On the work front, she’s been very elusive about what I’m supposed to be doing and when. It wasn’t till minutes before my first class that I first saw the classroom. I didn’t get the books till the night before. It’s been unnerving.

She initially seemed to be flexible in how I approach my classes, as long as I complete the units on time. I asked if I could present different exercises with the same objectives, and read things myself rather than use the tapes. “Whatever you want,” she said. She explained it would take about five classes for the kids to get through one unit so I began to pace myself accordingly.

In my first class with the kids, I realized they were nowhere near ready for the material they were getting — the didn’t have the fundamental skills to understand, leave alone produce. As we’ve moved along through this boring unit on health, I’ve injected some distantly related songs and movements and visual activities. They need it. But it takes away time from helping them understand the material. But they can’t understand when they can’t pay attention.

But by the third class when Elka watched, they were squirmy and disinterested for much of the class This was due to several things: my inexperience in managing groups of children and my determination to meet M’s curriculum requirement, necessitating that I plunge forward even when they weren’t ready and needed other distraction.

I never wanted to work with kids, though I love them individually. Man, does it take patience, particularly when they have no grasp of the level they are said to have achieved. I wonder what is he objective in corraling kids through a series of levels that they don’t comprehend. It is artificial progress. Is it to make parents happy? Is it to fit an arbitrary (or standard) curriculum structure established separate from the true learning goals. How do they measure success?

I have no experience in evaluation and test preparation and curriculum design, so I can’t answer these questions. I can say only that the learning experience and the course design are at odds.

After the first class I asked my teenaged boys if they liked listening to the taped exercises or preferred to listen to my rendition. They politely said they like the tapes. That surprised me. From my own experience and from research I’ve read, audio tape isn’t particularly effective. But it’s what they’ve come to know and expect here, so I guess it gives them comfort. It also gives me a break for a few seconds. So I’ve compliantly but with reservations started to use the taped exercises. I told Magdalena of my discovery and she said something like, “See, I told you to use the materials.” To her credit, she let me discover for myself what the students like. To her discredit, she never advised me that the students rely on them.

So we’ve had some bumps like that. I get no support in the office. I can sometimes connect to the Internet, which was hard and I figured it out without help. But I can’t print. I’m spending a fortune (about $25 so far) on copies. And they’ve never given me other material or office support. I have to borrow supplies from Magda but she seems cranky about doing so. When I say, “I’ll get my own,” she says, “No, you can use mine.” I’m left to fend for myself: dig around through other people’s belongings to find scissors or markers. It’s spartan, and I always feel like I’m asking a favor or bugging someone when I ask for paper or the like. I’ve since bought my own paper clips, stapler, tape and stuff, and will get my own (expensive) markers soon. Silly, since I’ll be here only four weeks.

Another unpleasant moment came the night before last. Elka had observed my children’s class and I spent all the next day (skipping Spanish class) working really hard on a new approach to the lesson plan, to keep the kids moving through the book but provide the vocabulary support they needed, and to give them enough breaks disguised as exercises. It was hard. I worked till 9:30 when Magda came home and said,”You have the kids for the first hour, and then they come down to the lab for their test.” I was shocked. Their test? That comes at the end of the unit and we’re nowhere near there. They’re already not understanding what we’ve covered.

It was awkard. We’ve spend three classes together, the kids and I. When I initially talked to Magda about the testing system she said the first test comes after about five classes. So this was a shock. And her informing late at night, after a long day spent entirely in planning (because I’m new at this, and want the kids to be interested and to learn), really upset me. I tried to defend the students (and by extension, myself) and ended up winning an hour extra for them. This meant that I had to complete a huge amount of material in one class. One involved a past tense article, in which I had them underline the words they didn’t know. They were basic words, and most kids had underlined the same ones: said, saved, threw. They don’t even know the present tense of some of these verbs, so how can I be expected to teach them this whole story without enough time to prepare and then debrief them. We went over a few of the words the didn’t know, but I had to move on to finish the unit so they can be tested next week. It really sucked. And it made my lesson plan more disjointed because my breaks and transitions were short and lacked context and follow-up. If I were they, I would have been confused. During the whole class I felt there was a dementor standing over my shoulder.

So we’ve had these weird mixups — stated curriculum freedom within bounds that has turned out to be highly restricted and random and criticism for things I’d been told were okay.

Beyond the institutional aspect, I hate these workbooks. They are so confusing. Magda likes them because they’re among the few that are American. But the lessons are thin and don’t seem to build on another another. And the tests are pulled directly from the book. They don’t review the language learning, but rather test them on a poem they heard. It sucks.

And I feel very insecure and unstable in this setting, never knowing what’s going to be popped on me when, and always feeling unsupported and in the way. I’m sure they don’t perceive it like that. But in the school community I am an outsider — the only outsider — and my presence is barely noticed or acknowledged.