Literature during the lockdown

When the pandemic reached Guatemala, the school I was teaching in was on the verge of completing the third quarter of the academic year. For the first few weeks of lockdown, I had my students wrap up the work they’d already started.

There was a shift in everyone’s frame of mind, when we realized it wasn’t going to be a short-term situation. There were also the realities of wide variance in access to computers and the internet. Given all that, and education ministry guidelines, the school administration decided that all school work would be optional.

Because of the Cycle System, my students were relatively comfortable with the process of receiving and submitting tasks online, and working independently. But I needed to be sure that the work I gave them was worth their while, not in terms of the language skills it gave them, but in terms of how it enriched or improved their present moment. 

So, for the last quarter, I made weekly newsletters which gave my students one poem to read, and a selection of writing prompts to choose from (or they could create their own) to write one creative and one analytical piece each week, neither to exceed 300 words. It was work that they could realistically accomplish, and it was a reliable way for me to provide new material that could be understood and digested independently.

I chose poems that I hoped would be meaningful to them, and I created prompts that would enrich their appreciation of the poems. I was able to help individual students who needed it over phone calls, and with or without my help, the writing they turned in was delightful.

I had to leave the country before the school year re-opened, and I’m still sad that I couldn’t say bye to most of them. But I’ll always be grateful to have seen their learning and growth with so little external support.