"It's not Ee-gor, it's Igor"

In the beginning of the year, I went to my first day of classes to find 438 faces staring back at me, and a list of 438 names.

Of the original 438, about 30 are now considered “desistidos,” (the opposite of ‘exist’) which means that they stopped showing up to classes and consequently were scratched off the school roster.

I tried to leave No Child Behind. But when there are more than 400 of them, and sometimes only 9 students in a class of 50 show up, it’s difficult to assess the situation of each one. With vastly different levels of ability in each class, before designing each lesson I find myself having to decide which students I want to teach to today: those who can follow my grammar explanations and speak up when they don’t understand and correct my Portuguese when I make the same spelling mistake on the board 6 classes in a row, or the students who have made it all the way to eighth grade without learning how to read?

That is why most of my students are stuck. In the high school I high-schooled in, a student who was struggling might catch the attention of teachers, and be picked up and put back on their feet before they needed to repeat a grade. In the high school I am teaching in, 23 over-worked teachers cover 12 different subjects for 1,000 kids. A struggling student can easily slip by unnoticed, simply because there is not enough staff to seek them out and address their needs. Even the most motivated kids may end up failing a class because they happened to be absent on the day of the test that determined their grade for the entire trimester, or they won’t continue past 10^th grade because their family can’t afford to send them to live in the city 1.5 hours away, the nearest location offering 11^th and 12^th grade. Regardless of my efforts, many of my kids will be stuck working in their family's field for the rest of their lives.

The least I can do is learn their names.

Did I mention I adopted fiftythreeuplets? They are now 13 years old.

I found this plea at the end of a homework that a student handed in

Singing and snapping to our favorite song, "I am running and I have the ball"

Meet the director of the General Secondary School of Nauela.
No, I am not posting this picture just because I look tall.
I am actually the one on the left.