Hasta luego, Quetzaltenango!

Phew, just finished my Last Spanish Class, y estoy saturada con el subjunctivo presente!

I still have some Shopping to do for my classroom, its harder, but more interesting, to only buy things if I can think of how I´ll use them in a lesson. Have some idea about building of details vs having one large central problem-question, tone and mood, symbolism, metaphor. Also, rereading Zen and the Art of Motorcycles turned out to be useful in terms of thinking about quality.

Coming here, I thought that volunteering in the art classroom would be a transformational experience, but actually, it was just sort of lame. Nothing I saw could be used in an English class. My tejido lessons were interesting, in that they gave me uninterrupted time to think about Pirsigian Quality. But really, thats just another way of saying that weaving is BORING.

At the Fellowship for Teachers meeting I met a woman who was planning on buying backstrap looms for her 1st grade classroom so she could teach the kids how to weave. Having spent the time with the loom, I have to wonder how THATS going to go. A loom is basically a collection of sticks and some rope. Furthermore, setting up the loom in preparation for weaving is incredibly painsaking. Well, I´m sure I´m not the only one whose fellowship time did not go exactly as planned.

Tomorrow I leave for Lago de Atitlan, and a week from tomorrow I leave for NY. I think Im ready to go. Being in another country, even under easy circumstances like these, gets a little tiring after a while.

I´m dreaming in Spanish every night, and fantasizing about salad during the day.

Esta dificil a dar ayuda acqui en guatemela...

In which, after a serious conversation with herself, Maestra Pan Comido decided that she needed to confront her fears of a. the children and b. the art teacher.

Taking a deep breath, I approached the art teacher, and asked, con mi español cortesia, if I might observe his class. He smilingly agreed.

Pan Comido! I even used the conditional tense correctly, and all was well with the world.

Maestra Pan Comido returned to class at the appointed time, only to learn from Ismael, the art teacher, that no KIDS showed up.

Goddamn kids.

Off to sign up for a backstrap loom weaving class, because I am going to spend some time thinking about art and crafts in this country IF IT FUCKING KILLS ME.

Oy! de guatemala!!!

So, things are never exactly as one expects them to be, and so it is for Maestra Pan Comido.

Travel to guatemala and volunteer in an art classroom, pan comido! Meet cool and friendly companeros, pan comido!

Well, maybe not so much.

Spent a week traveling around a bit with friend, checking out guatemalan crafts and thinking about how one could use a painting to teach tone and mood. Pan comido, verdad! Analyze a Mayan Calendar for symbolic value, pan comido! Use a huipile from Cantel to teach motif, pan comido! Bought some books on bringing art into the content area classroom, but OF COURSE did not bring them with me to Guatemala.

Put myself in a class full of SEVEN YEAR OLDS and expect to be able to speak with them and understand their rapid-fire spanish.. Here, el pan comido comes to a screeching halt.

I cannot understand kid spanish. I can, however, make a puppet out of a sock, a plastic bottle, tissue paper and felt. This is cooler than it sounds. My puppet has one eye, a green mouth, a skully, and made the kids glance at me suspiciously. Well, except for that thuggish eight year old with a three-eyed puppet. He and I bonded over our mutual weirdness. This project does not seem like it will translate well into a class of twenty-year old juvenile delinquents.

So, rapid change of plans. Am going to OBSERVE the art teacher--assuming he lets me. In the meantime, am planning a class using these puppets to teach the kids words for color, emotion, and action.

Also, am going to take a class on weaving with a backstrap loom, which appears to be simulataneously cool and boring. Sort of like yoga, I guess. I bought a half-finished weaving, on its loom. Totally cool thing to use in the classroom, if I can just think of HOW.

mis adventuras en guatemala empeza en lunes

Just finished my third year of teaching in NYC, and for the third time, I will spend July abroad.

On Monday, I leave for Guatemala, courtesy of Fund for Teachers. (Thanks, FFT!) I'll be traveling with a friend for a week, and then spending three weeks studying Spanish, volunteer art-teaching (why no, I'm not an art teacher), and kicking it in Quetzeltenango. Oh, and shopping. My grant requires that I do ALOT of shopping. And blog. It requires that I blog.

So, hi! My name is Frances, and this is my blog!

I teach in Queens, at a small, loopy high school. There are many complainy teacher blogs, and this is not going to be one of them. This is the blog where I write about traveling in Guatemala, teaching art, learning Spanish, and shopping. If I zip-line or climb a volcano, I'll let you know.

This is also where, if I am so moved, I consider how my time in Guatemala impacts my teaching in Queens.