I Believe

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In December, I returned back to Singapore and then almost immediately straight on to Chiang, Rai, Thailand. I’m sure you all know that I’ve been working in Thailand for about 10 years now and after living and experiencing the power to relación tutora here in some of the toughest communities in México, I wanted to bring it back to my region.

For me, for the first time in about 10 years in Chiang Rai, I really felt we did something special in both Blessing Home and in Negseduak, something we can continue, something we can keep building up as we build ourselves up.

December 12, 2011, we began a network of tutors through a teaching method called relación tutora or check here in 1) a village hill tribe community and 2) Blessing Home, a youth hostel for mainly Lahu students who had come from various villages to the city center to study.

You see, there were so many challenges against us and at times I’d think of all the reasons why it would fail. There was no teacher in the village, and yes- it’s a village, not a school – so we would be going into people’s homes and trying to create a red de tutoría (network of tutors) there. Second, time as it always is, was against us. Many students work on Saturdays and we literally only had Sundays to count on to be sure there would be people in the village. During the week, the students would only come home at 5pm and we would be clothed in pitch darkness at 6pm as there was no electricity in the village, and no more tutoría could happen after 6pm. Almost none of us (except for 3 university students and another local Thai from Bangkok) were fluent in Thai, the team was new and this was the first time we would come together, we wanted to create a English program where students would learn to speak, listen, read and improve their vocabulary, but above all, speak. And in tutoría now, speaking a foreign language has been the most difficult to train. Furthermore, English while taught in school uses an alphabet completely different from Thai. When in Spanish it’s easy to decode words and figure out cognates of large words, it’s a completely different system in Thai. And to me the biggest challenge was for the students to see themselves as teachers, it goes so against Thai/ Asian culture where all we are taught is to absorb and we are in no place to teach. I’d thought getting over this hurdle would be the hardest. I was so worried that the kids wouldn’t want to teach, would feel too shy etc. But shame on me, and was I in for a shock because I had met on this trip some of the most creative and innovative teachers.

I just needed to believe.

We began on Sunday with a whole day with the kids. We started with an ice-breaker and then asked the kids to choose the listening activity or adjectives and Jamorn, Jap and I worked with one secondary student each. That day, we worked 3 hours in the village and had to completely modify our lessons on the spot. Some students had such a low level of English that we really had to start from scratch. We had to think of activities that would engage the students and be at a level where student could really understand and apply what they have learned. So each day, we would prepare for lessons in the morning and in the afternoon, drive up to the village by 3pm to work on painting the new sports court or build a small library and then at 5pm or 5.15pm, we would begin our lessons. What was most astonishing was that even after a long long day of school, even as the days went by, the students would still run up to the team at 5pm each day, with notebook and pen in hand, ready to begin their tutoría. In fact, as the days went on, the students took less and less time to change out of their school uniform to come and join us. I don’t even think I would change quickly to do more learning after school. Something different was in the air.

You could see a change in how they viewed learning. My absolute favorite part was our last day in the Negseduak village and at Blessing Home. That was when they tutees became the tutors. At Blessing Home the kids paired up and began tutoring each other, using the same styles, the same activities that we had used with them, and they knew it by heart. They knew the content well but I was amazed at how they could really guide their tutees, and they were even better than us, and could lead their own peers to a high level of understanding and knowledge in a much shorter time than we could. A lot of it was learning vocabulary and also using our senses and actions to experience the words, it was a whole new way of learning and teaching that the team had created. And when tested, their tutees knew the content, and knew it well.

More than new English vocabulary and speaking and listening practice in English, we created a real culture of learning. Now asking questions and encouraging curiosity became a way of life. As we walked in the village, they would point out or pull out things like leaves or flowers or the table or the chicken and ask what that is in English. The kindergardeners would tug at our shirts and show us that they knew where their head was, eyes were and all the body parts they had learned the day before. And best of all, you could see them asking each other questions. There was a new faith in their people, that everyone knew a little bit, and knew something different, and that even the kindergardeners could teach a secondary student. In the village, there was one girl, Nitaya in Primary 5 who created new activities when learning adjectives she had begun tutoring two students from K2. After she was done, another boy, Witaya who was in a grade above, from the village came up to her to ask her to teach him too. With a glisten in her eyes, she proudly took him on. Each tutor had a real experience sharing that knowledge, and tasted that they could. They were driven, so driven by the opportunity to share the knowledge with their peers. And they had confidence because we really believed they could. For me, Meizhi and Bevin were exemplars of that. There was in this village, a girl named Ah choo, an 11 year old who refused to go to school at a young age and was made to take care of the peanut harvesting in the village, she would barely read or write her own name. Driven by the sheer delight of seeing another learn, Meizhi and Bevin were so patient with Ah Choo and made sure she knew various adjectives. They had the highest belief in her and by the end of it, her face shone with satisfaction as she eagerly showed me her notebook filled with new words and new knowledge.

It’s hard to measure belief but one can feel it. I saw how that made people come alive. To be honest, the first day we arrived, we were treated as outsiders- exactly what we were. And slowly the kids started to warm up to us, and still not the families yet. Then the families started staying out with us after it was dark, and then by the end of it we were eating and sleeping with the villagers, singing and dancing together. We became family.

Now our biggest challenge is to take care of the process very very carefully. We will have to keep refining our work, the temas, keep building more temas, keep building relationships, keep changing, while keeping our principles constant and our passion to learn and work, our hunger and heart constant.

And something that tutoría is about, is that, whatever we do will never be enough. But that’s good, because it shouldn’t. That keeps pushing us to innovate, improvise and keep working, keep believing in others and in ourselves.

Back in México, I feel like there’s so much more to be done, and my burden to go back is even stronger. I keep thinking of all the places in Southeast Asia I have worked in, in the school for street children in Cambodia, in another children’s shelter, in Calcutta… they people are so hungry to learn, and I feel like finally I’ve found some answers that could make create real changes in both the students and their families through relación tutora. This is just the beginning. This is where it gets exciting.

Tags: CEAC, Chiang Rai, Education, English Language learning, Huey Sak, Mexico, Redes de Tutoría, Relación Tutora, rural communities, Rural education, Singapore, Thailand, Youth

Get down to work

Hands in!

¡En español aquí!

I came to México excited to learn how relación tutora (or tutoring relationships) really changed people. I had heard so much about the changes in the students, in the communities and was so curious to understand how that happened. But little did I imagine how I would change too.

I changed because I saw changes in the people that I worked with, and through, not just the work, but through the way each person worked on the team.

An experience in Veracruz taught me that.

In November 2011, I had the pleasure of going back to Tehuipango, Veracruz and this time to a primary school called Lic. Adolfo López Mateos. It was a bilingual school and most, if not, all of the teachers taught in both Náhuatl and Spanish.

I came, excited to work with the teachers, but also slightly worried because the school had been resistant to the relación tutora program when we last visited. I guess schools don’t like to be labeled “insufficient” or “schools that need focused attention.” The teachers and leadership are on the defensive, and feel the authorities don’t understand their situation. Things can get tense.

During the previous visit, the teachers were talking about some of their students who had difficulty learning. Some of them were at a loss at what to do. So along with Maestra Ruth de la Cerda and Maestro Román Fuentes, an advisor with an organization, Redes de Tutoría, we came back with the promise of observing some of their students, and above all offer some suggestions and then work in tutoría, along with Maestros Sandra Ortiz and Artemio Ríos.

At the back of my mind, I always knew that tutoría changed the people it touched, but I didn’t understand how or why.

Tutoría session

But it did. On that Thursday, I had the privilege of being in tutoría with a group of 5 teachers and also have them tutor me. And through the session, something changed. Through the dialogue, and through the excitement of wanting to learn and share, the cold resistance melted away, leaving a warm and joy of sharing a profound learning experience together. We were no longer “assessor” and “assessed”, we were just learning together. That’s the power of tutoría. The work itself immediately broke the barriers between us. You enter into a different kind of relationship. You became tutor and tutee – at the same time – you were both there to learn and to share, and there was a horizontality about that. I changed too. I learned to respect the work of the teachers as they taught me Náhuatl. Their faces shone with pride. We shared “aha moments” and I saw hunger in their eyes as we figured out the area of a hexagon. And I, who always ran away from math, started to discover how intricate and interesting math really is. It took me this long, and only in México to rediscover that joy. The teachers I was working with kept thinking about how to teach in their classroom, how to ask the right questions, and how the math problem we were cracking, called “The Bikini” or how the content Román was teaching about Spanish accents could be used in their classes. There was a thirst to get better, be better and we shared that. There was something different in the air.

During our debriefing session that night, the head of indigenous primary schools, Maestra Ruth felt the same. She said, “I’m really feeling good about this primary school, even though it was tough at first.”  She then turned to me and said, “There are great teachers here, right?” They were. And it was a great pleasure and having them as my tutors.

So many try to change schools from the outside, or try to change structure that never gets down to the actual practice as Professor Richard Elmore always say, when it should be the reverse – sometimes we just need to get down to work, and let the magic happen.

Primary 1 class at Lic. Adolfo López Mateos

Tags: CEAC, Education, EIMLE, Mexico, PEMLE, Primary schools, Redes de Tutoría, Relación Tutora, Sierra, teacher training, Tehuipango, tutoría, Veracruz

Worth the Walk

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I just came back from Tehhuipango, Orizaba, Veracruz, to a region where I marvel at the strength and determination of many of the students.

About a month ago, I spent a whole day in tutorial relationships with some students at the Escuela Secundaria Technica No. 126. We finished up just a few moments after the bell rang and one by one we parted ways. It was started to get cold and the drizzle began.

I quickly hopped into our car, thankful for the shelter and the warmth inside. As we drove out, I waved my farewells to the last of the students that trickling out of the school gate. About 30 minutes into our journey back from the Sierra to the city, I spotted two people in the distance in a café brown sweater with two orange stripes on each sleeve – the school uniform of the secundaria. As we whizzed past them, I waved, but wondered, where were they going?

Luis Avala, the technical academic advisor (or ATP for its Spanish abbreviation) for this school told me that there are some students in the school that live almost in the next state, near Puebla, and walk about an hour and a half to get to school by 7am. And it’s dangerous to be walking so early in the morning.

I shared these stories with some other enlaces, Fidel García and Juan Pedro Rosete and nodding, they told me that an hour and a half is little. In Pubela, some walk 3 or 4 hours up and down the mountains each way to get to school – both primary and secondary school students. That’s determination.

It takes a whole lot of love for school and learning to put in that much effort to get to school. I don’t know if I’d have it in me to stay in school against these odds. But these kids do. Day in and day out, with their bags filled with schoolbooks, rain or shine, they come to school, wanting to learn.

On one hand, I think of those of us who take taxis to school or are driven right to our school gate, making it to easy for us to excel in our studies. But I think those who are really cherishing their education and excelling are these kids in Tehuipango, who everyday go against the odds to learn. And on the other, the student’s brute determination reminds me that our call as educators, policy-makers, principals, teachers – all of us better make that walk worth it. Our call and our duty to these students is higher, more intense, more crucial; we have to make each day count. Otherwise we’d be letting our students down, we have to keep growing, keep learning so that they can receive the best of us.

That is why I believe the work we are doing here with EIMLE and relación tutora is so important – we’re learning to walk. We are all learning to climb the mountain of the immense challenges before us- be if parents who are illiterate, or students who are more comfortable speaking Nahuatl – to bring real quality learning to each classroom.

In schools with many students who clock the miles daily coming from one end of the mountains to the next, from teacher to ATP, our collective vision is clear: we need to do everything possible to make sure that walk is worth it.

Tags: CEAC, Education, EIMLE, Mexico, Orizaba, Relación Tutora, SEB, Veracruz