Just About Springtime in Patagonia

A beautiful day in the rural sector of El Espolón.

I’ve been back from winter vacation for just over a month now, and weather is starting to get a lot more pleasant here in Futaleufú. Less rain, more sun. Less cold, more warmth. At the same time, my classes are getting more manageable as I become more skilled and confident in what I am doing. Don’t get me wrong, there are still new things to take on and new clubs and classes to frazzle me here and there, but at the same time I’m feeling a lot happier with my work.

A temporary waterfall from days of rain and melting snow, along the Malito River.

In the weekly adult English class we’ve been having a good turn out this semester. In an effort to give the class some needed structure and continuity, I developed a curriculum plan and provided this to all the students on the first day. We started with self introductions and greetings (this How are you intro presentation is part of the first class), then talking about ourselves and talking about our family. We’ll move to food, traveling, directions, making purchases and other topics while taking several classes during the semester to focus specifically on grammatical issues.  I also have been giving homework assignments and encouraging my students to use online resources such as duolingo.com to continue learning.

A bingo activity for talking about ourselves and asking questions about others.

We still have a good deal of turnover from week-to-week, meaning it’s never the same exact group of students attending two classes in a row, but a lot of students keep coming back even if they miss a class or two. I hope to really give them the resources to improve their English and encouragement to take their learning into their own hands. Everyone in the class is at a different level and has different priorities, so another thing I strive to do in the class is make it versatile enough to offer something each of those different learning levels and needs.

A pup from La Gringa’s litter this past fall, waking up from a group nap.

In other news, at the end of October we expect to have a second litter of puppies at the house, right around Halloween! I think we should sew and dress them up in little itty-bitty costumes for dogs. There may even be some full golden retrievers in the litter, as la Gringa (the mother) has reunited with an old golden retriever boyfriend of hers. I look forward to repeating the experience living with puppies. Having never lived with dogs before this year, I found the first time living with a litter of puppies last fall to be absolutely heartwarming.

The kindergarteners getting ready to do the fruit counting song.

As for other classes, they have been chugging along. For kindergarten and pre-kindergarten I have been relying heavily on the help of videos (now that I have finally gotten a cord allowing me to connect the school’s projectors to my mac – thank you so much Madeline!), of course with a lot of interactive elements and short activities before and after. I can’t say it’s a bad thing: the children engage with me and with the songs, they have a good time, and there are a lot of very good free videos on YouTube for young ESL learners. My favorites are on Dream English Kids and Super Simple Songs.

A clothing activity for the first graders, racing to put on the items.

I have started two new English clubs, one for younger kids (3rd-4th grade) and one for older kids (5th-8th). There’s a definite learning curve to leading this sort of activity, but most days go well, the kids have a lot of fun and they keep coming back. We are practicing for the English Olympics, a province-wide event that the foundation is planning for the end of September. Meanwhile, my first graders are learning about clothing and weather, and my second graders have just finished learning a ton of types of food.

Some 6th graders from the brigada working on our composter.

With the Brigada Ecológica, the special environmental class for the 5th and 6th grades, it’s just about time to get our seedlings planted into the ground in our greenhouse. We have tomato, lettuce, chard, carrots and cucumber ready to go. There’s also a scrumptious compost mix that the brigada has been cultivating, that will soon be ready to help the little plants grow up. (For full disclosure: some days it’s hard to get students animated about working on the compost due to the smell – we need to fix our green-to-brown ratio to address this issue.)

I’m happy to say that I’ve accomplished one of my major goals in coming to Patagonia to work in this position: figuring out whether this kind of teaching was for me or not. And what I’ve found is that I do like this work and I can be a good English language teacher. It’s a good feeling. And I’m going to remind myself of that feeling to focus my energies and stay confident in my work.