Boom Town

Playing Hookie

Since each of my classes is 2.5 hours long, I have had trouble trying to regulate attendance and timeliness. The first semester I didn't have a rule about being late, so people would sometimes stroll into class 1.5 hours in. I couldn't let that slide so I added a rule that if you come late to class you have to wait outside until the second part started after the break. This also became a problem when students would come a few minutes late and miss an entire hour of teaching. My most recent rule has been that students can enter class during the first half late so that they don't miss the entire lesson waiting outside, but it will be marked as a half absence.

So far this has been an effective approach, and after the first few weeks students see how many class absences they have accumulated through consistently coming late to class and they tighten up for the remainder of the semester. However, my students have recently found a new way to infuriate me by missing class even with this system in place.

This past Thursday the weather was really nice outside and my students were incredibly reluctant to continue for the second half of class. One of my students, who is in college, came back from the break and said she had an important test to study for and asked if she could leave early. I reminded her that all my students are adults (with the exception of a few seventeen year olds) so she was obviously free to do whatever she wanted, even if I didn't recommend missing class. She asked about the consequences and I told her it would be half an absence just like when someone comes to class late, and without hesitation she said goodbye and left. The rest of the class must have overheard that conversation because six of my thirteen students present then proceeded to leave the class, apparently not concerned about the half-day of attendance they would all be docked.

I was then left with a difficult decision to make: should I keep teaching half the class or cancel class since so many people were going to miss it? My gut instinct was just to keep teaching since there were still people who wanted to be in class and learn English, but when I thought about it I was going to be teaching to only half of my class, and knowing the culture of studying they have in Ecuador, the absent half of the class would not have a chance at passing the next test if they weren't in class to hear me teach it. So while I know that everyday Krishna would go on teaching and have the rest of the class deal with the consequences of missing a lesson, teacher Krishna had to wonder if that would be the best move to make as a teacher whose goal is to make sure the class learns the material no matter what.

When I learned that I would be teaching adults, I really thought that I would be able to take the former approach with no problems, because why would an adult sign up and pay for classes that he wasn't going to attend? Unfortunately, teaching my unmotivated adult students has been much more like having a class of reluctant high school kids who are forced to study English by their parents, and I think I will have to start treating them accordingly if I want them to come out of my class with a satisfactory knowledge of English.

Outside of the issues the new-found loophole in my attendance policy has caused in my professional life, I am finding that it is also hard to separate work from normal relationships as a teacher with adult students, because the truth is that by spending ten hours a week with them and going out on field trips, I have become friends with a lot of my students. I understand that none of my students meant to leave as a personal attack on me, but it was still hard to see half of my class pick up and leave when I had prepared a lesson for them that day.

The expectations that students in the States and students in Ecuador have of being in a class are very different. In the States, students go into a class knowing that they will have to do the work and that the teacher is there to guide them and answer questions as an authority on the subject. Students usually end up fighting for the teacher's time when the floor is opened up for questions because they realize that they can get an immediate answer instead of having to look it up in a book. I suppose that in a lot of classes students are scared to ask questions if they don't understand something, but I think that that mostly stems from the very limited classroom time for courses in the States, and teachers need to ignore questions to get through the material.

In contrast, my students (with a few exceptions) come to class with no intention of thinking or making any kind of effort. They just stare blankly at me while I do my teaching bit, don't ask any questions when I invite them to, and then ask their neighbor what the hell is going on when I assign them an exercise to do in class. My lack of teaching experience definitely plays a part in this problem and I know I could concept check better, but I still believe that an adult who took his education into his own hands would concept check himself and take advantage of the native speaker in the room while he was in class and ask plenty of questions.

Teaching students who want to learn is rewarding, but my students who fit that profile are few and far between and I have little tolerance for people who expect to be able to speak English just by sitting in class, without putting any of their own effort into it. I am learning a lot about motivation and managing groups of people by teaching, but it definitely isn't my calling, which is why I'm happy about this...


About Time

After two years of sending out applications and attending interviews, this past Tuesday I was finally accepted to a medical school: the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB).

Unfortunately, the coolest picture I could find of a buffalo was this one getting smoked by a lion

I can't express how relieved I am to finally know what I will be doing when my time in Ecuador is up and how satisfied I am that in the end everything worked out the way I wanted it to. It obviously would have been a lot less stressful if I had been accepted somewhere the first time around and gotten a deferral to work abroad for a year, but I can't complain because I was still able to do a WorldTeach program while applying a second time and secure a seat for myself in an MD program in the States in the proces.

Med school applications were frustrating for me because of the nearly sole importance that schools put on grades. I didn't have a great first couple of years in college and that definitely got me screened at a lot of places before my application was looked at. I have to give credit to UB for actually reading my application and having a sense of humor.

Med schools have a habit of being attracted to students that are as full of shit as they are of themselves, so I was shocked when my interviewer at UB told me he liked the way I started my personal statement, which was an anecdote about how one time I thought a doctor in Mexico was telling me to kiss a patient (bésala) instead of weigh her (pésala). I won't detail what happened next except to say that I made an idiot out of myself and hilarity ensued. I think that the tone of my personal statement reflected my personality and that the way I presented myself at interviews was genuine, so it is refreshing to see that there is at least one school out there that values students who act like human beings.

There is a lot of pressure on prospective med students to appear flawless on paper and cram their resumes with as many cool sounding activities and pointless internships as they can, but I am happy that UB was impressed with my passion for the few things that I did do in college and acknowledged my maturation from freshman year to the present. Again, my interviewer surprised me when he was skimming through my grades and pointed out a C+, only to then immediately qualify it with, "Oh, but that was in calculus freshman year", readily acknowledging that my worth as a potential med student can not and should not be judged by a math grade I got four years ago.

I would have never guessed at graduation that I would end up in Buffalo, but I am nonetheless ecstatic for the opportunity to study at an MD program in New York. I suppose there is always the chance that I will be taken off the waitlist at another school, in which case I would consider that program, but until then expect "B is for Buffalo" to show up sometime next fall.

Moral of the story: the next time you meet someone who says he got accepted to medical school give him a high-five, because as it turns out, it's really hard.

Rest of the Week

On Monday I will finally be getting my wisdom teeth pulled, which will hopefully result in me no longer having to eat ibuprofen like skittles. I am also heading to Quito on Friday to take the Spanish language proficiency test I have been preparing for, the DELE. Next week I'll report on which experience was more painful.