Community English Classes

Hi There, Neighbor. Want to Learn Some English?

Like the other Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) in my group, my primary project is working with Colombian teachers of English to strengthen the English program in my local high school; this means I spend a good chunk of my time at school with my counterpart teachers co-planning and co-teaching classes and planning the occasional school event. Outside of this, PCVs are expected to have secondary projects that support the communities we live and work in. A natural outgrowth of our primary projects is to have community English classes as a secondary project. The tourist-heavy cities of Cartagena and Santa Marta and the industrial base of Barranquilla require skilled workers that can navigate English in their interactions with foreigners. Community English classes can help support the development of neighborhoods and individuals that may not otherwise have the financial means – or an amenable schedule – that would lead to more formal English language classes.

Teaching some boat driver-specific vocabulary

That being said, I initially hesitated to lead English classes for my community. Focusing on English during most days of the week, I wasn’t too keen to spend my nights on the topic as well and was hoping to focus my spare energy on something related to small business development or youth development instead. However, once everyone in town discovered that there was a real, bonafide English-speaking gringo in town, it was difficult to turn down the opportunity to teach English to my new community and especially to the boat drivers who occasionally drive the occasional American or European tourist whose Spanish vocabulary doesn’t extend beyond “cerveza”. The projected eagerness to learn English directed toward me was surpassed only by my neighbors’ seemingly unquenchable thirst for Aguila beer on hot sunny days. I promptly gathered some community members, got my school principal to grant permission for me to use an empty classroom a few evenings each week, and started planning.

I thought I was decently prepared for this endeavor. I’d taught community English classes before. In college I helped with community English classes for Latino immigrants every now and then; while waiting to ship off for my Peace Corps service I assisted a social organization with teaching fundamental English to refugees from Bhutan. But stepping into an overflowing classroom of my new Afro-colombian neighbors and community members, I knew I was a bit over my head.

So Many Students!

My first community English class was packed. I had about 30 adults packed into the small classroom and a waiting list for those that couldn’t physically fit in the room. Nearly every day, and often several times each day, I would be approached by someone else trying to get into the class. “But I’m really interested!” they would plea; I would promise to put them on a list for the second class I would open during my second year of service. “How can I get my ten year old daughter in your class?” Sorry, I responded. This class is only for adults; I already work with the children and teenagers in my primary activity of co-teaching in the school during the day, drawing a line to neither negatively affect my primary project nor to show up to class one day to deal – for the second time of the day – with dozens of rambunctious teenagers who just want to flirt with each other or have me translate lyrics to the latest Chris Brown hit.

A semi-successful activity

Hey, Where’d Everyone Go?

As the weeks went by the number of students in my class plummeted. Thirty plus people dropped to twenty students, slumped to fifteen students before slowing to ten students and glumly settling around seven or eight students before another drop to four or five students depending on the day. My initial reaction was that of feeling like a failure, that my classes weren’t interesting or dynamic enough for the students. After having this happen twice during two years of community English classes – and seeing it happen to another community English class here in town organized by a local foundation – I no longer take this personally. My town refers to this as the “fever”. When a new activity starts in town, people come out of the woodwork to check it out and clamor for the opportunity to participate before quickly getting bored or settling back into their favorable activities of watching tv, going to church or drinking beer. Coupled with the local belief that people can learn a foreign language without actually exerting any effort by studying and doing homework, this can be quite frustrating for the local PCV who is trying to make a lasting impact in the community. “Last month I had thirty super excited students and now I only have five that come whenever they feel like it! What the heck!” After going through this a few times, my perspective now is that most of the initial students won’t stay with the class and the best approach is to teach to the remaining dedicated students, hoping that something I cover in a class helps them in the future.

A few remaining diligent students hard at work

Limited Resources

The classrooms where I work are bare, basic. Painted concrete walls. Dilapidated, stained whiteboards. Four bulbs in the ceiling with three constantly burned out, the one remaining bulb casting a soft shadow in the pale dusk light. One or two fans above our heads circulating the hot air and occasionally pulling in a cool breeze from the bay while whispering away the soft voices of the more timid students. My pedagogical method is that regrettable standard of standing in the front of the class writing on the whiteboard while describing prepositional verbs and conjugations and asking the students questions for them to respond to. I have no resources – no curriculum, no book, no cd, no technology – other than what I myself have developed or bring to the classroom. The idea of “Teaching with Limited Resources” is very true at my site. During the early days of my community classes I spent my free mornings and evenings developing a curriculum for the course and identifying activities that map to certain topics. I would spend hours preparing an activity that more often than not would incite mass confusion among the students, fail miserable, cost me my own money in materials, and require me to reteach a class. After having this happen multiple times, I decided it was best to just keep it simple – stick to the whiteboard and try to get the students to talk more in class.

 

An elementary classroom - the chairs are a little small for my adults class.

Doing It To Serve and Not For the Pesos

I started by charging the students $10.000 pesos (about US$5.00) for the entire year making my class, arguably the most inexpensive course with a native English speaker in the metropolitan area. (“I’m confused,” I was told on several occasions by locals. “Is that 10,000 pesos per class?” “No, for the entire year, the whole course” I responded. “Ummm, that’s like nothing. How is that possible?” they would ask. “Well, I’m a volunteer…” I would explain over and over.) A basic course with the local institute can run into several millions of pesos, way out of budget for almost everyone in my community. My class, on the other hand, was basically free. Serving as a Peace Corps volunteer, I receive no financial compensation for my effort in the class. The money would cover materials I bought for the class – whiteboard markers, photocopies, butcher paper and sharpies for classroom activities, etc. I have probably received about 10% of the money I have spent – out of my own pocket, from my own tight budget – on the class. The other English class in town – led by a Colombian and paid for by a local foundation funded by local factories to offset the contamination they emit into the bay (occasionally visible in oil sleeks in the water) – is free, as are most of the other activities in town. People are simply not used to paying for activities here in town (other than drinking at the local watering holes). Recognizing that some of my students don’t have set incomes, I even tried to do a little bartering to offset my expenses: “How about the next time you go fishing you bring me a couple little fish for dinner and we’ll call it even, okay?” “Sure,” the student would agree before going to go play soccer and conveniently ignore that class was to start in 30 minutes. Needless to say, I’m not holding my breath waiting for an overflowing wheelbarrow full of fish to miraculously appear one day at my front door as compensation.

Homework? What’s that?

My students don’t do homework. Being adults, some of them are quite busy. The most dedicated students I have are young mothers who squeeze a few hours out of their week to come to class when not busy cooking, cleaning, taking care of their children, going to the market in the city for their grocery shopping, doing laundry, attending church services, and myriad other duties. I can’t blame them for not having much time to study. I recognize their never-ending domestic obligations and really admire them for simply making the time to come to class and pay attention (and they’re actually the better students). Other students with more leisurely schedules just don’t study or do homework. I have tried to assign my students simple homework that would take 15 minutes or so to complete. The vast majority of the people in my community, however, have never had to do homework other than a handful of times and still graduated high school; they aren’t likely to start now, especially when the majority of the other students in the class aren’t likely to do the homework either. Education here is viewed as a classroom activity – if it doesn’t happen in the classroom, it simply doesn’t happen.

Is There Class Tonight? Yeah, about that…

Attendance in my community class is sporadic, at best. I used to have class on Monday nights but quickly realized the futility in that – Sundays being the local day for many adults to drink and party, Mondays are spent continuing the party or in a cloud of guayabo, the local word for a hangover. Other events – certain soccer teams having matches, church events, an ill child, rainfall, the power going out, feeling a bit tired – can mean students don’t come to class or that the class will be cancelled and moved to the following day. The idea of progressive classes that continuously build upon each other is a laudable educational form, but is difficult to implement with very sporadic attendance. Best to plan each class as an individual lesson from which something valuable can be learned – it’s hard to use a class to reinforce a previous lesson when only half the students attended the lesson.

 

The view of the rainy bay while waiting for students to come to class...

In Retrospect

With six months remaining in my service, I intend to continue my community class until I finish my service and teach my students some specific themes and phrases they want to learn. I feel a commitment to the few students who actually regularly attend my class and every now and then learn something new, although it can be completely frustrating to take the time out of my schedule for a two hour class when only one or two students bother to show up. If I were coming in as a new volunteer, I honestly don’t know if I would teach community English classes at my site. Sure, it looks great on paper and meets one of our local Peace Corps goals, but I already have English classes several mornings of the week with Primary school teachers and work with high school teachers most afternoons. Having more English classes at night is too much of the same thing and I also have another project (afro-colombian drumming and dancing with teenagers and kids) that is much more interesting and requires a lot of my time and energy. I think I would feel differently if I had a classroom full of eager students interested in speaking English and participating in dynamic activities to practice English, however “English Fever” came and quickly left.

If I were to do it again, I think I would do less of an actual English class and more of an “English Conversation Hour” like several other volunteers have organized in the city for people to meet up and engage in speaking English. With local English language ability significantly below that which my fellow PCVs encounter in the city, this would still involve plenty of teaching – explaining vocabulary and linguistic nuances in the moment – but would put the burden more on the students to attend and lead the classes and develop their speaking ability rather than simply showing up and expecting instant fluency via osmosis by being in the same classroom as a native English speaker.