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.

Thinking and talking, talking and thinking

One of my hypotheses about the strong oral language production of students at Pequeño Sol, the private school where I observe, is that it is strongly connected to their use of Philosophy for Children. The students take part in a philosophy class as part of their curriculum from their first year of preschool through secondary school. (If you want to see an adorable example of this program and small children in philosophy class, check out the documentary Just a Beginning. It is especially cute because it is French.)

A couple weeks ago, I attended a conference on Philosophy for Children (Filosofía para niños).

The Latin American Center for Philosophy for Children happens to be located right here in San Cristóbal, and this week I had the chance to meet the director, Dr. Eugenio Echeverría.

I had just come from a school where a dynamic teacher was rapid-firing questions at fourth graders, eliciting a few one or two word answers. I was already thinking about how class structures can promote actual discourse and scenarios in which students are the ones who are asking the questions. In Pequeño Sol, children ask a lot of questions - of their teachers and of their peers. In fact, in our conversation, Dr. Echeverría shared a comment made by the high school teacher of one of his children who had attended the school: "You must come from Pequeño Sol because you ask a lot of questions and you talk a lot."

Philosphy for Children follows a format of a community dialogue and has 4 main goals:
* Develop thinking skills.
* Explore values.
* Construct concepts. (e.g. happiness, culture, reality, power, democracy, beauty...)
* Life project (This does not translate particularly well in English, but the idea is that children begin to answer the questions "What kind of person do I want to be? In what kind of world do I want to live?)

Apart from these, Dr. Echeverría spoke of additional goals and constructs of the program: self-esteem, resiliency*, internal locus of control, defense against manipulation by the media, critical consumption, position taking, developing intellectual humility or epistemic uncertainty... Certainly high aims for a program that works with children as young as 3 years old!

The structure of the classes themselves is a wonderful venue for developing oral language. Dialogues are partly student-run and the teacher/facilitator pushes students to use specific vocabulary, probes thinking so that they can express well-formulated opinions, and requires that they respond to each other´s ideas.

Apart from this structure, the Philosophy for Children program interests me in the shared space that thinking and speaking hold in educational discourse. Although both are valued - critical thinking especially is a popular buzz-phrase - they are rarely considered an ends in and of themselves. As educators, we encourage students to use talk in order to develop their writing and comprehend reading, in order to express mathematical reasoning, or in order to describe scientific observations. We encourage them to develop thinking in order to more clearly express ideas about their reading, writing, and arithmetic.
We promote speaking to develop writing, but rarely writing to develop speaking.
And even less speaking to develop thinking (indeed, my preferred approach to formulating a thought!)

A class devoted to thinking? It sounds absurd. The same for a class devoted to speaking.
But that doesn't mean they are not honorable end goals.






*For a reflection on the teaching and testing of skills like resiliency, check out the blog of fellow Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching recipient, Patrick Walsh: https://bigpictureeducation.wordpress.com/2016/04/06/are-21st-century-skills-non-cognitive/ (I highly recommend his blog in general.)

Semana Santa

Spring is here, with Holy Week festivities, and in my case a nasty stomach bug.
I'm glad I chose to stay home instead of traveling like all the rest of Mexico.
I was able to participate in some of the San Cristóbal rituals. Thanks to Virginia at the university for being my cultural interpreter! (Her words quoted below.)

On jueves santo, there is a mass, and then "half the population of San Cristobal hits the streets to tour 7 churches --any 7 -- in conmemoration of Christ´s going to the house of Annas, to Caifas, to Pilate, to Herod, back to Pilote, etc. The churches are all beautifully decorated with Eucharistic themes and open till midnight for this 7 Casas pilgrimage."

Lest people get hungry while trekking among
7 churches, there are food stands set up EVERYWHERE -
churros, potato chips, corn, pizza,fruit soaked in liquor...

On Friday is the Via Crucis, Way of the Cross parade through the streets.

"The most wonderful --and longest--mass of the year is the Vigilia Pascual Saturday night at 7. 7 readings, 7 psamlms, blessing of the fire and water, a dark bare church, eerie chants... Suddenly, the church explodes in light, flowers and the joyful, insistent clamor of bells"

Zapatourism

In accordance with the local authorities and autonomous municipalities, the transport of illegal vehicles, planting of drugs, and assaults are prohibited. You are in Zapatista rebellion territory. Here the community rules and the government obeys.

The Zapatista movement is a huge part of San Cristóbal history and continues to this day - for many international and Mexican tourists in the form of romanticized revolutionary dreams and for residents of nearby caracols (autonomous Zapatista communities) in the form of a nuanced reality.

In honor of fellow Fulbrighter Andrea´s visit to Chiapas, we decided to venture a visit to the closest community, Oventic. Unlike other nearby indigenous towns, it doesn´t advertise itself as a tourist destination, but we were allowed to enter. After finally locating the taxis that travel in the right direction and after surviving a hair-raising hour of steep cliffs, sharp turns, dense fog, and inadvisable speeds, we arrived at a road-side gate where a masked Zapatista took our information. Then a soft-spoken and kind woman (also masked) showed us the highlights of the small community.

As in many indigenous communities, photos of people are prohibited, but there were impressive murals on many of the buildings. The fog, which turned to drizzling rain, added to the other-worldly ambiance, but made the pictures a bit blurry.

We are the root

Office of women of dignity

In the autonomous Zapatista schools, children
are educated in the spirit and collective
conception of the world.

Can I tell you about oral language in Mexican primary schools?

In our training in August, a Fulbright alum presented his experience studying Korean. He was the first American (typically known for poor study skills) to win the oratory prize for beginning students. His presentation was on The Seven Temples, and the way he won was by practicing… with everyone. He would walk around the city and approach random strangers: “Can I tell you about the 7 famous temples?”

                That’s how I feel about my current research project. I finally made a decision about how I want to focus my research, and I’m telling EVERYONE – teachers, principals, fellow grantees, friends, parents, friends’ visiting parents, teachers’ center coordinators, etc. This has helped me 1) get feedback and 2) organize my own thoughts and ideas.

So… “Can I talk you about oral language in Mexican primary schools?”

Project objectives:

1) Describe indicators of strong oral language at different age/grade levels, considering the national learning standards and within the areas of vocabulary, structure, and dialogue.

2) Identify academic contexts that promote the development of oral expression (teacher questioning, social structures, learning activities).

Background/Justification:

                Oral language development is critical in the formation of literacy skills. This is especially true for second language learners, who tend to develop vocabulary and grammatical structures orally and then transfer them to writing. However, strong oral language skills have value in and of themselves. They are included in both Mexican and US learning standards, although Mexican education has traditionally placed more emphasis on oral production – choral reading, recitation, etc.

                In contrast to reading and writing, there are not many tools to measure oral expression, and this makes it difficult to determine strengths and weaknesses, establish academic goals, and measure progress. An analysis of speaking in various school contexts will permit teachers (and potentially even the students themselves) to perform these tasks.

Audience:

Mexican and US dual language primary school teachers

Hypotheses:

*Social curriculum (like the one at the private school, Pequeño Sol, where I observe) supports academic language development.

*Participation in a Philosophy for Children program (again, Pequeño Sol) develops oral language abilities.

*Oral language projects promote language development.

*Graded speaking activities elevate the status of oral language among students and teachers.

*Socio-economic class and education level of parents affects the level of oral language of children.

                *These factors also affect the register and complexity of language used by teachers.

                *Advanced discourse of a few children can elevate the discourse of a whole class.

Methodology:

1. Collect audio recordings from different schools, grades, and subject materials.

2. Transcribe recordings.

3. Analyze transcriptions for vocabulary, structure, and dialogue. Look for patterns. Identify examples of discourse that exemplify oral language learning standards.

4. Design a rubric or collection of exemplars to use in evaluating oral language.

5. In examples of high levels of oral language, analyze the context – type of activity, role of the teacher, evident routines – that could have supported language production.

6. Summarize conclusions about context

My favorite Mayan words

Today I completed the second half of my Tsotsil mid-term. In honor of this milestone of study, I offer the following linguistic gems:

*Chinab tak'in - computer - translates as "metal brain"
*Chonbolom - animal - translates as "serpent jaguar"
*Cha'vinik - 40 - translates as "two men" (Mayan numbers follow a base 20 system. According to my professor, this has to do with the number of finger/toes a person has for counting. Therefore, multiples of 20 are multiples of men. 40 = 2 men, 60 = 3 men, 80 = 4 men, etc.)
*Chib k'onton - I am sad. - translates as "my heart is in two"
*Jun k'onton- I am happy. - translates as "my heart is one (whole)"
*Kaxlanvaj - Bread - translates as "Spanish tortilla"

Get out if you can / Treading lightly in educational politics

Friday I visited the government's Teacher Center. It is located on the outskirts of town, next to this neighborhood:

Maybe I'm mis-translating this, but I'm pretty sure it is called "Get out if you can..."

The main reason I wanted to connect with the teacher center was to try to lend some legitimacy to my research project and potentially recruit teachers with whom to collaborate.

In researching said teacher center, however, I discovered it might not be the most popular endorsement. Instead of finding an address in my google search, I found a couple of articles about an incident this summer when union activists burned the furniture and paperwork and defaced the buildings in protest against the education reform.

The buildings were significantly run-down, and there was no running water. Three women sat in a dark office and were initially a little reserved, but when I explained my project, they opened up and sounded interested in collaborating. I'm going back on Tuesday to talk to the boss, so we shall see...