Going with the flow... the Chilean motto

I haven’t updated on my life in Chile recently. So, here goes…

Liceo ExperimentalNirvana- Smells like teen spirit, “Here we are now entertain us”… haha, it’s actually pretty relevant to my teaching experience so far

Alright, well my kids are pretty stuck in 80’s and 90’s music… and when I say pretty stuck I mean they are actually bogged down and gonna need one of those jacked up 4x4 trucks to get them out. Their musical interest is also reflected in their clothing, I’m talkin’ faded acid wash jeans, Nirvana-Guns-N-Roses-Metallica-Slip-Knot and any other scary/horror (as they call it) music from the Dawson Creek and 90210 days. Luckily for my students my fellow teachers and superintendents aren’t really into school either. Por le ejemplo (for example), last week school was cancelled Monday and Friday and this week ladies and gents school is cancelled Tues and Wed. When I arrived Monday morning I went to my classroom and began preparing for class… after about 20 min and I still had no students staring at me refusing to speak English I went in search of them. As I was walking down the hall to the sounds of music playing from cell phones, teenagers whispering sweet nothings into one anothers ears and “Hey, Miss Gringa” I realized that not only was class not in session but school was literally not in session. I knew exactly where to go, the teacher’s lounge…

Tangent: The teachers hide out in here throughout the day, usually it is the students that have to come find them/us after class was supposed to have started 5-10 minutes earlier. I don’t fight this anymore, it’s one of those things you just have to let happen.

Low and behold I find the teachers… all drinking coffee in the teachers’ lounge/hiding out from the rampant teens. I begin asking them what in the world is going on, even this much chaos is unusual for Liceo. They explain to me it is a continuation of Teachers Day/ el Dia del Profesores … because school was cancelled last Friday for the holiday, of course school cancellation is not enough, we also must celebrate.

Celebrate we did. We were all led into the gymnasium where for the next 3 hours the students preformed song (Te Vas, one of my current favorites), dance (bellydancing to be exact, I had to avert my eyes because it made ME uncomfortable), and theatrical skits (the 3rd graders reenacted a group of teacher discussing their classes). Of course, I had no idea what was going on the whole time … but at this point in the game you can longer ask questions without appearing like a dimwit because you haven’t learned ANY Spanish.

So, after the program finished school was dismissed.

Gosh, I love this place.