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Today I had my first taste of ‘working life’ in Panama (yay!). Moníca, whose daughters I’ve been teaching English to asked me to help out in her school because her English teacher can’t come on Tuesdays… of course I jumped at the opportunity!

This is the school sign, I'll get one of the actual school soon!

So I found out about it Monday night and started Tuesday morning 7am, no time to prepare anything but I honestly don’t think I could have prepared for what was in store anyway!

The children are NUTS and the teachers are SO RELAXED, it’s been a whole new insight into the Panama way of life and their psyche! For a fact, if the classroom antics were going on in Ireland there’d be a lot of children ‘sa cúinne’ for being bold!

I realised I’d forgotten so many things about primary school too, like saying your prayers in the morning and evening, having to ask permission to go to the toilet and how much fun it was to draw on the white board (both for the kids and me!)

My first class was disastrous, almost as soon as the teacher left (I thought she was coming back but she never did!) the drama started. One little boy left the classroom to wait for his mammy outside so I’d to chase after him, then when he came back in - after half the class followed him outside- he started throwing toys and Lego around the room and wouldn’t put on his shoes! When the secretary came along (as planned, it wasn’t because I was thaaaaat bad) to help out order wasn’t even restored, and she wasn’t too concerned (she certainly didn’t appear shocked amnyway)! So we tried to sing the alphabet (fail), tried colouring-in (fail), tried to sit in a circle (fail). It was HILAROUS!! If it was Ireland I’d be mortified, but it’s Panama and I have a feeling neither the teacher nor the secretary were expecting too much more from me only to attempt to babysit for the two hours!  

Just one morning and WOW what an insight into the Panama mind-set it has been (and a trip down memory lane too).

The school is tiny too, it only goes to second grade so I was in all three classes before the day was over.

This year's timetable and display

The kids get away with murder here! In my second class it took us an hour and a half to write five English sentences, the kids were so busy chatting to each other and literally rolling around on the floor and climbing their seats. Class just would not work like this at home, I found myself asking how the children learn anything with all action going on around them!

For the rest of the day I was with the temp Tuesday teacher, Carmen and she was so lovely! She told me all about her family and Panama and showed me pictures of both. She must be at least fifty because she’s a granny but she only looks about forty (the usual in Panama). I was also horrified though when the kids asked me how old I was- I should never have asked them to guess, 28??!! Really?! Lesson learned: ‘Must stay out of the sun’ L

Who needs desks?

Took a few snaps of the kids and classroom too, I wouldn’t have done it only Carmen was showed me videos of the kids she’d taken so I figured it was alright! :D It was so funny though because we were doing this in the middle of class with the children having the craic all around us! I felt like we were doing as much dossing as them!  

This is supposed to be a crocodile...

At least the fish and dog are good?

It was fun sneaking a peek in their lunch boxes too, I can’t decide if it’s better or worse than Ireland but there was no chocolate or Nutella for starters! Every single child had either a fruit juice or milk- vanilla flavour and fortified with Vitamins A and C, folic acid and iron- how bad! And then it was either a ham and cheese sambo (with manky Easy Singles cheese) or a scrambled egg sambo (actually pretty tasty) or a hotdog (actually hot, the teacher microwaves their lunch for them!). The fruit was rare enough though, a mango, banana and apple only appeared in three lunch boxes from what I saw. No yogurts to be seen either, instead they had salty snack crackers and Pringles with dips, not too shabby!

When the day finished Carmen and I swapped WhatsApp numbers (It’s never ‘Can I have your number?’ it’s ‘Have you WhatsApp?’) as we waved the children off when their taxi collected them to bring them home! Again, who sends their 7 year old home in a taxi in Ireland?! Gas stuff!

Phew, you’ve made it to the end, sorry it was so long! Also, fair play to any primary teachers reading this, my respect for you has deepened!