Five weeks in Guatemala

In the spring of 2022, I spent four weeks teaching English to kids and teenagers in Guatemala, where I spent a total of five weeks, thanks to the B.E.S.T. Project Fund. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to say that.

The B.E.S.T. project felt like too good of an opportunity to pass up. The second I found out about it, I started brainstorming project ideas. I am pursuing an honours in Hispanic Studies with a double minor in English and Teaching English as a Second Language. Career-wise, these three disciplines could lead me in very different directions. Undertaking an English-teaching internship in a Hispanic country seemed like the perfect balance to find out.

During these five weeks, I was interning at the Colegio Americano Superior in Antigua, Guatemala, while staying with Guatemalan locals and discovering the culture. I worked with a devoted Guatemalan teacher; my students ranged from high-spirited, energetic fourth graders to more or less motivated 16-year-olds with very different levels of English; and my host parents and siblings introduced me to their customs and the marvels of their homeland. Between all of them, they taught me a lot.

Francisco – the teacher I was paired with – deeply cared about his students. Learning English in Guatemala is not valued as highly as it is in most of the western world; the official curriculum considers it a third language, after Indigenous languages – the main one being Quechua – and it is taught with various degrees of efficiency, taking into account the poor level of language of some teachers and the lack of proper training and resources in some cases. Therefore, Francisco did everything in his power to ensure the quality of his teaching, from weekend education and English classes at a university in the capital to endless hours spent on preparation to motivate his students. He cultivated a friendly class environment and maintained close relationships with his students, for whom he had individual nicknames and inside jokes. What he lacked in training and English proficiency he made up for with innovative pedagogical activities and an inch of fun.

Christina Lépine, Features Editor » thecampus.features@gmail.com

My fourth-grade students taught me resilience and patience. Their 8-yearold selves did not care about learning English; they cared about their teacher, me, and having fun. It became my job to match their level of energy and instigate enthusiasm about our lessons. They made me laugh as much as they made me scared, and I loved them for it. My middle schoolers taught me resourcefulness. Their lower intermediate level of English did not allow them much wiggle room for expressing their thoughts, and I could feel their equal desire to try and give up. I racked my brain to provide them with onthe-spot tools and innovative strategies to encourage them to keep trying. My advanced teenage students taught me to be creative. They were past the simple speaking exercises; they needed to be challenged and enjoyed stepping up to it. Most of all, they taught me you can learn and laugh at the same time.

The family I stayed with consisted of Wendy and Francisco, born and raised in Antigua, with their two sons, 15-year-old Adriano and 7-year-old Carlo. On my first day, Wendy welcomed me into her home with a hug, and from then on, she made me feel at home. She accommodated my vegetarian diet to the best of her abilities, she gave me recommendations for places to visit, and she told me about her life. She told me about life at the foot of an evererupting volcano (volcán Fuego, which erupts four times per hour). She cooked traditional dishes, like pepián, a meat and veggie stew with incredible spices, daily tortillas and black beans, and tamales, a papillote-style wrap of Indigenous provenance (the word tamal comes from the Indigenous language Nahuatl). As for her sons, they became my friends.

I left Guatemala with a flinch of the heart but filled with joy and wonderment. Learning about teaching languages and Latin American cultures is all well and good, but nothing compares to experiencing it in real life. Especially when, months later, my professor mentioned the Tikal ruins and the Mayan legacy in Guatemala and Mexico, it felt incredible to know I had seen it with my own eyes.

The B.E.S.T. project allowed me to understand a profession and a culture to a level that I would have never been able to achieve otherwise. I cannot recommend it enough.