Relaxed Weekend, Crazy Week Ahead!

This last weekend was a long weekend, due to El Día de las Candelas. This is the day of the presentation of the Christ child, which is celebrated in the Catholic Church. It is 40 days after Christmas. This is the day that Mary brought the baby Jesus to the Church. Before this day, it is believed that Mary stayed at home with the baby to protect him from the cold. As a side note, my host parents told me that traditional Mexicans abide by this 40 day rule. After giving birth to her children, my host mom stayed at home with her babies the first 40 days. Anyway, for El Día de las Candelas, the 2nd of February, many schools and work places close. People go to churches for Masses and to bring candles as a way to celebrate the presentation. In a motion of veneration, some move toward the altar with their candles on their knees the entire way. Mexicans also bring Jesus dolls swadled in white cloth to stores or religious places to have them dressed up for the presentation.

The food used to celebrate this special day is ¨los tamales.¨ This food symbolizes the presentation of Christ, because it is a warm cake-like food wrapped up in a corn husk, just as the Christ child is wrapped up in a blanket like un tamal. (See attached photos.) You don't each the husk...just the inside. Tamales come in sweet or salty kinds, some with meat, fruit, raisins inside, and the sweet ones are often colored either red or green with dye. Whoever finds the plastic baby doll in their cake piece on El Día de los Santos Reyes (the 6th of Jan.) must make tamales for everyone for el día de las candelas. My host uncle found the baby doll, but he must not know how to cook. My host mom had a party for her family with tamales, atole (a drink kind of like chai tea but creamier), and pozole (a soup with pork and corn, to which you can add fresh radish, onion, lettuce, chile, and limón (lemon)). I helped make some of the tamales. In Mexico, the traditional way of cooking is mixing things by hand with a wooden spoon and sometimes even with your hand. My host mom labored over the tamales for hours, because she was stirring huge bowls of flour, sugar, butter, etc. all by hand. I tried it for a while, but my arms are noooot that strong. Her work was worth it, since the tamales were delicious, and we have enough to eat all week long!








This weekend, my family took me to Pátzcuaro, a city nearby to Morelia. It is known for ¨La Danza de los viejitos,¨ which is a dance of the Purépecha, the indigenous people of that region. I took a short video of this dance, which you can see above to the left! The buildings in this city are beautiful, colonial ones, all in red and white trim. The one to the left is part of El Palacio de las Once Patios. This used to be the home of El Rey Caltzontzen, a Purépecha king. Above, you can see me sitting in the bath tub (el baño) of this king. Many of the colonial buildings like this are now used to display and sell the crafts made by artesans. There are many, many more artesans here than in the States.

Although the weekend was rather long and relaxed, this week at Varmond is rather crazy. All of the teachers are stressed, because this is the week of open classes, when parents are invited to attend class. However, they´re not just coming to a normal class to see it. We are putting on special presentation-type classes for the parents, and moreover, we need to make gifts to give the parents. The theme is recycling and helping the environment, so we´re making the Varmond insignia out of egg cartons and stryofoam balls. I have a lot of painting to do tonight to prep materials. All these gifts need to be finished by the 6th grade open class this Thursday. To add to this, grades are due soon for January. Varmond´s AMCO curriculum has monthly issues. Since the English classes are a bit behind in the January book, we´re trying to squeeze the last of it into this week, and my cooperating teacher and I are doing lots of grading to finish up the month. This makes teaching hard, since the focus is mostly on just getting all the workbook pages done and graded instead of focusing on student learning. This will be a good lesson for me in curriculum time management.

My main goals for this week in the classroom are to help keep everything running as smoothly as possible and learn the ins and outs of the grading system. I am doing a little less teaching this week, since the majority of class time is getting ready for the open class and breezing through the workbook as fast as possible. In the meantime, I'm trying to brainstorm ways to integrate process into the curriculum, since most of the contents focus heavily on the answers and final products. From grading some of the students´ work, I can tell they need more guidance and direction in certain areas. Their compositions had many, many grammatical errors, spelling problems, and often needed organizational help. I think that it may help in the future to give them a rubric, so they know exactly what is expected of them. I would also like to introduce them to the idea of writing outlines and rough drafts even though the book only gives room for a final draft. I brought up the idea of putting up some grammar rules on the walls as reminders for the students, and my teacher seemed to like this. I might work on that this week if we have time. If not, then this weekend for sure.

Another challenge I forsee in the classroom is that my teaching and classroom management styles are quite different from the two 6th grade teachers. The students are accustomed to teachers who raise their voices to get their attention, point out their academic and behavioral mistakes, and teach via oral lecture the majority of the time. I don't naturally have a loud voice, so this simply won't work for me. I will probably introduce either some hand signals, songs, clapping, or some other form of getting the students' attention while I teach. I also prefer classroom management that is silent (eye contact with students, walking toward students who are talking, hands motioning toward work that needs to be done, etc.). While teaching, I prefer to have the students talking more than me, so that I´m more of a ¨guide on the side.¨ I think it may take a while for students to get accustomed to my teaching style, but I hope I can figure out how to integrate my style in an effective way. That´s a bigger goal I have for the duration of my student teaching.

And...well...if you haven´t had enough to read yet....

Here is some random cultural info to entertain you:

• If I ever miss the U.S., there is a Sears, Sam’s Club, McDonalds, Applebee’s, Burger King, Subway, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Domino Pizza here.
• My family took me to la Plaza Morelia Sunday night, which is essentially a mall. It is much like American malls, except all of the shops are smaller than ours, and there is live music (and sometimes dancers) there performing free of charge every Sunday night.
• Many of the trees here are painted in white on the bottom half of the trunks to protect them from diseases.
• It is also “winter” here. I get a kick out of seeing people bundled in scarves, hats, gloves, and winter coats when I leave for school in the morning.
• At the stoplights, the “walk” sign figure moves! First the figure is walking. When you’re running out of time to cross the street, the figure starts running, and a count down begins. When you’re out of time, a still, red figure displays.
• Breakfast is in the morning, “La Comida,” the biggest meal of the day, is between 2 and 4p.m. (3:30p.m. for me), and la cena, a light dinner is between 8 and 10p.m.
• There are rarely any stop signs here, so you have to just slow down at every corner if there isn’t a stoplight. A common way of slowing cars down when necessary is “los topes,” what we would call speed bumps. They’re everywhere!
• All toilet paper goes in the garbage can, since the sewage system can’t handle it.
• The most common greeting/farewell here is a handshake with a kiss on the cheek or a hug with a kiss on the cheek. (Sometimes, this just means touching cheeks and kissing the air. It depends on the person.)
• Only purified water is safe to drink here, so work places and homes have large jugs of water.
• Some of the music here is American music translated into Spanish, for example, Elvis songs.
• Here, it is customary to eat with your arms and elbows on or above the table and eat with your hands (things like a piece of steak or fish). I'm trying to get used to this so that I don't come across as a snobby American.

Wow, well this was long. Bless your heart if you read this all!!