Presentations

I think I’ve mentioned before that our counterpart here in Los Santos, the regional assessor of English,Manolo, is a very powerful man and that he was instrumental in bringing the TEFL program not only to this region but to Costa Rica itself. Needless to say, we all feel very lucky to have him because he’s set up so many meetings for us and he provides us with the support we need to do our jobs well. We’ve already met most of the teachers we’ll be working with and visited most of our schools. However, sometimes it can be a bad thing for your boss to be so active and interested in your project because sometimes you might have to present yourself in front of seventy principals – in Spanish. And that was just one of our meetings this past week and a half.

Our first meeting was in a pizza place in Santa Maria with the regional assessors of the other subjects and the supervisor of the assessors. We had two hours to tell them all about the Peace Corps, the TEFL program, why we decided to be volunteers and what we want to do in our sites. In typical tico fashion, the meeting started a half hour late but we still ended a half hour early. Everyone knows that it always takes way less time than you think it will to say something you’ve written for a presentation, but as it turns out, it’s a lot worse in a foreign language! I think it took me an hour to write what took me only five minutes to say. I shouldn’t have been as nervous as I was, because everyone here understands how hard it is to learn English, so they’re really gracious about our level of Spanish. But I couldn’t help but be nervous introducing myself in Spanish to the region’s highest level of educators.

Also present at our first meeting were the three county administrators. Each one of us got to meet the man or woman that is in charge of all the schools in our respective county. That’s the cool part about the meetings: after you’ve introduced yourselves and gotten the hard part over with, you get to meet all these powerful people that can help you later on. Everyone seemed like they were excited to have us there and were thinking of ways they could work with us. In my presentation I told them that I like playing soccer, so one of the assessors was telling me that the teachers have a league and I could join his team!

The second meeting we had was the one with all the principals. In the pizza place, the meeting was just for us, but in this one we were just a small part of a much bigger meeting about all kinds of school-related stuff. We met in a big gymnasium at a school in between two of the major towns here for a few hours. I probably could have understood what was going on if I had wanted to, but the four of us had just gotten back from a rafting trip and I was too exhausted to care. The superintendent had some things to say as well as the circuit supervisors and some other people. I have no idea what they were talking about but I can’t imagine I missed anything exciting! For some reason, I wasn’t so nervous to talk in Spanish in front of the principals. I don’t know if I was just too tired to be worried or what it was. Right before our part of the meeting, Manolo sang a couple songs, so I opened with a joke about how if it didn’t embarrass him to sing like that then I could at least say a few words in Spanish!

The third meeting was with some of the English teachers that we would be working with over the next two years. This was by far the most fun because we could talk in English and play games with our new friends. Of course, we said a few things about the Peace Corps, but our main goal was to just meet the teachers and have fun with them. I think we ended up playing Mafia for the last hour of the meeting! I met almost all of my teachers and they’re all really cool and I’m looking forward to working with them. I can definitely see myself hanging out with some of them after school or on weekends if they have time. The problem is that the single ones go home to other parts of the country to be with their families on weekends and the others are married with children. Also, their schedules just don’t really allow them to do a whole lot during the week. They work from 7:00 – 4:00 almost non-stop and without planning periods – ridiculous. Anyway, it was a huge relief to meet my coworkers and for them to be cool.