A 'Day in the life'...

Having been back at school for a couple of weeks now, I feel like I have settled back in the way of life here in Candelaria and am back in the mindset of an English teacher again. I say that, however I still have a long way to go before I feel even close to having things under some degree of control in the classroom, and I’m not even sure whether that day will ever arrive! Despite this, I am going to try my best to describe a somewhat normal day-in-the-life as one of the English volunteers at the primary school in Candelaria...

Our alarms start to screech at around 7am, however we are usually woken up by our younger host brother's alarm at 5:30am which he infuriatingly lets ring out, waking up the whole household in the process.Mornings have never been my favourite time of day however waking up to Dania’s legendary cooking skills makes them bearable; sometimes we are greeted with a typical Honduran breakfast of beans, cuajada (which is like milk curd and is DELICIOUS- 'que ricooo' as Gene would say), avocado or plantain and of course a tortilla or two. Sometimes we are surprised with pancakes which makes Samuelito scream with delight. Our breakfast is either accompanied by Don Timo’s coffee - Abuelo has a coffee farm and not to be biased or anything, but it is most definitely the best coffee around - or atole, a warm cornmeal drink flavoured with vanilla and cinamon and is to die for.

After a quick shower we pack our bags with anything we will need for the day; children's books, coloured paper, broken pencils, smashed crayons, a seemingly endless supply of stickers which is almost never enough, lunch plates, my speaker and more. Then we usually try and fail to get Samuel ready in time to go to Kinder, which more often than not means leaving him behind with Lety and Dania as we have to be at Kinder, ready to teach, for 8am, which really isn’t asking a lot as Kinder is quite literally a 60 second walk up the road from the house.

Last year I had the Kinder class of 4-5 year olds which meant I had Samuel in my class. I adore my tiny host brother however, as you can imagine, teaching him is a different thing altogether, and he knows it: he loves to see how far he can push me with his cheeky ‘the English teacher is my host sister so I don’t have to listen to her’ mentality. This year we decided to stick with our class from before Christmas so I am taking my Kinder class into Prep - the grade above Kinder but still not quite primary school - and I am so excited as although my class is a handful and much bigger than last year, they are such a good age to teach, and by teach, I mean mainly play games and mess around. I had so many things I wanted to do with them this year but after realising that they were still getting to grips with Spanish, let alone ready to learn English, I have resorted to playing endless games of Simon Says and pass the ball as we count to 10 and to be honest, I love it just as much as they do. As I walk into the classroom, Profe Luce rings the bell and the little minions come racing in, some of them being the angels they are and placing their bags on their chairs while the others run around screeching in excitement and can barely contain themselves. Gotta love their enthusiasm.

Then, we all sit down in a circle at the beginning and usually start by saying ‘hello’ a hundred times and then spend ages singing the numbers song which they can't seem to get enough of. Coming back from summer holidays I really didn’t expect them to have remembered anything from before Christmas, however I was pleasantly surprised when Samuel came running into my bedroom the day after I arrived home to show me how well he could recite the numbers 1 to 10 in the tune of the English song we had been learning. His classmates were no different and it made me so happy to see the songs paying off. At 8:30am, it's time to say goodbye to the little ones, and after extracting myself from their tiny arms wrapped around my legs, hugging me goodbye, we head off down the hill to the primary school.

Our morning walk takes us back down the street past Victor’s ferriterias, the high school which is situated next to our house, and then down the hill towards the road bridge. We then take the road down to the river and cross the footbridge before entering the school gates. The primary school starts just before 8am so by the time we have had our Kinder session and arrive, the kids are just finishing their first lesson. At this point, Izzy and I quickly unlock the English classroom, scan our agendas for what we have each planned for the day before the bell rings and we wish each other luck, heading off in opposite directions. Every day is different so it's hard to sum up a normal day at the school as there really is no such thing. One day I can spend most of my first grade class trying to stop the boys from attacking each other with the wooden ruler, and the next they are all angels hanging onto every word I say. It really is a case of the luck of the draw, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Some of our first graders - a tiny but feisty bunch :))

Right, I usually start with my first grade class which belongs to Profe Doris. I know you are not meant to have favourites, but this is a fantastic group of kids and Profe Doris is equally as wonderful. She tends to stay in the classroom while I teach, and sometimes I can spot her in the corner of my eye following along, learning alongside her students which makes me smile. Yet, this class doesn't go without its challenges. This class probably has the largest range of abilities compared to my other grades and I think this is down to the fact that it has such a high proportion of autistic children or kids with learning difficulties. Recently a young boy joined my class, and although he is almost twice the age and size of the rest of the kids, he severely struggles to write his own name. It's heartbreaking because he is so eager to learn and is one of the happiest boys in the class, however I know that due to Honduras’ lack of support for those with learning difficulties, he is going to struggle for the rest of his time in education, which will sadly most likely not be for much longer. So, for the time being, I am making sure that he enjoys his time learning English with his friends, and as along as he is having a good time, I’m happy. Another thing about my first graders which I haven't encountered with my other grades is their extreme eagerness to pass me the wooden ruler when someone is misbehaving. As soon as one child steps a foot wrong, another runs up to me with the ruler, expectantly waiting to watch me punish their friend. The first time this happened I was quite taken aback and didn’t know how to react; I was faced with a class of 30 6-7 year olds staring at me, anxiously waiting for me to smack their fellow classmate who had been running around the classroom moments before. I quickly made it clear that while that may be a method of punishment that some teachers use, it will never be one of mine. I want my classroom to be a safe environment where my students can have fun and feel free to express themselves without fear of corporal punishment. Before coming to Honduras I knew that this method of punishment was still a practised in Central and Latin America - as it is in many parts of the world - but knowing that it was still used within the school grounds was shocking to me. However, there is nothing I can do or say to express my disapproval as it is ingrained in the history of not just the village but the Honduran culture, and I am in no position to come here and outrightly question their traditions.

Anthony wrestling Cesar for marbles, my first graders' new obsession :'))

I categorise the topics I teach my students into 1-3 grade and 4-6 grade as I find that with English, they are all coming at it from a similar level of ability so it makes sense to teach the same things to my 6 year olds as to my 9 year olds. This shortcut also eases up my workload which is always a plus. With the younger grades I tend to use a lot of songs and dances when introducing them to new vocab, and I have quickly learnt that repetition truly is KEY. The sounds of the English language and movement of the mouth required to pronounce them is so different to that of Spanish that it takes the kids a while to get to grips with new words; they are having to make sounds that their mouth isn’t used to making and therefore they don’t have the muscle memory for it. An example of this is the word ‘with’, which they turn into ‘gwit’ as they physically can’t make their mouth form the right shapes in order to say the word correctly. However, they are a determined bunch and don't stop until they get it, which often means that we will spend the whole hour playing Simon Says, repeating different body parts for example, until they feel satisfied.

(Below shows my attempt to lead my first graders in a semi-orderly fashion to the hall where we nearly always end up playing duck duck goose...)

Recreo (breaktime) comes after my first and second lessons which is a welcome break because although I love teaching, the kids can be exhausting as their energy levels are just through the roof, and it's not even midday yet. As soon as the bell sounds for Recreo, the children go mental however they’ve slowly realised that they can’t leave the classroom unless they have finished the work or they tell me one English word they have learnt during the lesson. Well, that's what's meant to happen but I tend to let them go a little early so they can get to the front of the snack queue. I do make an effort to keep behind the ones who have struggled during the lesson which sounds a little harsh but it gives me a chance to spend some one-on-one time with them without peer pressure and the subsequent need to ‘act tough’ in front of their friends. One of my favourite things is watching the little ones act out the actions I have taught them to associate with new words, and going through the routines we create for new phrases and questions to help them remember vocabulary makes me so happy. Especially with my younger kids, I’ve realised that they pick up vocabulary so much faster when they have an action they can put to it. Ugh, my first and second graders' little dances when asking each other ‘what do you like to eat?’ just melt my heart.

Anyway, back to break time. Despite the abundance of fruit and vegetables which are grown on local farms, the only break time snacks on offer are hard-boiled sweets and crisps and now the new addition of ice cream which is delivered by the ice cream man selling cones by the school gate.

I’ll be honest, sometimes I cave and have the odd ice cream or topoyillo (frozen juice or coconut pouches which are incredible - I can’t get enough of them) and as they are so cheap, only about 5 Lempiras (so about 16 pence), it would be stupid to pass them up, right?? The reason why fruit isn’t more readily available for the children is because the families who grow it heavily rely on it as their income and are dependent on being able to sell it at the local markets. As a result, they can’t afford to simply donate their produce to the school unless they have a surplus and only then will I see a bunch of bananas in the corner of the classroom or am gifted an orange or guava by one of the teachers which never fails to make my day. This has made me realise how agriculture truly is the foundation of the Candelarian economy, and that of many rural Honduran villages, which means that when the rains are late or if the climate is too hot and dry - as it has been recently - the crops don’t do as well and the knock-on effect of a smaller crop output is unimaginable; everyone in the community is affected.

Wow I am bad at going off on tangents - back to Recreo yet again! During the 15 minute long break, I usually spend my time chilling at the Merienda tables in the shade of their tin roofs, swarmed with students who love to rummage through my bag, the girls in search of stickers while the boys desperately look for one of my squishy mini rugby balls. I love these breaks as it gives me a chance to chat to my kids from all my grades at once, and it's a beautiful thing to see my sixth graders chatting to or playing football with a first grader just as they would a classmate.

As well as this, it's a time where I get to find out who are siblings or cousins or neighbours, and the interconnectedness within the school is crazy, and it is so lovely to watch my older students walk out of the gates hand in hand with a younger sibling at the end of the day.

Once Profe Aminta rings the huge bell which hangs outside her door, everyone rushes off to line up outside their classrooms and I head over to my next lesson. My third grade class is probably my most hectic class. They are very lively, very loud and very loveable. Their seemingly incessant screaming and shouting meant that when I first met them they were a little overwhelming, but now I know it's just that they just have huge amounts of energy so most of our lessons revolve around playing games and running around in attempt to burn some of it off and tire them out; half the time we end up in the hall playing vocab games, their favourite being one where we stick English words up around the room and once I shout the word in Spanish, they need to translate it and then run to the correct word, wherever it may be.

It gets a bit rowdy, not gonna lie, but they love it and by the end, they’re panting and exhausted and if I’m having a lucky day, they have mellowed out and are ready for a bit of quiet reading or a crossword, a.k.a success.

As there is only one class for grade 3 and one class for grade 4, Izzy and I decided that I would take third and she would take fourth. This means that while she is teaching her fourth graders, I get a free lesson where I take a breather in the sunshine at one of the Merienda tables, lesson planning and usually surrounded by my first graders who have come out to the tables to read. As mentioned a bit earlier, my first grade class has such a wide variety of abilities, and this doesn’t just apply to when they are learning English but also to the rest of their subjects. During one of my free sessions, I noticed that the kids come out to the tables, in partners based off their ability, and my more able students help out their friends who struggle by going over phonetics and reading short stories together to practice their pronunciation. This makes me so happy as sometimes I find myself questioning the Honduran education system because so much of it is made up of wrote learning and copying down what their teacher writes on the board or from a textbook, word for word. However, this system of peer learning demonstrated by my first graders is so much more effective and enjoyable for them and I have been quite surprised by how the school has started to implement more progressive means of learning.

After my free it's Merienda time! This break is meant to be about half an hour long but it usually overruns and tends to come to an end only when the teachers have finished their food, so really the length of the break depends on however long they want it to be. So very Honduran. Each class eats something different as the food is provided by a different mother of one of the kids in that class every week. This midday snack varies from baleadas to spaghetti to enchiladas to pupusas to rice and beans and more and I love it allllll. However, one thing I’ve had to get used to is eating anything and everything with my hands and I’ve gotta say, I’ve got a long way to go before I master eating rice and beans without dropping it all over the place, and as a result receiving a disapproving look from my six year old students who have it down. By this time, the sun is right above our heads and it can get so unbelievably hot that the boys in my older classes more often than not end up soaked from water-fights in the bathrooms in attempt to cool down. After washing our plates at the pila (concrete wash basin) in the bathrooms, it's time for the next lesson which is fifth grade, another fantastic class. This year, as there is only one fifth grade class, Izzy and I teach it together. Their teacher Profe Aminta is the sweetest woman you will ever meet and possibly also the most eager teacher to learn English along with her class; she even has a notebook dedicated to English which is amazing. This is also the class with our host sister Genesis which is great fun - she and her friends are very fast learners so we are able to do a lot with this class, although there are still the odd ones who struggle a bit more so I tend to spend more time helping them out as Izzy explains the activities for the day. It's a weird feeling teaching together as we both have such different teaching styles and it's a matter of give and take, but we’ve found our groove and it's nice to have someone else to help - another pair of eyes and hands is more helpful than you know.

I round up the day with my sixth grade class which is such a different experience compared to that of last year’s group. My new sixth grade teacher Profe Dixie has really helped in making this difference by redecorating and brightening up her classroom. As well as this, by only having 20 students in this class, I have been able to get to know them so quickly and suss what they do and don’t know individually, and they are just a very special group of kids, I can't fault them. Working with older students is so different to teaching my younger ones because we can get into the nitty gritty of verbs and sentence structure and they can see and feel themselves progressing which is a wonderful thing. However, it is still difficult as there is so much that you don’t think about as a native English speaker, therefore trying to break it down for someone who has almost no knowledge of the language has been a big challenge. Yet, they are patient with me and as I help them with their English, they do the same for me and my Spanish which I am beyond grateful for.

By the end of the day the kids are getting tired and start to lose focus so we either finish up with some games outside or I let them take over my speaker and have free reign over the music we play while messing about and tidying up for the last little bit of the school day. I hug them goodbye and once I find Izzy, we get ready to walk home. Sometimes we stay behind for a while and work at the Merienda tables, chatting to the kids who wait for parents to pick them up. So many of our kids live outside Candelaria and have to walk for up to 2 hours to get home; I will never get used to the sight of some of my 6 year olds waving goodbye as they set off on their trek home on their own. Despite being reassured that they are safe and are always fine, the thought of that tiny child walking home in the dark at such a young age just doesn’t sit well with me, but there is nothing I can do apart from be there ready with a big hug in the morning.

Although we may have left the school gates, our walk home is almost always accompanied by what feels like the whole school grabbing our arms and shirts, insisting on holding our hands as we trudge up the road. It's one of my favourite times of day, being surrounded by our kids who seem to have revived after almost falling asleep at the end of the school day and are now bounding up the street, singing songs and showing off the English they learnt that day. Recently we have been teaching them about the weather, and listening to my fifth graders tell me how ‘it is sunny’ and so ‘it is not rainy’ makes me so proud. When we finally reach our front gate, we say our goodbyes - meaning it this time - waving as our boys waltz up the street yelling ‘goodbyeee mees loiiiis y mees eesabelllll’ and the odd English word that has suddenly sprung to mind making me laugh.

The school day ends at 1pm as it's the heat of the day which is just too much to bear, and so every day at that time it's as though the village shuts down for an hour or so and everyone returns home to escape the heat and have lunch with their families. Although we have a decently sized meal for Merienda at midday, we have a 'proper lunch' at home at around 1:30pm; Dania always has something amazing prepared and ready for us when we arrive. The afternoon siesta is something I have become very accustomed to and can really see myself taking back to England - I mean, who doesn't love a midday feast followed by a lengthy afternoon nap?? Victor and Lety often stay in the shops and we take lunch down to them if they are too busy to come home, and after eating, the boys head off to college at around 2pm for their second half of the school day. Unlike the primary school which runs from 8am-1pm, the high school has one section in the morning from about 7am-11am and then another from 2pm-4/5pm. If they don’t have afternoon lessons, my host brothers head out on their motorbikes to work on the schools finca (farm); they head out the door in their blue long sleeved shirt and cap, ready to spend the following few hours in the baking sun working the school’s fields, turning the soil and using machetes to cut crops.

It seems like back breaking work and by the time they get home they are usually exhausted and I spend time relaxing with them as they play video games or nap. While they are out, Izzy and I make the most of the peace and quiet to either nap or lesson plan, but usually end up grabbing some snacks from the mini-super or ice cream from the ferriteria and settle down to watch a movie with Genesis if she has finished her homework. I love spending time helping her with her school work, but as she is such a clever girl, she never needs much help and so humours me by allowing me to colour in maps or quiz her as exam prep. Other afternoon activities include gossiping with Dania as we help prepare dinner, and then when the sun starts to set and the air has cooled, we head out for an early evening walk up to the mirador, the viewpoint up on the hill from where you can look down over the whole of Candelaria. Along the way we nip in to say hello to Lety and help organise her new stock, and when we have Samuel with us, we make sure to pass Hotel Candelaria so he can say hello to the talking macaw who lives in the tree out front.

These walks have become so special to me. We always pass people we know and have students running up to give us a hug, and when we walk by we can’t help but pop into Profe Aminta’s house to say hello. Everyone in our little community has been so welcoming and their doors are quite literally always open, encouraging us to drop in whenever we are passing by.

When evening arrives, the family starts to trickle in the front door one by one. If it's a Friday, we’ve started having movie nights where we set up the sofas, sometimes quickly stepping out to buy a late night licuado, before settling down. It's moments like these when I have Josue’s head in my lap and Genesis snuggled up by my side when I truly appreciate how lucky I am to have been placed with this family; I love them, and my little life in Candelaria, much more than I ever imagined possible x