• Monday: The Onboarding

My Spanish is still a bit rusty at this point and it leads to me accidentally starting a job interview for a position at the Milhouse Hostel, an energetic hub and the meeting space for Voluntario Global. Five minutes in, when it’s revealed that I’m not Iranian, I am brought to a table with Lucia, Neil, and Victor. Lucia is the volunteer coordinator and Neil is a former Voluntario Global volunteer from the UK who came to Buenos Aires and never quite left. Victor, a Bolivian born and raised in Denmark, is working for four weeks at the academy with me. Lucia pulls up a slide presentation outlining our time at BYS including expectations, travel routes, schedules. Then, we embark on a trip to the school to get comfortable with the travel route and meet Silvia and the other teachers. 

Victor and I travel to the school Monday through Wednesday to teach from 16:30-19:30pm (17:30pm on Mondays). From Milhouse we take the C line on the Subte to Retiro where we board a train to Estancia Ing. Pablo Nogues. According to Neil, the train is “like a cattle car, with its open doors.” There’s a mini marketplace of walking vendors selling anything from trashbags to chocolate candies down the aisles. 

On our first day, we are brought in by Silvia for some refreshments, delicious facturas, and to meet the teacher we will be closely working with, Mel. Mel is a local and graduate of BYS academy who speaks with a slight British accent. She walks us through a typical lesson plan and then we are introduced to her current class. The students range from 13-17 and interact with us with the typically awkwardness you would expect from any teenager meeting a new adult for the first time. The whole endeavor is quick, just familiarizing Victor and I with the project. 

• Tuesday: The First Class

Victor and I arrive about ten minutes early to the school to settle in. Our role is to work with students who miss the regularly scheduled classes due to other commitments. We start with a speaking warm up and then move into the lesson which is a mix of themed speaking and listening. Thiago, our first student, is a high school student from Pablo Nogués. As the session progressed, he began asking Victor and I questions. What are our countries like? What do we study? Do we like fútbol? He smiled a bit when we said yes.

After our time with Thiago, Victor and I returned to Mel’s classroom for a more in-depth introduction to her class. We talked about traditional foods, which the U.S. lacks, and popular sports, and other things unique to our countries. While nobody recognized my home state of Pennsylvania, everyone knew Rocky Balboa. It was nice to see that Philadelphia’s name travels.

• The Routine

Victor and I fell into a rhythm quickly, the way you do when you share a commute with someone. We'd meet at Retiro station, talk for twenty minutes or so about our students, about Buenos Aires, about whatever, before the conversation tapered off and we each retreated: Victor into his book, me into music, the vendors' voices moving through the car like a soundtrack. Trash bags, chocolate candies, phone chargers. Every ten minutes, like clockwork. The doors stayed open. The train bumped along.

BYS sits between two buildings with a small garden running through the middle. Silvia's office and Mel's classroom occupy the first; three more classrooms and a snack area fill the second. Students trickle in around 4:30, still in their school clothes, settling into the kind of late afternoon that feels unhurried. The teachers greet you with a kiss on the cheek every single day, without exception. The students fling a shy "hello" and look at the floor. The school feels, in a way that's hard to articulate, like it belongs to Silvia, which is to say it feels like a place someone actually cares about.

The ride back was quieter. Victor and I would pick up where we'd left off, comparing notes on a student's pronunciation or an exchange that had stuck with us, before drifting back into our own worlds as the city reassembled itself outside the windows.

• When the Rain Came

On my first day in Buenos Aires, I was told by my uber driver from the airport that “Buenos Aires is a city that never sleeps.” I would caveat that: until it rains. On our second Monday, the rain poured all day and the city went silent. Our train ride was a soggy and quiet one. When we talked to our students, they casually mentioned that they hadn’t gone to school that day: “it rained.” It reminded me of snow days in Pennsylvania as a child when any responsibility was absolved until the roads were thawed. 

Even in the rain, BYS Academy operated, it was a testament to Silvia’s founding principle: every child deserves the same shot, regardless of what neighborhood they were born into. Neighborhoods, like Ing. Pablo Nogués, are left behind by the government with little funding and resources.

If it truly takes a village, that village is in BYS Academy.