The hours from 8 to 11 AM hold the potential to be either the three best or worst hours of any given weekday for me, and I suspect the same holds true for 13 of Hogar Amiguito's young residents. The variable? English class.

8-11 AM Monday through Friday is the designated time for the students to study, do their homework, and practice the academic skills they're learning at school. We have a tutor on staff who comes for these three hours a day to work with the kids. When I first arrived, I quickly discovered that this was my least favorite time of day here at Hogar Amiguitos. The teenage girls are at school, and the 13 younger kids are all cooped up in one room with little adult supervision, lots of distractions, and no desire whatsoever to study or do homework. To borrow my older sister's favorite expression, GONG SHOW.

It didn't take long for me to recognize that this part of the day was always utter chaos (or at least, it is so in Joy's absence). Over the past few weeks, the tutor has been in and out due to some medical problems, so my daily 8 o'clock dose of dread kicks into overdrive on the days I discover that Profe Sélfida won't be coming... for example, this past Monday. After being the only one here working with the kids all day Sunday as well as all night and the following morning (it was everyone's day off, including the night girl), I can't accurately sum up the emotion I felt at 8:30 that morning when Sélfida still had not arrived. In her stead came a young woman with a doctor's note explaining that Sélfida had been admitted to the hospital due to some ongoing leg troubles and wouldn't be coming in at all this week.

Study time on Monday was once again the classroom equivalent of pulling teeth.

My dissapointment over Sélfida's absence had less to do with being one person short than it did with the fact that being the only adult present means I can't execute the plan that I've developed to combat my 8-11 AM dread: English Class.

While the children of Hogar Amiguitos (and perhaps, children everywhere) have little interest in completing their homework or bettering their skills in long division, they do however have a very strong interest in learning how to speak English. With the amount of English groups that come through Hogar Amiguitos on a yearly basis, and the amount of doors that open to a young Nicaraguan who can speak English, they certainly have more than enough reasons to desire to acquire the language. So shortly after my arrival, having been asked by Joy to resume teaching their English classes, I developed a scheme to kill two birds with the only stone I had... my mother tongue.

My English class works as a reward system. I start off my classes at 8AM, after the kids are settled in to study time, with the older kids, since they are more reliable and responsible and can be trusted to finish their homework in the remaining time after my half-hour class. After their class is complete, I return to the study room and ask the tutor which children are ready for English class. The only kids who can come to my class are those who have already completed all their homework. When they return from my class they are to continue doing "reinforcement" work such as practicing printing, math, or other skills.

The beauty of the system is that the children have a fresh opportunity to be in the next group, and therefore fresh motivation, every half hour for the duration of the study time. Those who finish their work only in the last half hour forfeit their opportunity to recieve English class that day. Those who finish even a half hour early are rewarded by having the opportunity to join my class. As well, Profe Sélfida's authority in the classroom is reinforced every time I return to the room, as the only way a child can enter my class is if Profe Sélfida has personally reviewed his or her completed homework and granted the child permission to go.

I'm loving having the chance to practice my classroom management techniques, and while my kids' behaviour is far from perfect, I've been very pleased with the relationship in our class so far. From the beginning I've been very strict about the type of behaviour that is appropriate in my classroom, and I have had no problem asking a child to leave the room and return to study time if he or she isn't showing the willingness, focus, or desire needed to participate. I consider myself very lucky that the class and subject holds enough appeal that even those who were kicked out the day before will repeatedly ask me if there will be class tomorrow. I'm seeing a lot of the disrespectful, inattentive, and undesirable behaviours die off in my class, as I'm trying very hard not to reward them or allow them in my classroom. Certainly my classroom management skills are far from perfect, but I'm relishing the opportunity to work them out nonetheless. (Insert more nerdy education talk here....)

The subject, as well, is offering no end of challenges to me, as I get to not only reflect back on grammar, reading, spelling, and pronunciation rules that challenged this Canadian second-grader but have long-since faded into the landscape of subconscious competencies (change the 'y' to an 'i', and add 'es'), but also all the differences between Spanish and English, both subtle and less so, that I've uncovered over the last ten years as I've acquired my present knowledge of the language. In Spanish, the pronunciation of several consonants is negotiable (such as j, g, and x for example), the pronunciation of vowels never varies. In English, the opposite is true. With the exception of combinations like ch, th, ph, and sh, our consonants rarely change (though our enunciation is usually poor) but our vowels change constantly.

A long and a short sound for each vowel.

The e on the end of almost every word? Silent.

Combinations like au (pause), ai (faith), ou (south), oa (goat), oo (tooth), ea (treat), ie (wierd), and so on and so forth.

A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y?

I'm finding all sorts of interesting differences between the two, but these only serve to make English pronunciation much more difficult. And did you know that while Spanish, like French, conjugates the verb differently for each possible subject (yo voy; tú vas; él/ella/usted va; nostros vamos; vosotros vais; ellos/ellas/ustedes van), we conjugate almost all subjects the same (I go, you go, we go, they go) with the exception of he and she (he/she goes). All this to say, learning a second language is challenging, and teaching one is as well. But at the same time, sweet, sweet, grammar-nerdy fun.

Going back to Monday, my biggest dissapointment on hearing of Sélfida's misfortune was tied up in the fact that I wouldn't get to give my English classes to the kids this week, and the knowledge that they would certainly revert back to being unmotivated little hellions for during study time without it. We slogged through an exasperating couple hours on Monday morning, and happily, were able to hire a substitute to come in for the rest of the week.

On Tuesday morning the children and I happily resumed our morning classroom routine.

On Wednesday morning, I decided that I didn't really need a full free day and instead traded around my free time (I'm supposed to have one "free day" a week) to take several afternoons off while the kids are in school and give one more morning English class a week, modifying the routine to its present Monday-Friday state. I also offered to teach Anielka in the evenings, since the breakfast dishes always eat up her morning study time and she is one of the more eager students here.

Tomorrow, I plan to continue working with my little Spanish choir, who are currently attempting to nail down the pronunciation of the English alphabet (I'm making them spell with English letters... a whole other story there) in order to be able to sing the "ABC's" without mumbling through everything past D and re-inventing the whole "LMNOP" stretch to sound like some version of "menomenopee" (and hey, don't laugh, you did that one too.)