Saint Geoge Madness

Ok, so we are now well into the second quarter of the school year at Saint George's here in Santiago and lets just say it has been an interesting adjustment for all of us. Saint Georges is Holy Cross school that is widely recognized throughout Chile in terms of being one of the better schools. It pretty much serves the upper middle to higher class people, many of which have rather powerful and influential positions. The school is loaded with money.

The school itself is rather interesting in that in order to walk from one classroom to the next you have to literally walk outside (the closest thing to a hallway is a canopy like the bottom left photo). Now that wouldnt be so bad if this school was situated in southern california. The summer here was fine, but it is winter now and so far our winter experience has been anywhere from nice to really cold and rain...lots of rain. Now it is not any colder than Philly or Chicago, but you never get warm here. We leave in the morning with our winter coats on and we dont take them off til we get home at the end of the day. But we hardly even warm up at home because we have no insulation in our apartment, and we havent turn on the heat cause it is really expensive and Brian is the most Jewish Catholic i know (no offense). So we really do teach with our winter coats on because the classrooms are not insulated, and hardly have any heat either. As one student of a nearby school put it, "saint george classrooms are like garages." Yet this school is LOADED, and they have one of the lowest salaries for a private school of its type.

Lets talk about another aspect of Saint George, the bell system. Its unique in that for half the classes during the day, when the bell rings to signify the end of class, it is also the same bell that signifies that the next class has already begun. Basically, when one class ends, at the exact same time the next class begins. That wouldnt be so bad if the students never left the classroom, but of course that is not how it works. So I have to leave my one class, and get to my next class about 3 - 4 minutes after the class has already begun, but chances are half the students havent made it yet themselves. But that only happens between half the classes. There are also 4 "recesses" built into the day that last about 10-15 minutes where the students have the opportunity to play soccer, socialize, vandalize, climb on top of classrooms and makeout. But with this recess time, they have time to get to their next class on time, right? Wrong! These are chileans; worst of all, saint george chileans. The scene is actually even more chaotic after the recesses because since there are no hallways, all the students lockers are in the classrooms. So after the bell has rung to begin class, that is when the students will come in to get their stuff out of their lockers and half those students wont even be mine. Class will probably begin at least 5 minutes late and on friday afternoons, 15 minutes late.

Dont even get me started on our boss...

Rather, lets focus on the events of the last two weeks...Sunday, two weeks ago there were some heavy rain storms but nothing too crazy. We get to school the next day at our normal time of 7:30 and there is no power in the entire school. Not too big of a deal as there have been times when power has cut out randomly. So class begins 45 minutes later and power still has not been restored and we are under the impression now that we probably wont get it back at all before the end of the day. So I teach my first two hours with my 12th grades using the light coming in through the windows and the door i have propted open to the outside (remember, no hallways) . With about 5 minutes left in class before the recess, a student comes to my door and starts telling the students seated near it (not that strange of a thing to happen) that if they call their parents, they can come and pick them up to go home. So 5 minutes later during recess, literally every high school and middle school student is on their cell phone calling their parents and no more than 10 minutes later, hords of parents are showing up, in suits and work clothes and all, to take their kids home. the line at the attendance office is way out the door and chaos has officially ensued. There is a mass exodus and for those students who dont leave right away, either their parents literally walk into the classrooms during class (because school was never cancelled) or they are the few that stayed for the entire day. For the last period class of the day, not a single eleventh grader showed up (out of 200). The administration did nothing to stop all of this. School never ended up being cancelled (probably never shouldve had it in the first place). Oh and at the end of the day, the teachers are told that if we do not get power back in time for the next day, classes will be cancelled but teachers still must come in for meetings all day. YAY

Fast forward to Friday that same week. The night before, the region is hit with tons of rain to the tune of 1 and a half inches over night, creates major problems through the city so the goverment shuts everything down for Friday; school was cancelled. So we get up at 6 and hear about what happened and call around to comfirm and end up going back to sleep til 8:30 when we get a call from a friend saying that our boss said we have to go in to school. Basically, it was too dangerous for the kids to go to school, but the teachers still need to. We confirm that a few of our friends with the same boss still arent going to school so we saw screw it and stay home that friday. Monday comes and i go into the english office and run into our boss... "so did you make it in Friday" "No" "Why not you guys live so close?" (three busses away) no response from me. "did you guys call the school?" "yeah we did" pause "Was there something wrong with the entrance" "I dont know" I still have no idea what she meant by this. She proceeded to ask several teachers if they came on friday, most said no and when asked why, they all gave some vague excuse that seemed to satisfy the boss. So the next day at our department meeting she tells us that the administration says that in the event that school is closed in the future, call the school hotline and unless it explicitly says that teachers do not need to come in, teachers are expected to make it to school. WTF???

Ok, fast forward to that Wednesday...It has been a normal day so far, class is chaotic at best, and I was walking to my 7th period class and i get there and there is not a single student in the classroom. I walk out and find my partner teacher who is also missing her class and we notice a mass of students going to the gym. so we walk over there as well to find the gym filling up with all the high school students and the only adult there is the dean of students. "what is going on?" we ask "I have no idea" thats not good. Turns out the student government decided to have an impromtu meeting with the entire high school in the gym without telling any teacher or administration person to discuss some law being passed in Chile. Eventually the principal shows up and has a rather heated discussion with the student council president that really leads to absolutely nothing. The students have their meeting for the next two class periods which ends the school day. I left and had an early lunch and was only told to write down the names of the 3 students that i had that did not go to the meeting. Nothing was said to the faculty about what happened and as far as i know, nothin happened. The students felt they had the right to do what they did, so they did and no one stopped them.

So, that is the last two weeks and Saint George in a nut shell. It is a very liberal school for the spoiled, with little discipline, so so education, but a really good name.

oh, and i dont edit my posts, so excuse the many mistakes