Expectations and results

By Katherine Ferry

As the end of March rushes at us, Rachel and I are stirred by the reality that only a few weeks of English classes remain (two weeks of April will be consumed by Easter vacation), and feel the anxiety surrounding the inevitable questions of: Have our students learned enough? Will they be prepared if their next step in life is leaving for the United States?

I have tried to have a constructive response to these questions. I have thought a lot about what we can expect from our work in Ziquítaro, and the absolute necessity of being realistic about the progress we can achieve. One of the essential bits of guidance I would like to impart to our future volunteer English teachers is that, in an educational and cultural system so drastically unlike our American version, with what we consider hopelessly irresponsible practices being the norm, we must do our best to adapt in order to reach our goals. We must remember: Our job here is to give English classes. While we wish we could reform the unfortunate quality of the schools (make sure classes take place every day, teachers remain in their classrooms at all times, and so forth), attempting a sweeping reform is not what we came here for and may be inappropriate. We do our best to remove the impediments which keep us from executing our classes well, and will be satisfied with the effects of our doing so.

Previous blog entries have already revealed that the work here can be exasperating. We can’t reach all the students. Repeated attempts to transform a student with behavior problems who refuses to study may fail. There will be some disinterested parents, careless teachers, and school days missed because the teachers have to go to a barbeque. But I know (I know!) that I reached some of them, and some of them will have the basic English skills they will need if they journey North.

Recently Rachel and I had a very encouraging conversation with an elementary school teacher who is delighted with her job. She glowed when she showed us some assignments of her top students as she repeated, “See? I taught them all this!”. She pointed out students she’d taught since they entered the Primaria, saying how proud she was that she was the teacher who taught them to read. I thought of this as I gave my students their second oral exam. I’ll demonstrate with the example of a particular student named Miguel. When I first arrived, he mixed with the most difficult of his classmates and his behavior was lamentable, his work below average. This semester he has transformed himself, staying after class to make sure his assignments are perfect, showing up for study sessions, and ignoring his loud friends during English class. He flew through his oral exam, comfortably answering questions and easily scoring the points necessary to earn an English Champ award. Miguel has put in the effort, and I am the one who taught him these basics. Now that is a result I can be proud of.

The Cost of High School By Rachel Wickland

The nearest high school to Ziquítaro, is a private school in the CEC y TEM system in Penjamillo (a town about 15minutes away by bus). CEC y TEM stands for Colegio de Estudios Cientificos y Technologicos de Estado de Michoacán. Unlike a high school in The United States, you must enter under a specific area of study (much like college). The four areas of study offered at the PLANTEL 01 Penjamillo school are Technician in Analysis and Technology of Food, Technician in Internal Combustion, Technician in Administration, and Technician in Information. The school also offers extracurricular activities, one of which includes a regional champion women’s basketball team.

Now let’s consider the cost of going to high school for someone living in Ziquítaro. We will already assume that there is a cost related to the students attending high school because it limits their availability to work for an income. Then, we consider the charge for the entrance exam you must take upon entering the system, which costs $100MEX. An entering student must also buy uniforms ($300MEX), pay a registration fee for the year ($200MEX), daily transportation (to and from Penjamillo at $7MEX each way), and any food they will eat while at school if they do not bring it from home (usually $20MEX). Variables that add to the cost of school are: homework and projects that require the use of the Internet($10MEX/hour), extracurricular activities that require the student to travel, school supplies, etc. So then, we break down the cost of the first year of high school as follows:

Entrance Exam $100MEX
Yearly Registration $200MEX
Uniforms $300MEX
Transportation $2520MEX ($14MEX x 180 day scholastic year)
_______________________________________________
TOTAL $3120MEX*/ year ($222.86USD^)
$260MEX/ month ($18.57USD)

*This figure does not consider the cost of variables and assumes the student brings food from home.
*This figure was derived using the current 14-1 exchange rate.

Through the educational section of the program, Oportunidades, that you have no doubt read about in past blogs, support for a student in the first year of high school is $610MEX for young men, and $700MEX for young women. This easily covers the tuition and all other associated fees of the high school, with extra to spare. For a family not involved in Oportunidades, however, the cost can be daunting. The other day, I casually asked around for the average monthly income of an average family living in Ziquítaro, and the median answer I received was between $2000MEX and $3000MEX per month.

There is still much to be investigated in this area of Ziquítaro, because it seems apparent that with any funding from Opportunidades the cost of high school would be easy to cover, and virtually all barriers to continuing one’s education resolved. However, we also have to consider the culturally charged issues of keeping the woman in the home, the idea that a “real man” works, the fear of entering the unknown, lack of confidence in their ability to perform in the high school, and the fact that many people from Ziquítaro have a skewed self-awareness as a group of “country-bumpkins” if you will.

For these and so many more reasons, I pound into my students every day that yes, THEY CAN DO IT! Yes, YOU ARE INTELLIGENT! Yes, YOU CAN FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS! I truly hope that Katherine and I can be examples of success for our students and that our examples will spark the desire within them to continue their education, even in the face of the challenges presented above.

Update from Rachel Wickland

The Mexican landscape impressed upon me the need to write this blog. This past weekend, Katherine and I took a road trip to the Sierra Chincua Monarch Butterfly Reserve on a weekend trip (I will get to this fantastic experience a bit later). On the ten-hour bus ride, the towns we past by were strikingly similar to that of our own familiar Ziquitaro. The abandoned houses, the dilapidated schools, the echoes of United States popular culture (I was particularly fond of an Interstate 5 sign hung in a window)…you could have very easily mistaken one town for the other. So in that ten-hour stretch, I began to think: Just how many other towns out there are like Ziquirato? The thought was daunting. How many other schools are providing an education to children of bi-national circumstances? How many other families are broken apart from immigration? How many other pueblitos have shrunk in population due to the absence of working-age men?

Whether or not we agree with the current policies and administration surrounding immigration, we cannot turn a blind eye to the challenges it presents. Immigration has become the untouchable subject in politics, not only because of the complexities it presents in terms of campaigning and elections (i.e. winning the “Latino vote”), but because of the Catch-22 that the United States has found itself in with respect to Mexican immigrants. A great film called, “A Day Without A Mexican,” illustrates the dependence of the United States on immigrant (specifically Mexican) labor. The driving point of the film emerges provoking the idea of: What would my day be like without the Mexican labor force? Imagine if you will: no farm workers, no housemaids, no day laborers, no caretakers—no fast food!! Risking sounding completely impersonal, I propose just for a moment we conceptualize Mexican immigrant labor as a commodity, an economic sector that supplies Mexico with a huge chunk of its GDP (in remittances) and provides the United States with a cheap labor force that pays into the tax purse, yet receives no social benefit from those taxes (not to mention the ease of exploitation using documentation as a threat). From this perspective, it is a pretty sweet deal. So in the eyes of the United States and Mexican governments, what would be the motivation to change such a system? Lest I remind you we are looking at the commodity of Mexican labor: Mexico producing an unskilled, uneducated source of inexpensive labor and selling it for remittances, and the United States benefiting economically from the purchase of a convenient, exploitable labor source for which they are not socially obligated or responsible.

But then...where is the origin of such a mutually beneficial system? Ziquitaro. Zinaparo. Numaran. And all of the countless other pueblitos we passed by in our bus trip to see the butterflies. The reality is that the Mexican immigrant labor force is not a commodity to be bought and sold. It is a group made up of people that I have the privilege of sharing my life with in our little town. The future of this group resides within the intelligent young minds that I joyfully teach English to on a daily basis. But what about the students and families that want to break out of the cycle of being under educated and having to heed to the pull of the Mexican immigrant labor force in the US? What is the recourse for the people who live in a community with a system of poor education and families living in poverty? In fact, it is the opinion of many mothers in our community that the school system is so poor that sometimes they question if they would rather keep their children at home. With all the hope in the world, this is what our organization is trying to change. Let me just quote directly from our mission statement: “First Step aims to help town members lead more successful lives in both Mexico and the US through enhancing their access to education as well as bolstering its relative importance in their lives. Ultimately our organization has bilateral aims: to instill a sense of hope and future in towns where immigration has become virtually the only economic option while simultaneously helping forge stronger communities in the US by educating its future members.” We are challenging our students to make themselves more than a commodity in the face of stereotypes, and every day, they impress their beautiful, unique humanness on me.

Now for the butterflies: Katherine and I had such an amazing experience at the Sierra Chincua Monarch Butterfly Reserve in the Zitaquaro area of Michoacan. It was truly unlike anything I had seen before in my life. As we hiked down to the hibernation site of the monarchs, millions of butterflies flitted around in the air. It was as if it was snowing, but the snowflakes were somehow alive. The green trees seemed brown because of the overwhelming number of butterflies crowded on them. To say the least, it was the greatest natural wonder I have ever witnessed. (Other than the birth of my precious niece Katelyn.) Interestingly enough, the monarchs migrate from the Great Lakes area of the US and Canada, then hibernate in areas of Mexico, and will eventually lay their eggs in and around Texas. Imagine all that wing flapping!! I never considered the Monarch butterfly to be an international migrant!

English Champs

by Katherine Ferry

I tried out a new testing method at the Telesecundaria this week and am thrilled with the results. After last semester’s many unsuccessful attempts to stop an epidemic of cheating in my classes, I decided to renounce written tests altogether and give individual oral exams. The test consisted of 18-30 questions, depending on the class level. Each student entered the class alone for 5 to 10 minutes, and I asked him or her questions in English. I graded each student on his or her understanding of the question, the accuracy of the response and pronunciation. Their performance far surpassed my expectations.

The slow academic progress at the Telesecundaria has often caused me to doubt my competence as a teacher, even when I acknowledge the countless obstacles beyond my control. But now I feel quite proud, as the success of a considerable number of students on the spoken exam is indisputable proof of their great progress! I was especially pleased with my first-year students, who hadn’t studied English before my class. There they were, after just a few short months of a foreign language class lacking even a textbook, having a conversation with me in English about themselves, the animals of Ziquítaro, school and personal objects, who the objects belonged to and where they were located!

I had been debating the right way to give awards to the students for outstanding performance, as there are a handful of them who always get the best grades and I thought that by giving out the traditional first, second and third place I might not acknowledge the students who made great improvements but didn’t get the very best grades. Instead I decided to grant all students who scored 80% and above with “English Champ Awards,” an idea borrowed from my third-grade teacher Mrs. Shupe, who named top test scorers “Math Champs.” Each student who earned this honor (more than a third, in my first-year class) received a certificate and candy. The “English Champ” I am most proud of is a girl in the first year who barely passed last semester, but has worked conscientiously since we started again and earned one of the best grades on the oral exam.

I have noticed that the students are more confident since I have placed more emphasis on speaking abilities. Now that their English capability is far more than just a memorized list of basic words, they are much more eager to talk and less concerned with making mistakes. Their eagerness means that they get excited to pay attention to the lesson and have fewer problems with discipline. And, I often catch them saying English phrases to each other during recess, which (hopelessly cliche as it may sound) is music to a teacher's ears.