Mr. Grinch

So here I am again. After a much needed Christmas vacation, I and the other volunteers are back in dusty old Juticalpa for the spring go around.

Christmas was wonderful! I ate fancy food (not an egg in sight!), took long, hot showers, and relished every dirt-free breath. I also found myself complaining whenever the subject of Honduras came up. Even by the end of my two week reprieve (especially by the end of the two weeks, as the start of school loomed ever closer,) I found myself hard pressed for nice things to say about my experiences to date. During the flight back I felt quite guilty about my whole attitude towards Honduras.

It didn’t help that my flight took me on a brief tour of Central America, stopping at both El Salvador and Guatemala airports. I couldn’t help but notice that both places seemed much cleaner and better organized than Honduras. From the air, the cities looked quite pleasant, especially Guatemala City with its modern looking skyscrapers and fountains. The city streets fanned out in an open, inviting manner, and I found myself wishing that I had the time to stop and look about the city. Tegucigalpa in contrast grew out from the landing strip like a grimy fungus, buildings sometimes literally overlapping each other on the mountain slopes. There doesn’t seem to be any plan to the city, just dingy, grey structures piled haphazardly one on the other.

When we finally arrived back in Juticalpa, it looked as though the house had been abandoned for months. Spider webs filled the corners of the rooms, and everything was covered in a thick layer of brown dust. It took all Monday to clean it up and make the place livable. Thankfully it was raining the day before, so we are able to breathe…for the meantime at least.

I really wish I could get excited about being back. The next two weeks are going to be crazy, with the end of the second quarter nearly hear already! Art and Activities shouldn’t be too hard to get going again, but World History is going to be a mad dash to the finish line. While the group projects are going great (overall), I’m not sure if the kids are really going to be ready for the final. I haven’t been giving them worksheets like I was last quarter, since they’ve been researching for their projects, and I didn’t want to do their work for them. But now I’m worried that they aren’t actually learning the stuff outside their own topics.

You see, last year didn’t really end on a good note, which I’m guessing is why I was such a Grinch about school over Christmas break. While many of the groups did a good job on their presentations, it mostly felt like regurgitated information. Nobody (with a few exceptions) actually KNEW their topic, and many of the kids didn’t listen to the presentations (which was how they were supposed to learn the other topics). And then there were the handful of students who simply didn’t care about the project. I had about five students who simply didn’t present, refusing to get up to help their group. A couple even walked off during the presentations, leaving their teammates to pick up the slack.

How do you cope with that? When you have done everything you can think of to make the class interesting, you’ve spent hours making rubrics and direction sheets to help the students, and then they just walk out on you, telling you they don’t care? Just thinking about it is soul draining.

I try to think of the students that did work hard, of how great their presentations were. But I know that they could have done so much better if these other students hadn’t eaten up so much of my time, simply trying to get them to crack a book or pick up a pencil.

The end of the second quarter is almost here, and a hard decision MUST be made. Do we go against every instinct as an educator and cut these students loose? Or do we give them another chance, and try to step up our game in the next quarter?

I have already made my decision, as much as I don’t like it. Tomorrow we have a day to prepare for the start of school, and I am going to try and force the issue. For the sake of the other students, someone has got to be the mean one.