We asked several Ecuador volunteers to describe the towns in which they live and schools where they teach. We hope these samples will give you a picture of life as a WorldTeach volunteer in Ecuador, but please keep in mind as you read these that every site is unique. Your experience will be what you make of it!
Universidad Nacional in Loja, by Lindsay Calvert
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador Sede Ambato, by Liz Henry
SECAP in Guayaquil, by Tarik Carter
SECAP in Quito, by Westra Miller
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Universidad Nacional in Loja, by Lindsay Calvert
Host Community
Loja is a quiet little town in the southern part of Ecuador, near the border of Peru. It's in the mountains but it is lower than most of the other Sierran cities and therefore warmer. There aren't many attractions for tourists, but it's a beautiful, clean city with parks and some old colonial architecture. There are 2 major universities in the town, along with a medical school and a law school. It is small enough that you can walk almost anywhere. The people in Loja are incredibly friendly and very proud of their city. It is very tranquilo. Loja is fairly close to Cuenca, another of Ecuador's larger cities, but also a short distance from the coast or the rainforest.
Host School
Volunteers work in one of two schools in Loja: the Universidad Nacional or the Tecnica. At the Nacional, volunteers have classrooms with whiteboards, TVs, stereos and access to VCRs and DVD players. Your students are from the community and have requested these classes (none are there to fulfill requirements). They range in age from about 13 to older adults, and are separated into adolescent and adult classes. On the whole they are very motivated and committed and in general just lovely people. The schedule at the Institute right now is such that each teacher has four classes and then teaches a class to some of the English professors from the University. Generally the volunteer will teach an adolescent and an adult version of two different levels. There are two semesters, each about five months long.
Teaching Assignment
Teachers at the Nacional work directly for a department called the Instituto de Idiomas. The director has been working there for a long time. He has worked with WorldTeach volunteers for more than 10 years now. He speaks quite good English since he attended Iowa University.
Host Family
My host family here in Loja has been absolutely wonderful. I live with a mother, Neibi, and her three children César (24), Andrea (18), and David (15). They run an internet café in Loja and César and Andrea are busy in the University, so I've had a lot of freedom. They have had volunteers living with them for many years and Neibi used to work for WorldTeach when they lived in Quito. The house is right near the stadium, which is awesome on game days, and is a short walk from the center of the city.
Language Issues
When I came to Ecuador, I had about 3 weeks of Spanish classes in Mexico under my belt. I was very worried that I would have big problems with the language. However, the people here are very patient. Also, my director and my family spoke English and were able to get me through the really tough spots. All in all, it hasn't been a problem, and I'm learning Spanish faster than I would have thought possible. I have actually found it to be helpful when teaching beginners. My students knew how little Spanish I spoke when I came and they were encouraged by the fact that they could hear how much I was improving. I think it made them feel like what I was asking them to do was possible.
At this point, I've been living here in Loja for 6 months, and I feel like I've got a good handle on things. I can understand most of what is going on around me. I can read the paper, watch TV and talk politics with my students and family. I've become a soccer addict and am making good friends. Getting past the language barrier was, and still is, the hardest thing for me, but many things are making sense that I didn't even realize I didn't understand before. There are just things you will never learn about a place until you have lived there long enough to forget what wasn't normal for you before. And Ecuador and its people really reward the person who they see trying to understand them. If you come here ready to learn and appreciate this country, it can be an amazing place.
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PUCESA in Ambato, by Liz Henry
Host Community
The capital of Tungurahua Province, Ambato is a bustling commercial hub located about 2.5 hours south of Quito in the Sierra Region of Ecuador. While the population of Ambato and its outlying areas is approaching 300,000 people, the city center is rather concentrated and has a small-town feel. Ambato itself is not a popular tourist destination, but many travelers pass through Ambato on their way to Banos (an hour away), a small town on the fringe of the Oriente famous for its thermal baths and proximity to a variety of outdoor activities.
Host School
In Ambato, I teach at la Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Ecuador Sede Ambato (PUCESA), a private university offering degrees in Applied Linguistics, Optometry, Computer Science, Business Administration, and Industrial Design. In addition, the Catolica offers language courses for students and professionals from the community who are not necessarily pursuing a degree at the university.
All of the students in the Department of Applied Linguistics are quite advanced, many have lived abroad in English-speaking countries, and most of them hope to be English teachers themselves. The students in the community courses range in ability from beginning to advanced and are all over the age of fifteen. Most of the students in the community courses need to learn English to increase their employment opportunities.
As a private university, the Catolica is well-equipped and I have access to CD players, DVD players, and overhead projectors for use in my classes. The university also supplies its teachers with white-board markers and a shared computer (with sporadic internet access) to prepare class materials and activities. The community courses have a set curriculum and teachers are supplied with copies of the books used in those classes. There are several classrooms at la Catolica and a small library with pedagogical material and other resources for student and faculty use. Most of the fifteen to twenty English teachers at the University are Ecuadorian, although the foreign faculty includes British and French teachers in addition to the WorldTeach volunteers.
Teaching Assignment
As I had teaching experience prior to coming to Ecuador, I taught two courses in the Department of Applied Linguistics during my first semester, as well as one advanced grammar course open to the community. My linguistics courses focused on developing advanced reading and writing skills in English and my grammar course covered a range of advanced grammar topics. I also held office hours and drop-in tutoring hours during which I helped students with homework or just talked with them in English.
Including my tutoring and office hours, I worked seventeen hours per week (excluding the time that I spent planning classes and grading student work). Because everyone in Ecuador seems to wake up early and go to bed late, I taught classes/held tutoring sessions and office hours Monday through Friday both in the morning (from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m.) and in the evening (from approximately 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., depending on the day).
This semester, I'm teaching two different sections of an advanced grammar community course for adolescents and adults and holding drop-in tutoring hours five times per week. I work Monday through Friday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. (with a half-hour break). At the request of my supervisor, I'm also helping to revise the standardized exams for the community courses, assisting with the publication of the university's bi-annual student newspaper, and helping to coordinate the university's cultural week.
Each semester at the Catolica is approximately fifteen to sixteen weeks long and there is a seven to eight week break between semesters. In addition, I also had some time off for Christmas and other national and religious holidays.
Living Arrangements
Living with my Ecuadorian host family, a sixty-year old widow and her twenty-six year old daughter, has been one of the richest aspects of my experience in Ambato. We live in a large two-story house about ten minutes by bus outside of the city center. I have my own bedroom and share a bathroom with my host sister. We have electricity and hot running water, although I still haven't figured out how to adjust the water in the shower to an ideal temperature!
Language Issues
Before arriving in Ecuador, I had taken six weeks of intensive Spanish courses and had a low-intermediate level of Spanish. After spending seven full months in Ecuador, I can converse without any problems. Of course there is still a lot of grammar and vocabulary that I don't know, but I feel comfortable communicating in nearly all situations.
Greatest Challenges
Adjusting to living with a family after being on my own for seven years, understanding the education system in Ecuador, understanding the current political situation, learning Spanish, understanding my role here and how I can best serve the students I teach, being confronted with poverty and inequality on a daily basis.
Greatest Rewards
Feeling more "connected" to people and to the larger world in which I live, learning more about Ecuador and this region of Latin America, helping my students to learn, living with my host family, working with "street children" in my free time, gaining teaching experience, improving my Spanish, learning to dance salsa.
World Teach History
There have been WorldTeach volunteers at the Catolica for several years.
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SECAP in Guayaquil, by Tarik Carter
Host Community
I live in Guayaquil, a metropolis of about 2 million people located on the southwestern coast of Ecuador. Geographically speaking, the city itself is huge! Guayaquil is divided into three main parts Centro, Norte y Sur (Downtown, Northside, and Southside). The Centro is home to business offices, government buildings, and the Malecon 2000 a stunning boardwalk and tourist area that hugs the Rio Guayas, a large river that boarders the city. The Norte and the Sur are residential areas. The city also hosts a large number of suburbios, or suburbs. These are satellite communities are densely populated, lower income areas outside the metropolitan area of Guayaquil.
To be frank, Guayaquil is like any major city in the United States. It has the same modern day conveniences as New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. The city has an excellent transportation system, five star hotels and restaurants, great night life, and trendy shopping centers and art galleries. Unfortunately, Guayaquil also suffers from the same big city problems as well. Crime, pollution, traffic and a high cost of living are chief among these concerns. The guayaquileños are a very open, genuine, and friendly people.
Teaching Assignment
I teach English at SECAP, a nation-wide learning institution with branches in every major Ecuadorian city. There are two SECAP offices in Guayaquil, both of which are located downtown. I teach two basic level classes, each two hours long, Monday through Friday. My teaching schedule is based on a 20 day cycle called a "modulo". At the end of each modulo, one usually gets a couple days off in order to turn in grades and plan for the next cycle. I am responsible for creating my own exams, projects, and oral evaluations. Fortunately the schedule and syllabus are flexible and allow you a great chance to be creative. The majority of students enrolled in the English courses are working professionals seeking to learn English in order to advance in their careers. I also have a good number of high school and university students looking for more practice, as well as a few elderly students who want to study English in their free time. My students are very committed and dedicated and I am very proud of the progress we have made together.
Living Arrangement
I live in a small house in a middle class neighborhood with a divorced middle-aged woman named Catalina and her fourteen year old son, Miguel. They are both kind, caring, and wonderful people who have essentially taken me in and treated me like a member of the family. There is also an extended family network of about ten aunts and uncles and numerous cousins that live close by. I am very close to the extended family and am treated as if I were another one of Catalina's children. Honestly I could not have asked for a better living situation. My family has helped me with my Spanish and to get adjusted to daily life in Guayaquil. More importantly, they've also helped me to understand the logic of several key cultural differences between Ecuador and the United States. I am very happy.
Language Issues
My Spanish was fairly advanced before arriving in Ecuador, having studied it in both high school and college. Despite this, I still had some difficulty dealing the dialect and speed of the Spanish spoken here on the coast. It took me approximately 2 months before I could get comfortable listening to and using the costeño Spanish. 6 months later I've developed quite the accent. Volunteers with little to no Spanish background should not fear. A co-volunteer of mine, Benjamin, came down with very little Spanish, but he was able to pick it up in about 3 months. He can now converse with Ecuadorians with no problem.
Greatest Challenges
Understanding that working abroad is VERY different from studying abroad. As a teacher, my responsibilities are much more time consuming. I am also in a very different position, socially and professionally speaking. People look at you differently and have different expectations of you.
Greatest Rewards
I have several. The first one is teaching. I absolutely love it! I have a real sense of pride and accomplishment when I see someone understanding something for the first time. I'm also very proud of the vast improvement in my ability to speak and understand Spanish. I play on a neighborhood soccer team in my free time which I also enjoy. Lastly, as clichéd as it my sound, I have made several great friends while in Ecuador. To be completely honest, I know that the relationships I have with these people will continue to grow after I have returned home.
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SECAP in Quito, by Westra Miller
Host Community
Quito, Ecuador's capital city, sits at a 9000-foot altitude in the Andes Mountains. It has always been an important city-it was once one of the two capitals of the Incan empire and was later rebuilt by the Spanish. Today it is a mix of colonial buildings and modern shopping malls, of indigenous street vendors and ice-cream selling Penguino men. The city is cradled on all sides by mountains and even after 8 months here, I am still getting used to the early morning sight of Pichincha pushing against the clouds to the west. Quito is, in many ways, the center of Ecuador. There are universities, museums, parks, movie theaters, and restaurants. From here, buses run to nearly any part of the country; both the Amazon and the beach are easy trips and there are a number of day trips that can be made in even less time. Quitenos, whether secretary or doctor, wealthy or poor, high school student or store owner, have a real love for their city in the sky.
Host School
SECAP is a national government-run organization with schools throughout the country. WorldTeach places teachers at sites in Tena, Ambato, Cuenca, and Guayaquil. Here in Quito, where the national SECAP office calls home, we have four teachers. We teach a range of ability levels, although most of the Quito teachers have basic level classes. My students are, for the most part, motivated to continue through the English program and committed to studying English. Students come from all sectors of the community to take classes at SECAP-comparatively speaking our classes are priced cheaply at $27 a month. Classroom management can be difficult sometimes due to the variety. Keeping teenagers, twenty-somethings, housewives, and professionals interested in the same grammar point is at times tricky. Through my time with SECAP, my classes have fluctuated in size from as few as nine students to as many as 32. The optimum is definitely somewhere in between.
SECAP runs a number of centros (or sites) in Quito. Mine is located on the intersection of Avenida Colon and Diez de Agosto, which makes it a relatively easy commute. The building is rather rundown but has the essentials for teaching-students, whiteboard, and chairs. There is an "audiovisual room" with a TV and VCR on one of the upper floors. The administration has given us an office, so we have a place to keep our books and stash the random presents I seem to be collecting from my students. I teach in two classrooms, both of which have their faults. Nothing, however, can compare with the grass green shag carpeting that greets my night class.
Teaching Assignment
I teach twice a day. My first class is from 7:00 am until 9:00 am and the second is from 6:00 pm until 8:00 pm. We are currently on a month-long class cycle, in which we teach for four weeks and then students must re-register and pay again before starting the whole process again. We do not receive the same vacations that teachers at other schools do, and although our students are really an amazing group, it does frustrate me that we are given so little time off. Holidays are frequent in Ecuador, however, and many times we are given impromptu vacations as the days occur. Planning around or for these holidays is often a mess, but it is a nice surprise to get some extra free time. Meaningful supervision is nonexistent in Quito, where the administration is most concerned with keeping enrollment high and receiving grades on time. I have come to think of this as a good thing-having a boss who is unconcerned with my curriculum or teaching style means that I have the freedom to play around with my classes and make things as creative as I want. In terms of scheduling, the lack of supervision translates to being able to schedule vacations when I need to. My students understand should something come up and with some planning, we have had both vacation time and made up lost class time.
Living Arrangements
I lived with a host family for the first seven months of my time here. My family was-and is-wonderful, although the situation was not without its problems. Living with my real family in the US has its own trials, so it would have been silly to expect that it would not be the same here in Ecuador. My host father and mother are a very committed couple in their mid-forties. They, along with their teenaged boy and girl, live in a small three-bedroom apartment in Quito. They are warm-hearted and welcoming. My host mother, especially, always goes out of her way to ensure that I am comfortable and well-cared for. When my brother came to visit last December, she was eager to share her home and her life with both him and me. When I lived with the family, I had my own bedroom, although the size of the apartment meant that I did not really have my own space. We five shared the one bathroom but I generally had no problem finding time to take a (sometimes cold, sometimes warm) shower. Although it is far from the gringo areas of Quito, the apartment is conveniently located near the Ecovia terminal-which allows fast public transportation to the central and southern parts of the city.
Language Issues
My Spanish was a terrible level of intermediate when I arrived. While it is not fantastic now, it has improved a great deal. After seven months, I feel as though I can usually explain myself well enough in Spanish and I can definitely have full-on conversations. I took private lessons briefly but am now just working with the "skills" that I have. Speaking another language throughout the day is at once both amazing and daunting-the moments when I can speak cogently make the ones when I can't completely worth it.
Greatest Challenges
I have to work daily to keep myself motivated and excited about being here. I love Ecuador and am constantly amazed that my life is here, even though it does not seem that way every day. I was not prepared for what an emotional roller coaster it would be living in another country. Eleven months is a long time and I have experienced nearly every emotion through the course of my time here, or sometimes, through the course of a single day. Feeling lucky, restless, inspired, impressed, disappointed, useless, and potent all at the same time is a hard act to manage. I have done it and will probably do it again, come what may. That's why I have friends, Ecuadorian and gringo alike.
Greatest Rewards
Conversations after class with students or that laughing way they say "Teacher!" after I do something stupid in class makes it worth it.
WorldTeach History
WorldTeach has had a long relationship with SECAP. Hopefully, it will continue into the future given the access the school has to such a spectrum of the Ecuadorian population.
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