June 2-8: Controlled Chaos in Class

This week got off to a particularly slow start… Many teachers in Costa Rica belong to unions, and when the unions meet, they don’t go into work. Costa Rica also lacks substitute teachers, so that means classes for almost all of my students were canceled on Monday. Fortunately, I had some errands to run, (I needed to get a flu vaccine) so it worked out to kind of have Monday off. Ironically, this lack of substitute teachers affected me again a second time later in the week when I hiked to the escuela early on Friday morning to teach a single class there before I was set to return uphill on the opposite side of town to work at the colegio. Upon showing up to escuela, the class was empty and other teachers told me that they didn’t show up because the teacher was sick. I’d woken up at 5:30 to get ready for this class but never had any indication it wouldn’t happen. This kind of improvisation is pretty typical working in the Costa Rican public educational system (particularly as an outsider), so sometimes it’s better to make the most out of situations like this (I got an extra run in that morning) than to get mad about it. 

It wasn’t a super involved week, but here are some highlights from the rest of the week in the schools. I worked with 12th grade students at the colegio preparing for their national English exams next week. It was pretty easy for me as a native English speaker, but by simply doing mini 1 on 1 conversations with students, hopefully that helped train their ears and vocab a bit. I also continued soccer and communication workshops with students at the escuela. With the permission of their teacher, a 6th grade class was able to convince me to play a mejenga (pick-up game) during PE. I’ll start with some new activities next week there, including a new club that I’m launching alongside the librarian.



When I wasn’t teaching, I tried to keep myself as busy as possible. On Friday evening, I took myself to the movie theater to see Wes Anderson’s new film, “The Phoenician Scheme”. I’m fortunate that there is a great independent cinema in San Jose that features a lot of arthouse style movies for pretty cheap. I also ran with clubs both in my community and in San Jose. On Sunday, I cheered on the Arkansas Razorbacks as they qualified for yet another College World Series and joined some fellow Peace Corps volunteers that night for a virtual trivia game. I got thrown a couple curveballs over the course of the week, but I still feel great about everything going on at site.







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