control de asistencia

so duocUC's attendance policy looks like this:

El alumno debe asistir al menos al 75% de las clases, esto significa que puede faltar a 9 clases, con o sin justificativo. Aunque presente certificado médico el alumno será registrado como ausente, solo se registrará presente cuando el alumno participe en alguna actividad obligatoria de su carrera, lo que deberá ser comunicado a su profesor de Inglés con la debida antelación. La asistencia cuenta desde el primer día de clases aunque el alumno se haya inscrito tarde. El alumno que falte a más de 9 clases REPROBARÁ la asignatura, sin excepción.

now i'm no certified polyglot, but basically, what that there says in english is:

"meh."

i believe i've already established that we are all working within a rather arduous system here in chile. duocUC students are generally (or so i've been told by other students) lackadaisical and that phenomena is only exacerbated within the english department. mind you, this is not universal. i have great, enthusiastic students that show up every day. my host mom angelica is a passionate learner and has spent the last week working on an english presentation that i know my students haven't even thought about yet. that being said, i get to experience this:

now this may be hard to decipher, so here's the code: a dot suggests a day in which a student came to class and a slash suggests an absence. yes... i know, hard to believe. this is my "clase de fantasmas" or ghost class - networking students who my boss apparently gave up on 3 years ago - and as you can see, we don't exactly do a lot of group work. duocUC is infamous for its shit attendance, but the provided photo does more than simply reinforce a perennial tradition, this right here redefines.

when i show this sheet to other professors (it's even funnier now with another 2 weeks of classes and absences tacked on) they are shocked. they immediately ask what "career" my students are in, to which i answer "redes" (networking), after which they let out an "oh" of understanding, yet are still transfixed, "still though, that's awful. why do they hate you?" they'll joke. "it's probably because i refuse to wear pants in class" i answer.

in reality, the problem can be attributed to any number of the following things:

1) english is a joke at our school

2) english is especially a nuisance for kids who work with machines all day

3) duocUC in general isn't setting itself up for great attendance when one only gets reprimanded after 9 absences

4) its incredibly, incredibly easy to get a doctor to write up a medical excuse in this country, and in the style of a 9th grade biology class, this school accepts them as collateral for missing class

5) english is a joke at our school

6) even if you miss 9 classes, you can still keep coming to class and take all the tests. chances are if you pass your finals you'll pass the class despite the rule that states "after 9 absences, you fail"

7) i intimidate my students with my dapper attire and stunning looks

8) any work related excuse will usually play with duocUC as a valid reason to miss class as its comparable to a vocational school in the states. written proof of work engagements may actually be even easier to produce than the inexplicable ease with which one can produce evidence of disease. of course, none of the students in this class have jobs, so this doesn't actually play

9) school sucks (not just english) is the general sentiment of the majority of my students

10) language classes are generally more frustrating than your run of the mill, future career related courses

not that american public schools are generally any better, but these kids/adults have been conditioned to not take education too seriously. the disparity between public and private institutions in chile is close to offensive. from what i have read/heard/seen, having less money for education in this country is commensurate to signing you progeny up for less opportunity. while the same problem is thriving in the united states, it's decidedly worse here, with a much smaller middle class and less purchasing power. duocUC costs a decent amount of money, and yet still, in my 2 months of teaching alone i have seen egregious curriculum changes, ill-prepared staff, misinformation, and some resulting indifference from students. all this has taken place in a well-funded, successful technical institute. from what i've heard, english classes in grade school here are a institutional joke, whereas in the united states and canada, they're generally just jokes to the students mandated to them. here, even if you were all in for the learning, you'd run into some serious problems.

since duocUC is a technical institute, it's all about certification in these parts. where english is concerned, this means passing the TOEIC. the TOEIC is a (american) standardized test that has been adopted in some parts of our world as some sort of measuring stick of english ability. passing the TOEIC at duocUC is an extra gold star on your certificate, though it does not by any means suggest (to anyone who knows anything about the test) that you speak better english than say, a baboon. this year, duocUC has began simply teaching the test in its intermediate and advanced levels (essentially all but basic 1 and basic 2 english). without curriculum or precedent, we english professors have been thrown into test prep, which is balls, but what's more balls is that i'm trying to teach kids who can't remember what "where" means why "the lady is looking at clothes" is a better description of a woman browsing for threads than "the lady looks at clothes."

challenges. some rise to them, some fall. me, i like my ghost class. not wearing pants is awkward when you're in a room full of pants police.

for some brighter fare, a picture of the seabed paradise i walk past twice a day in the park next to my house. yes, i finally live next to a park/center of burgeoning teenage love and drug experimentation and yes, i love it. for a horribly polluted city, santiago really done good by pumping its neighborhoods full of nameless, public spaces. take a page los angeles: