Teaching English in Cuenca

I can hardly believe I’ve been teaching English in Cuenca for 10 weeks!  I gave the last final exam on Saturday.   Now we have a 2-week break before classes resume on July 3.  I am really looking forward to my vacation and I also know that I’ll miss the relationships I’ve established with my students.

I’m teaching at CEDEI, www.cedei.org.  At it’s 20^th anniversary celebration last week, I learned that it was originally set up as a non-profit dedicated to promoting intercultural understanding.   But because they need to run it as a business, tuition costs unfortunately prevent the majority of Cuencanos from attending.

CEDEI building in downtown, with typical traffic jam

Most of my students probably represent the 1% of Ecuador.  I'm guessing that their parents perhaps pay $3.00/hour for English lessons—not much by our standards but far out of the reach of most Ecuadorian families.  One of my students told me that he and his family are traveling to Europe this summer.  A couple of my other students will spend time at their home on the beach—coincidentally, the same beach where I spent several days after my English teachers’ training.  One of the members of this beachside community is a former President of Ecuador who spent his time under house arrest in his luxurious seaside home.

Despite the fact that I’m teaching a lot of rich kids, I do enjoy my job!  My favorite class has been a group of young adults, all in their 20’s, who are eager to learn and always ready to laugh.  After the last class, they took me out for pizza!

Class taking a break in the CEDEI courtyard

At the other end of the age spectrum has been my class of two 11-year old boys.  Because one was quite hyperactive, I had to keep things lively.   I hope that between games of Pin the Tail on the Donkey and Tic Tac Toe they might have picked up a bit of English.  

The most challenging has been the 4-hour class Saturday morning made up of 6 teens who would no doubt prefer to be in bed at 8:30 am.  Over the past 10 weeks, they gradually warmed up to each other (and to me) and they actually got a bit rowdy toward the end.  Here we are celebrating the end of class at a popular ice cream parlor downtown.

I am reminded how much I love teaching!  I could be the grandmother of most of my students and sometimes feel a bit motherly (or grandmotherly) toward them.  I gather that there is a lot of pressure put on them to get into the right private high school and to achieve.  My hope is that they leave this English school with a positive experience learning English –and the confidence & desire to continue studying it.

Next week I'll be traveling to the coast for a few days with a couple of my fellow English teachers.  We hope to see some whales on our day trip to Isla de la Plata also known as "The Poor Man's Galapagos."  More about that later!