November 10, 2011

Arrived at the PedInst at 11:00 as requested by my colleague to finally complete the paperwork so I can become a permanent employee of the university. She was not in her classroom and the dean offered me his office to wait for her. Twenty minutes passed and no Pariso. I called her and she said she was on her way, texted her some twenty minutes later and she did not reply. I was fuming as I did not have a class until 2:20 and no other reason to be there.

One of my male colleagues came in to let me know that the students were concerned that my class was more about speaking and not about grammar. He instructed me to put together 50 questions that could possibly be included in the end of the semester exam and have the students practice answering them. Apparently, I’d need to submit the questions to a testing department which would give it its seal of approval. Only then can I provide them to the students.

Pariso showed up at noon and informed me we had 25 minutes before her class to complete the forms. I offered to print my resume and have her get whatever information she needed from there. The dean’s computer is a decrepit unit at least ten years old with no Internet access or even a PDF reader. The printer can only feed one page at a time and he was unnerved to hear that my resume consisted of three pages that he had to painstakingly load one by one. Pariso had never heard of the Dominican Republic and wanted to look it up in her pocket Russian/English dictionary. She also wanted reassurances that I was indeed an American.

The dean found two students to go with me to the bookstore to pick up the books, which were not ready and had to be brought in from some warehouse. I printed a page for each class to sign for their books and located a CD player in the resource room to play the CD included with the book. The students were delighted with the book and could not believe they did not have to pay for any of it. Some of the students insisted on having my signature on the inside cover as if I had written the book myself. It was also evident that they had never listened to a CD with people carrying on a conversation. We practiced the introductions before ending the lesson.

Took a break at the Morning Star Café so I could use the restroom and ran into two of the Fulbrighters there. One more class with a very enthusiastic group who wanted to pair up and do the introductions over and over. The dean came in to inspect the textbook and determined that this was good for listening, but not for grammar, which is what he feels the students need to pass the test. To hell with being able to speak the language and being understood.