Family and Independence

          When people think about Latin American culture, three things tend to dominate people's perception of the place:  "they dance salsa, eat spicy food, and think family is important." I was guilty of thinking that stereotype was true myself several years ago as well (you know what I'm gonna say... you can't really know something until you experience it blah blah blah). Here's my contribution to the efforts to mythbust some stereotypes and contribute my own perspective:

• Myth #1: "They dance salsa!" There are several more Latin American music beats/dances than salsa (merengue, reggaeton, cumbia, cueca...) and not everyone goes salsa dancing on Tuesdays at Famous Dave's. Although I would say that it is true that most Latin Americans dance better than most people from the US. Grinding and twerking are stupid.
• Myth #2: "They eat spicy food!" Mexican food is spicy. Mexico is not the entirety of Latin America. Mexico borders the US... but there are dozens of very different countries south of their border! Traditional Chilean food is the least spiciest food ever (it's great for this midwesterner!) and from what I ate in Bolivia, their food doesn't seem spicy either.
• Myth #3: "Family is important!" This one is a lot more complicated to explain. It's true! But the phrasing leaves much to be desired. "Family is important." But what does that mean? Does that mean that in the US we don't care about our families? I know that's complete b.s. Most don't understand why, and on what basis, we make that claim.

          I feel like this time around I'm gaining a better understanding of what the whole "family is important" idea consists of. The teacher I assist helped me understand that in a nutshell, it's much more advantageous to spend more time with your family because you receive support from those who really love you, and equally as important, those who really know you. Your siblings and parents are the longest friends you'll ever have, so why not reap all the benefits for as long as possible? This is in stark contrast with the US; where we're taught to prize independence above all else and that if you work hard as an individual you can get what you want (American dream, anyone?)

          The balance between family and independence is one that I've never really considered before. I always knew one system, and didn't understand the other until I really lived it. There's good and bad in each extreme, the Latin American family and the US independence.  Each way of life has its advantages and consequences, which I'll try to hash out in terms of observations I've had in Chile with my students, friends and myself.
          Chileans understand that you can't go it alone, and need to depend on others for support and guidance. "Chile solidario" is a phrase Chileans like to use to describe their country, and although sometimes I disagree with that statement (no one talks to strangers or smiles at each other on the street... maybe that's just my definition of solidarity), it is clear that familiar ties help form a strong, interconnected people. This is one advantage I see in the family system: maintaining close ties and acting on them helps people to know they are never alone and can trust others. It allows people to feel vulnerable because they know they have a support system to fall back on. In the US, on the other hand, people are very individualistic and feel like they only need to depend on themselves. Instead of feeling really connected with each other, we're very competitive and don't appreciate the need for a familiar system as much as in other places. As a result, we often feel lonely, reject help, and don't allow ourselves to open up to others in a way that's more rewarding than just seeing how they can help us along our selfish paths.
          While the familiar system helps people trust and open up, it also creates (from my perspective) an undesirable influence on the development of youth. It's one thing to depend on others for help when you need it, but it becomes a problem when you depend on others so much that you can't trust yourself. And this isn't just a critique on Latin American culture, it's a comment for anyone involved in helping kids realize their abilities. My students are incredibly insecure and constantly ask me if they're doing it right and rarely assertively make their own decisions. Parents desperately want to keep their children safe and create an easier life for them, and it's easy in the bubble of the family unit. But it's incredibly important that children learn to depend on themselves, trust themselves, know their limits, and most importantly recognize their own potential. If they are taught that life is more difficult when they go it alone, it's almost like teaching them to be scared of their own potential. That won't help change anything for the future. But this is all coming from the perspective of la gringa, which might have no place in this conversation or context.
          Time to cue the cheesy quotes! :) These two stood out to me when I was growing up, and have since returned to the front of my mind while writing this post.

"Don't ask what the world needs; ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what this world needs is more people who have come alive." -Howard Thurman

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." -Marianne Williamson (You can ignore the religious-ness of this quote and it's still pretty darn cool)

It's important to keep a healthy balance between independence and family ties. In the end, family is the largest and longest collection of weirdos you get to spend your life with!

How to Turn Culture Shock into a Learning Experience

          They always say that no amount of reading, discussion, and listening to other’s experiences can truly prepare you for an intercultural experience. Actually, I’m starting to think the opposite. Yes, it’s impossible to equate a story you hear to a story you can tell, but there is something to be said about preparing and educating yourself about intercultural dialogue before it actually happens. Preparing yourself for miscommunications and misunderstandings are essential to an experience abroad: otherwise, you would continually walk away from uncomfortable situations without any idea about what was going on, why people felt that way, and why you felt uncomfortable. You would have no idea how to turn that culture-shock moment into a real learning experience.

My personal guide to processing culture exchange, with an example of what happened in class one day:

1. Identify what factually happened. At the end of a discussion about civil rights and racism in the US, and student asked about the n-word.
2. Turn the fact into a story to identify what about it made you feel weird. My most recent learning experience (of many more subtle and significant ones this time around in Santiago) happened on Wednesday in the 1a media class when they had a reading about Rosa Parks. It was a great class! The students seemed interested and for the first time they were directly asking me questions and I could see their curiosity. Near the end of class, one student raised their hand and asked nonchalantly “So, is n***** considered an insult or something?”. Half the class didn’t hear what was said, and when I wouldn’t repeat the word for them, they started chanting and shouting “say it, say it, say it!”. I was completely caught off guard, but fortunately I had the situation under control: I firmly established I wouldn’t say the word, and subsequently explained how it carries the weight of hundreds of years of horrifying repression and history.
3. Third, consider that story from every possible perspective and ask questions. On the walk home from school and for hours after, I was turning this event over and over in my head, asking questions, replaying it from various perspectives, considering details, big picture, etc. What can I take away from this? Does this reveal anything about myself? About Chile? About the way foreigners view the US? Did I learn any new skills? Did the students learn anything? Did I represent myself the way I would want? How can I use this experience to help me in the future?
4. Answer those questions. This step takes much longer and I still haven't gotten around to thinking, discussing, and writing down my tentative answers.
5. Return to the story a few months later and see how your interpretation of it has changed.

          Unsurprisingly, coming from someone who considers education to be one of the most fundamental learning tools, these real-life strategies are taken directly from the theory taught in school. Critically looking at an event or object in a text for its symbolic significance, logically working through a math problem, analyzing the results of an experiment and coming up with every possible explanation, explaining people's motivations for acting in historic events, and breaking apart people's arguments in writing. All those strategies from different classes are applied in the real world at some point or another.
          So, reading and discussing and listening DO help you prepare for an intercultural experience. It's classroom practice where you can make mistakes and learn in a safe environment. Taking different subjects in school isn't just about learning the facts that exist in that subject area. It's learning the strategies involved in creating math, history, literature, philosophy, etc. that you learn to apply in real life.
          In my mind, preparing yourself for an intercultural experience means understanding how to ask questions based on strategies you learned in the classroom. Cultural miscommunications and misunderstandings are real and tangible, but you can soften the blow with some preparation and self-forgiveness.

Learning about learning... the beginning!

          Now that I have a clearer idea of what’s expected of me and what kind of students and teachers I’ll be working with, I’ve started to form a routine and the logistical learning curve is starting to come to an end, and the real learning can start!

Here's a typical day:
6am: wake up
645: leave my house
745/8: Enter the school! It's several buildings in one general area: the enseñanza básica (elementary school, grades 1-8) are split in two different buildings, 1-4 básica and 5-8 básica. The 1-4 media (9th-12th grade) are in another building across the street. Sometimes when I come in later around 9:30 I ring the doorbell so someone can let me in the gates.

The enseñanza básica building, 1-8th grade.

The front of the building that houses the "enseñanza media", or high school.

8-9:30: 10th grade english! each grade is split into two classes, each with about 35 students. That's a big number for any class, especially in a class where the students should be doing lots of discussion to learn a new language.
9:30-9:45: Break. The students will plug in their ipods or phones to the speakers some of the classrooms have, and reggaeton or US pop music will fill the classrooms and spill outside. Some students bring in cakes, panqueques (basically crepes, rolled around manjar), or other food to sell so they can raise money to travel as a class at the end of the school year. The teachers (myself included, haha!) go to the teacher's break room and talk over a cup of tea.
9:45-11:15: 9th grade English! It usually takes about a half hour to get the students settled: the teacher will check homework for "décimas" (decimals, points they can add to their test grades), take attendance and fill in the summary of material to be covered that day in big brown books that the government will review, and try to get the students to pay attention. So, the students really only get about an hour of teaching for what's supposed to be an hour and a half.
11:15-11:30: Another break! The students hang out and teachers converse. It's fascinating to listen to their conversations, they know who's dating who, who does their homework everyday, etc. It's weird thinking about what my teachers may have been saying about my classmates when we're not around. Teachers notice way more than I ever thought they did. :)
11:30-1: The other 10th grade English class. I really need to work on memorizing names!
1-2: Lunch! They get a whole hour for lunch here. I remember getting 20 minutes in high school!

          Sometimes a big chunk of students don't come to class. If it's raining really hard often students will stay home because their parents are worried they'll get sick. A few days ago, there was a student march against the "ley tributaria", (from what I gathered: a reform that will increase taxes on the rich to help finance education reform, which won't work because the rich avoid paying full taxes. The students want the government to be in charge of education to eliminate profit) and 2/3 of all the students were gone! I found it hilarious, because something like that would NEVER happen in the US. I've personally never heard of students skipping school to go to a protest about the education system (or any protest for that matter). In 2011, the school was shut down for about 5 months because of the "toma": students took over the school and demanded better education and classrooms.

The mural that commemorates the Toma.
"It will be the people who create a very different Chile. Toma 2011: restoration in April 2013." 

          I recognized that I was coming into this experience with virtually ZERO teaching or classroom experience, and I knew that my inexperience was going to be magnified by the fact that it’s a different education system, country, and language. Fortunately, I’m not actually teaching! I’m just learning from an experienced teacher and stepping in when she asks. I’ve learned a lot during these first two weeks, mainly about all the ways it's impossible to teach a group of 35 students English for an hour and a half. I've had many really cool conversations with the teacher I'm assisting about how integrated teaching is: you have to account for the student's family life, health, habits, and mentalities. Educating young people is SO complex and difficult, but I think it will be one of the most satisfying challenges I undertake in the future!