Term Time

Folks,

It was back to school this week with full classes up and running. It was great to meet the students again, but a tiring week because I attended the National Conference for Teachers of English in Costa Rica, in my new head teacher role. So it was getting up at 6.30am and home after school at 9.15 at night.

Hello, El Salvador, can we have your votes?
-----------------------------------------------------
The NCTE conference is held in San Pedro in San José. It was opened by the American, Canadian and British ambassadors. The American ambassador’s speech was very political, and mainly boiled down to the patronising ‘the least we can do is teach these poor Ticos English in the hope that it will give them some chance in life’. The Canadian ambassador talked about the fact that a second language can enrich those who learn it, rather than in any way threatening their culture. And the British ambassador told everyone to speak the Queen’s English and not to be listening to those nasty Americans ruining it.

There were many interesting seminars, particularly for an inexperienced teacher like me. The most boring session was a presentation from an American grammarian who has published loads of books. Her address was broadcast by videolink to El Salvador, Guatemala and Panama. After an hour of the presentation, we then had an hour (a full hour!) of questions from the three countries. It was like Eurovision. And now we go to Guatemala. Hello Guatemala. Can we have your first question please?

Intercultura
--------------
I’ve really enjoyed my first week in school. It’s good seeing the students and catching up with them after so long. The new teachers have really integrated well into the team. Having lost about a third of the English department staff in December it’s amazing how quickly we are up and running with the new crew.

Two truths and a lie
------------------------
With new classes we have a range of icebreaker activities, to help everyone to get to know each other. One game is 2 truths and a lie. Where you reveal two true and one false fact about yourself. Mine were;

· I broke my leg ice-skating in New York
· I once played a school teacher in a TV programme
· I played Gaelic football for the Dublin team

The students felt that they couldn’t imagine me ice-skating and went for number one.

Teaching ‘Scottish’
----------------------
My boss Barbara called me in the other day, to give me a new private student. This guy specifically requested a teacher with a Scottish accent, because his company deals with people in Scotland a lot. As I’m the only non-North American on the staff now, she persuaded him that Irish was close enough. So I start with him tomorrow. I’ve been practising ‘There’s a moose loose about this hoose’ all weekend.
-----
So that’s a big week over. The start of the new semester. I missed updating you yesterday because we had a pool party in one of the new teachers’ houses, so I was home late. The pool in question was a kids’ blow up paddling pool. Which still ended up with people in it! Jack arrives back on Friday after 5 months Brown Thomas-ing in Dublin. So we’re really looking forward to getting back together after five months!

So until next week,

Pura Vida,

Éamon

Today’s headline in La Nación: Chilean court frees Pinochet’s daughter on bail