Subbing for English and the facts of Volunteer life

A volunteer is generally considered someone who is available to do things that need doing. So even though I have a job at FyA 44 (religion teacher in the elementary school), I'm seen as available for other tasks. That made itself abundantly clear last week when there were no English teachers at the high school. They were in Lima doing a two week training, and it had been decided that Theresa and I would cover most of the classes. It was a reasonable decision (we're the only other people on staff who speak English) except that we weren't told about it until Monday. With no time to prepare ourselves, we were suddenly handed the burden of two complete class schedules on top of our own.

We made it clear that we were available and willing to help (that's what apostolic availability often means) but that we would only be covering classes that fell during our free blocks. It was a very busy and tiring two weeks. Suddenly I was leaving my work every day to go fill time at the high school. It was made even more difficult by the fact that the teachers didn't leave sub folders. What did we do with the students? We made it up each day. I played hangman with an English 2 class focusing on the alphabet and Jeopardy with an English 3 class. But mostly I showed movies. The kids complained about me leaving the audio in English, but I felt that if I didn't at least do that, then we wouldn't be able to pretend that the kids were learning. Who knows – maybe one or two of them actually did learn some English by watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End. All I know is that I'm glad that the English teachers will be back on Monday, because I was just about at my wits' end trying to think up more activities to fill time in the English classes.

This all points to one of the realities of being a volunteer – we're on the bottom of the ladder. Even though Theresa and I are called Profe by the students, we're not real profes. We're not on the same level. That can be frustrating – especially when it leads to being assigned to spend two weeks subbing for a class without any support from the absent teacher – but I ultimately think it's fair. We're untrained, the rest of the staff has their education degree. We're just passing through, much of the staff have been here for almost a decade. And we came to serve needs as we could. Covering English classes was one way we could serve. It was tiring, but it was part of what I came for.