; they had me laughing all the way home:
Try to use "He dropped me off" in a sentence with the above meaning.
Or "Fill me in!"
No chance for "Grow apart." Seriously -- they had no idea.
In all seriousness, the students weren't too far off in many cases -- but usually it's the small misunderstandings that bother and linger.
Phrasal verbs -- there's a natural ability to them that I never appreciated until I started teaching English.