Teaching English in San Luis

Claire (Volunteer) with her Students in San Luis

This past Sunday I turned out of the beaten-earth yard of a home in the community of San Luis Los Ranchos, leaving the chickens pecking beneath the mango tree. With each step the yellow dust of the road spilled over my boots; it was, quite literally, ankle-deep. But my mind was not on the state of my clothes as I walked, nor on the pines that shelter the coffee bushes in the adjoining finca (coffee-growing estate). I had just bid farewell to the family who’d welcomed me into their home each weekend for the past two months.

The Classroom

Typically I would arrive on a Saturday, teach an English class for community kids that afternoon, stay overnight, teach another class the following morning, and return to San Salvador late Sunday afternoon. In the family’s cocina (kitchen) I’d eat beans and corn tortillas, and sip coffee picked, roasted, and ground on-site. In their sleeping shelter at night I’d listen to the mountain wind buffeting the corrugated metal walls, and in their open-air communal area I’d read the story of “Senor Mole” with the kids. In the spare time we had we’d go for walks through the finca or play football in the local cancha (football/soccer field).

The end of the CIS teaching cycle meant that I now needed to move on, and I found it impossible to explain the reasons why to six-year-old Nahun. This had nothing to do with my limited fluency in Spanish. Unlike his 11-year-old sister, Michelle, he has no understanding of entrance visas and election observation missions. But unlike his three-year-old niece, Alejandra, who was still calling: “Clarita? Clase de inglés manana?” (English class tomorrow?) as I waved goodbye, he knows I won’t be coming back.

I came to CIS believing I’d be teaching English to adults in the city, and ended up teaching children and youth in El Salvador’s countryside, a choice that called to me when presented as an option. Mine was a very different experience from the other volunteers in the English program this cycle (January to March 2012), one that required weekend travel, an acceptance that classes might be cancelled when students had to work, help their families, or take part in other activities, and an understanding that the outdoor classroom could be used for community meetings. It also involved affirmation of the importance of learning more than ensuring acquisition of a language. I did not test my students, nor did they graduate from a level. As time passes, will they remember any of the vocabulary and phrases that we covered in our classes? Hard to say. But I think they will remember that someone – CIS – cared enough to make the time for them.