English Teaching Seminar

Hello there, I hope that you are all doing well at home. I am back in David once again after 5 days of a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) seminar. I met up with my counterpart in David last Sunday and we rode to Changuinola in Bocas del Toro to attend the seminar. Her name is Yamileth (Yami for short) and she is a really nice person. She is trying hard to improve her English skills, since she is an English professor at the high school. She is the one holding the certificate in the first photo. The two on the left are PCVs whole facilitated the first half of the seminar, and the two on the left are returned PCVs from a long time ago who are now TEFL consultants working in Panama and Columbia. There is also a picture of the cemetary that was behind the hotel and the school in Changuinola where we had the seminar. It was actually a fairly pretty school, they had plants and murals on the walls and it looked like they actually cared what the school looked like. Most places in Panama look like everybody couldn't care less, although the people themselves have to be perfectly dressed in expensive-looking clothes. I just don't get it.

I was really disappointed with the organization of this seminar, and with the work of my project director in general. Pablo is, as I have suspected all along, all talk and no action. Not only was this entire seminar badly organized, he has ruined our relationship with the ministry of education for future projects. I hope that something happens so our project can actually get the support it needs and the organization it needs. Most of us felt totally unqualified after three months of training to teach English, which should not be the case. We are feeling a little better after the two trainings we just had, but these should have happened during the initial training, not 10 months later. I think that the teachers generally liked the seminar though, even though the facilitators kept speaking too fast and using words that were too advanced for their level of English. I am pretty sure that at least half or three fourths of it went straight over Yami's head, because every time we were supposed to turn to our partner and discuss something, I had to explain what the question was and we didn't even get around to discussing the actual question. Oh well, even so she still learned and it was good practice for her.

Yesterday we had some really good training on how to teach pronounciation, which was awesome for me because although I know how to say something I don't always know what the rules are. Words that end in ED for example, they have three different ways of saying them and there are actually rules. One of my students, who always has good questions, asked me about this very thing and I didn't have an answer for him. So now when I go back and teach the next unit, which just happens to be about past tense, I can actually explain this and many other rules of pronounciation, and have strategies to help them hear the differences and practice making these strange sounds.

I would like to go back to Chichica but my journey is not over yet. I still have two more stops to make. I think I'm going to get fat and lazy and out of shape during all this sitting around and free food (though the food isn't that good, I keep eating supplementary ice cream and candy bars to make up for it). Last night during a five hour van ride through the winding road from Chang to David I was also trying not to get sick and succeeded. Yea for me! Others were not so lucky. At least the ride was free, although we got lost a couple times. Sonia, the assistant director of the tourism/english project and the real brains of the operation, apparently doesn't have a head for directions and gets lost really easily.

Well, I would love to post my video of my house tour 2nd edition, but it is taking too long. La proxima vez. . .