In my second-grade science class, the students are learning about animals. This week they were discussing the different classifications of animals (wild, farm and domestic/pet). So, as an activity, I made a worksheet with animal pictures and names at the bottom and blanks where they had to write the name of the different animals in each category. For example, under farm animals they had to write “cow,” “horse,” “pig,” etc. There was some confusion as to what qualified as a farm animal versus a pet. This is due to Priego’s rural setting. The edge of Priego is about six blocks from my apartment (really, you’re never far from the town line). When I walked to the cemetery the other day, I walked past a house with horses in the front yard. It’s easy to confuse farm animals for pets when people have horses practically in the city. To solve this conundrum, I told them to think of pets as animals their moms would allow inside the house.
Even so, one of the girls was convinced that giraffe and elephants were farm animals. I asked her if there were giraffe or elephant in the countryside around Priego (where almost all of the farm animals can be found). She looked me straight in the eye and told me, “yes” these animals live around Priego. She refused to believe me when I told her that they were wild animals.
Today in fifth grade we were talking about Thanksgiving. I gave the students a reading assignment for class time: journal entries written by people on the Mayflower. They were short, simple passages about the Pilgrims’ lives. One of the lines was about the Pilgrims arriving on Cape Cod. To explain Cape Cod I told them that it was a region in one of the states. I equated this to the Súbettica which is the mountainous region in southern of Córdoba (where Priego is situated). I asked the students about the Súbettica and one kid looked at me and told me that it was where Cabra (a neighboring city) is. David just looked at the kid and told him he was wrong and I was right.
I try to make the lessons make sense to the students, but they still refuse to think. It’s really frustrating. Today, two 5th grade girls got yelled at by the vice principal/resource director. One had asked David if she could go to the bathroom (he said yes) and the other walked out the door when he wasn’t looking. It’s really hard keeping track of the students when they all run around the classroom talking to each other and throwing things out. Anyway, girl two went and followed girl one to the bathroom, except they didn’t go to the bathroom on their floor. They went upstairs and stood outside the 6th grade classroom making faces. Well, the vp/resource director caught them and dragged them back to their classroom where he proceeded to ream them out for having left their floor. After he left, David yelled at girl two for leaving without having asked permission. He then announced that no one would be allowed to use the bathroom for the rest of the class. Kids are not disciplined here. The teachers focus on individual students rather than the entire class, so it is possible that one kid (out of only 15) slips out of the classroom. After students answer a question on an activity or do anything, they want the teacher’s approval. They’re almost incapable of doing an entire worksheet without pausing to see if they’ve done number one correctly. Even if I do an example, they still won’t continue until I’ve checked number two, then number three and so on. I’m trying various methods of correcting papers. Today in second-grade English I made them do the entire activity and then we corrected it out loud. The other day in their science class I did the same thing. Slowly, I’m trying to change the way the classes I’m in are run. I can’t stand working when students are turned around talking to other students, or asking me to correct each problem/blank, or running circles in the classroom, etc.
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