Challenging the System

As we our week at La Inmaculada comes to an end, I have had the opportunity to experience a variety of teaching styles for various subjects, and from teachers with different backgrounds. It has been interesting to see the diversity and I have learned more about the students’ roles in the classrooms as well. My days in the English classrooms have been engaging as I could be the most helpful in this area and had the chance to observe 3 types of teachers: one from America, one from New Zealand, and one who was not a native English speaker. They all had similar goals in what they wanted their students to achieve, but the delivery of their content was different.

The American teacher, Matthew, had a collaborative approach to teaching with groups reading an article about economics together in English then working together to summarize using specific forms of the past and future tense. He had a friendly relationship with his students and they were not afraid to ask him questions or for revisions. Johanna, the teacher from New Zealand actually mentioned to me that she did not have a teaching license but just a TOEFL certification instead. She structured her lessons as more towards a lecture in the beginning focusing on the writing process, and then had students create a guided outline before starting an essay. The class also went to an English language lab which was super interesting to be a part of since students had headsets and practiced their speaking and conversational skills with other students in the class over a certain theme/topic. This is something that I had wished was incorporated into my Spanish classes when I was in high school as our practice with speaking abilities was very structured/limited and less like in a natural or normal environment with other students. Maia, the other teacher was not a native English speaker and was Japanese. She was pretty strict in the way she taught and focused a lot of their learning through the use of their laptops and less emphasis on interaction. I personally was not a huge fan of her teaching style since students didn’t seem to be engaged with one another, but they were still eager to learn and frequently asked questions for clarifications.

In general, I noticed that students in all the classes were very respectful towards their teachers, were engaged with the material they were working with, and seemed to prefer collaborative learning. They were all about learning together and interdependence where the mentality seemed to be that they understand or fail together. In my math class, one boy was confused with something in the problem and I noticed that another boy came over and began to help him while the lesson was still going on; and the teacher didn’t seem to mind at all! What was unique about this placement vs. my placement in the U.S. were that students were very friendly and not afraid to go out of their way to ask me questions if they needed help. A lot of times in the schools I’m at in the U.S., the students don’t reach out as often or try to get to know me too well since I am not the main teacher. It is a lot more effort on my part to get students to talk with me. But here, students in my English classes reached out to me even during their breaks to ask me questions for their homework or schoolwork. It was also appreciating to see when they tried to practice their English or spoke in Spanish with me as well to get to know me.

Being at a school like La Inmaculada has brought me to ponder our discussion question which is what is or should be the role of privileged school communities in an unequal society. It also focused on what it would take to educate the global elite. Looking at our meeting with the Jesuit director of the school, he mentioned starting with instilling important and humanizing values and creating an atmosphere of inclusivity. This is definitely important to think about and referring back to our readings, I think about the importance on being open to revision and reconstruction as well to respond to the constant changes and inequality that exist in the contemporary world. By confronting inequality along with educating and valuing diversity, those who are privileged could increase their ways of looking at the world from different points of view (Greene). Changing from a stage of denial to the goal of integration where people begin to include diversity as a definition of their own identity may give awareness and a more active role in how they can change such a rigid system. There is also the importance of educating the privileged and elite about not just knowledge from their books, but also knowledge of the world around them, the community that they live in, and the process of self-actualization (Hooks). By addressing these factors, teachers can hopefully inspire and educate students on the inequality that exists within society to encourage them to make changes and challenge reinforced systems of superiority and divide.