Honduras Always Wins, And Has

Amongst the teachers at Day-Star School, there is a little phrase that is liked in order to make the difficulties we face in Honduras more of a game:  Honduras always wins.  It's pretty well documented in my friend's blog No Hablo Espanol where he keeps a running account of the gringos vs. Honduras.  (It's actually pretty hilarious, I suggest reading it through.)

I never really jumped on board with this because I moved to a developing country, I expected living here to be difficult.  Well, different and something needing adjustment.  And besides, thinking of it in terms of us versus them seems pretty combative in a way that isn't productive.  There are a lot of very beautiful things about being here, and I have met some pretty amazing people.

I have, never the less, decided to leave Honduras.

It is not the country, no.  This really is an amazingly beautiful place.  The people who are amazing I've met are not just my coworkers, but also some of the locals are excellent people, and so giving and helpful.  I have decided to leave because of my job, which is why I was here in the first place.  That, and learning how to speak Spanish.

My job is incredibly frustrating in a way that I do not want to deal with for an entire year.  At first, I told myself that once I adjusted it would be easier.  All jobs have their difficulties and seemingly arbitrary rules, it's just what you have to get used to.  In this job, though, the difficulties became harder to deal with and more frustrating, sometimes to the point were I couldn't teach my classes any of what I had planned.  The rules were never consistent, and what we learned in our training changed many times.  The hardest one for me to handle was the discipline of the students.  We were told constantly to be as strict with the kids as possible, but then later I was told that these kids have very important family members and you have to be careful how you treat them.  Read: be easy on them.  It isn't just me.  One of my coworkers had a consistently bad student and he was told, basically, to alter his rules for this one student.  No child left behind at it's worst.

Grading, too, is pretty crazy.  Honduran law dictates that if more than half of the class if failing it's not the students, it's the teacher.  How is it the teacher's fault that more than half of the class is talking and/or not paying attention during class?  Even if you have a well behaved class, like myself, no one pays attention, and I figured that out once I gave them a quiz and most of my students in every class failed it.  And not just failed.  Got 5 out of 15 or less failed.  For someone coming from teaching/tutoring college students, I was under the mindset that if you're spending money for your education and aren't going to bother trying in class, that's your problem.  Even though these kids are paying for this, they did not have that mindset.  I don't think I can emphasis more that these kids are the privileged, and I really don't know how to deal with that.

The younger kids are the worst, though, because they expect you to hold their hand through everything.  When kids would have a question on a test I would literally just read the instructions and they would get it.  But I wouldn't have any problem walking these kids through the assignments and tests and going slower if I had 20 students per class instead of 30, and for longer than 45 minutes every day.  I think that's why my 9th graders were so much more successful: there were 20 students per class and three days per week I had them for 1.5 hours instead of 45 minutes.

But that's pretty much just me bitching.

I don't think I'm the kind of person that can handle being a teacher.  These problems are the same sort of problems teachers have everywhere in the world.  Maybe not all at once, and maybe yes, all at once, but in either case, there are talented people that are not only good at this but love this.  I am just not one of them.

As far as my Spanish goes, it is inching, getting better slightly, but I've been here for 3 months and it is barely better at all to when I came.  Well, maybe instead of beginning 1 level I'm at beginner 2.  Not going to say it's not frustrating, especially when I'm on my own and tired and am talking to one of the less sympathetic inhabitants.

I feel that because my Spanish wasn't up to snuff coming here, I had a harder time keeping up with the vegan and as-local-as-possible lifestyle that I very actively try to keep, as I feel it is an incredibly important part of my life.  I am all but addicted to cheese again, and have definitely felt like an asshole when I order food in a specific way or send it back when it has ham.  I have had many meals of potato chips and accidentally eaten things that I really should not have due to my language problem.  This year  has been filled with cases of my not being prepared enough and needed to learn how to be more prepared, but the last 3 months of being unprepared were 3 months of being slowly chipped away at with very little support.

I knew this was to be the case, too.  I was excited to take every moment as a teaching opportunity.  I wanted to get into conversations with the waiters and waitresses about why I don't eat animal products, and learn about how food is made and transported in this country.  I was excited to teach my students about what it means to be vegan and vegetarian and open their minds a little to alternate ways of thinking and acting in this world.  I was especially excited to teach them about animal rights, at least.

But alas, I am not good at teaching.  I would rather do, I suppose.

I will, without a doubt, have a place in my heart for Juticalpa, Olancho, indefinitely.  But now is not the time for me to be here.  In the future, if my path takes me back to this place, I will welcome it with joy.