English teaching dilemmas

Being the only three native English speakers in the Cajabamba area, and given that every Peruvian schoolchild is required to learn the language, Jess, Katy and I are constantly receiving requests to teach English. Sometimes it's adults who want us to offer an English class so they can practice. Sometimes it's parents wanting to give their child the extra advantage of some one-on-one tutoring sessions with the gringa - when we say no, they even offer to pay us, and after twenty minutes of explaining the concept of "volunteer," they go off still a little disappointed that we don't want to spend our afternoons teaching their seven year-old. And other times it's the local teachers or principals who trap you in their office and literally continue talking/pleading/convincing you to teach their English classes for them until you say some form of yes that is satisfying enough to them while still leaving you with a way to get out of it later - those times are the worst.

While teaching English is something I enjoy, in the right context, it's not one of Peace Corps' main goals. Nor, in my view, is it the most sustainable use of my time here. For these reasons, I have yet to teach English in any structured way in Cajabamba - this also gives me the advantage that I can continue to use the white lie "my program doesn't allow me to teach English" to help me deflect incoming requests to teach. However, the exception to this rule is working with the local English teachers.

This past Friday and Saturday, we three volunteers offered a two-day workshop open to all the teachers in charge of English at Cajabamba's elementary and high schools. If we help improve these educators' abilities to effectively teach English, we are impacting more students than we possibly could just by offering English classes ourselves - the sustainability factor goes up by about 100%.

The whole group with their certificates at the end of the workshop

It is an unfortunate fact that while English is a government-mandated part of the school curriculum, the teachers assigned to teach the subject are often woefully underprepared to do so. Among the twenty or so teachers that came to our workshop, I'd say that about three are really qualified to be teaching English. The most glaring deficiency is pronunciation: in rural Peruvian schools, the vicious cycle is that teachers with poor English abilities represent the students' only access point to the language, so all the mispronunciations in the teacher's repertoire are going to be passed on to the next generation.

But this problem is structural, and does not reflect a lack of goodwill or effort on the part of the teachers (at least, not usually). The group at our workshop were extremely excited to have face time with three real-live English speakers for two days. While they listened attentively to our suggestions for how to make classes more dynamic and guidelines on teaching methods (the stated main purpose of the workshop), they were equally interested to just sit and practice pronouncing basic vocabulary in a repeat-after-me call and response fashion.

Practicing the classic food vocab activity: pretending to order off a restaurant menu

The workshop left me with mixed feelings. On one side, I am now more aware of the reality of the low level of English instruction in Peruvian schools, and is a bit disheartening to realize the true extent of the problem. But on the other hand, the teachers are excited to have the opportunity to improve their English skills, which in turn will give the students a better learning experience. Their eager participation in the workshop and their interest in continuing to work with us over the course of the school year gives me hope that, step by step, the system can improve.