The Entertainment At Barbacoas

In Santa Ana there are two schools, a public school and a charter school, Barbacoas.  The charter school is supported by a foundation so students only pay a nominal annual fee (the equivalent of 4 USD).  I work at the charter school.  It is beautiful.   Each classroom has two walls equipped with chalkboards and two open spaces where walls should be.  The classrooms are not joined together but they are maybe fifteen to twenty feet from one another.  This is great but also presents some unique challenges.  I tend to tape up posters and signs on the chalkboard for various lessons and on the occasion that there is wind they just get knocked back down.  Each classroom has at least one broom because they floors accumulate dirt, twigs, and such.  I think at any hour of the school day there is a student sweeping in a classroom.  I will be in the middle of a lesson and one or two students in my class will be sweeping away.  I don’t even want to think about what life will be like in the rainy season with open classrooms and dirt roads.  The rainy season doesn’t start until September or October so I have some time to buy rain boots and mentally prepare myself.  Also the placements of the classroom understandably lead to quite a few distractions.  If another classroom is singing a song all the surrounding classes hear it as well.  Moreover, students are always yelling at one another at different classrooms.

One of my favorite parts of my school is the natural environment surrounding it, but at the same time it is the biggest distraction for students and teachers alike.  In the past two weeks I have seen about as many animals in my school as I have seen in a national park.  There are always dogs, chickens, and roosters within the school grounds.  We have named most the dogs and consider them our unofficial pets.  Recently there was a cow about seven feet from my class chomping down on some plants.  All the students yelled “Teacher, una vaca.  Como se dice vaca en English?”  I respond with cow and they all start yelling, “Cow!”  In another class I looked outside for a second and I saw an iguana carrying a frog by the corner of its mouth.  It proceeded to drag the frog into a bush and then the bush just started shaking back and forth.  As I entered my sixth grade class a giant crab was chilling outside.  One of the students shooed it into the classroom with a broom.  Another student was trying to catch it and kept stepping on it.  I was in the background trying to tell them to leave it alone and put it back outside which they finally did.  Later during that class I glanced outside and there was another class gathered around a tree looking a snake. 

My friend, Shannon, teaches Kindergarten through second grade here and a frog entered her classroom.  We always give her a hard time about frogs because there are always frogs in her bedroom; they seem to follow her.  So this frog was in her class and a little boy picked it up to throw it outside but he waited to long and threw it up instead and the poor frog hit the ceiling.  It sure does make the school day interesting; that is for sure.