Exposure and motivation

Last week my parents came to visit me. On Thursday we took a trip out to the indigenous town of Tenejapa, and then continued on to San Juan Cancuc. These are small towns, and we were the only foreigners present. It was market day in Tenejapa, so there was a lot of activity, with rural neighbors visiting to shop and sell, but San Juan Cancuc was very quiet. There weren't even any stores to shop for their beautiful textiles. About an hour and a half down beautifully forested, hilly winding roads, it felt worlds away from San Cristóbal.

Three days later I found myself making a presentation at another COMEPO meeting (the independent group of bilingual educators):

A gratuitous photo of me looking professional, if only to prove that I don't spend all my time traveling, eating, and trying to speak Tsotsil.

At the meeting, we got to talking about student motivation: its importance and its often discouragingly low levels. A school director from a rural school outside of San Juan Cancuc, that same sleepy town I had visited with my parents, shared a story:

There was going to be a story contest for indigenous students. The director encouraged a teacher to have her students participate. "No, no," she said, "no time, no materials, can´t do it." (*In her defense - that could easily, easily be me or many better teachers than me.) So, one day when the teacher was absent, the director covered her class and led the students in writing stories for the contest. And one of them won! The student, along with his teacher, was invited to an awards ceremony in Mexico City. Again, the teacher: "Mexico City? That´s too far. No, no, I can´t go." Again, the director stepped in. Before leaving for the capital, it seemed like everyone at the school wanted to provide some last-minute instruction for the student. They collected money for shoes and new clothes but told him he also had to wear his traditional clothes from his community. They told him he had to greet people in Spanish with "Buenos días" and "Buenas tardes," and that he should be polite in receiving food. It was a huge experience for both the child and the director - flying on a plane, staying on a top floor in a tall hotel building, being offered a sandwich and taking off everything so he could eat the bread... It was certainly motivating for the child, the director, the school and the community.

The story made me think about other "exposure" opportunities I´ve witnessed, some of which I cynically judged to be gimmicky:

* The FBI taking our sixth graders on a one-day trip to New York.

* Our college mentoring program bringing a busload of middle schoolers to campus, where their most significant experience was probably gorging themselves in the cafeteria to the point of vomiting.

* Peace Corps hosting a conference where volunteers from all over Honduras could bring two leaders from our site. I brought a health promoter and a woman from the semi-rural exurb where I worked. I remember her spending the nights praying loudly in tongues. I remember an indigenous woman who came with another volunteer sharing about the merits of breast-feeding her five-year old. Most of all, I remember the excitement of traveling somewhere new, meeting new people, and returning to our town, motivated to try new strategies we learned.

And I thought about myself, here in Chiapas for 6 months.

Do we always need big experiences in order to find motivation? No. Should we capitalize on innate curiosity of children as a source of motivation? Yes. But big (and sometimes gimmicky) "exposure" experiences generally don't hurt. And for people like the boy and his school director outside of San Juan Cancuc, where classes are too big, teachers are overwhelmed, and resources are scarce, a big experience can be life-changing.