My Job

"Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
"Do you like Obama?"
"How old are you?"
"Do you like Argentina?"
"Do you like asado?" (barbecue)
"What’s your favorite music group?" (There’s a large Lincoln Park and Green Day following here.)
"What’s your favorite movie?"
"What’s your favorite fútbol (soccer) team?"
"Do you know any famous people?"

My high school students tend to giggle with curiosity, to shy away from speaking English and sometimes from speaking at all. Before my coming to a class their English teacher often requires them to draw up questions, and those questions above are some of the more common ones. Once we get those out of the way, I generally make my way to the US Civil Rights Struggle. Students have said that things seem picture perfect in the movies that the US exports and they are surprised to learn that we are still struggling with things like women’s unequal wages, the placement of toxic waste dumps (75% of toxic waste dumps that do not meet with Environmental Protection Agency standards are in predominately African-American or Latino neighborhoods. Eek!), or anti-immigrant sentiment. As part of my job description is serving as a cultural ambassador, I feel a certain responsibility to share stuff that they don’t get from Hollywood, that they don't have access to otherwise. It's nice because they are sooo curious about the United States and since I enjoy talking about it, well, it's a cycle of positive energy.

I’ve been working for maybe a month and a half, and enjoying it. In addition to the hours I am required to work during the week, some students and I arranged a time on Saturday afternoons to meet and simply hang out in English. This for me is a pleasure since Spanish requires a bit more thought; speaking English can feel like taking a breath after holding it for a long time.

I’m also arranging a time with the English professors at the various places I’ve worked to watch movies and/or read poetry in English and then discuss it. We haven’t pulled this off yet, but we will. Organizing something in Argentina… well it takes more time than in the U.S., even more than in India. In my experience.

Also, the professors at San Fernando Rey have said that many of their students are interested in playing music with me, which will be a blast! I suspect. That, also, has yet to gel, but when it does it will make a great blog entry.

And whatever the case, free time is already fleeting. Between teaching English and
serving as a cultural ambassador, preparing for class, volunteering to "hang out in English" and such, and all this alongside daily LSAT studies, there’s hardly time enough to watch the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation a friend downloaded for me. (I think I have ALL of season three. Yeah!)

Another thing that (some of) the students and I enjoyed was making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The idea seemed fairly repulsive to many of them before trying it, and to a few of them after trying it. But as a young cultural ambassador, how could I not introduce this vital meal to them? I explained to them that I ate peanut butter and jelly 6 days a week at one time. Not sharing this food would, in my mind, disqualify me from calling myself a cultural ambassador. (joke alert!)

So I found crema de maní and mermelad de frutilla and some good wheat bread, and shared it with a few of the classes in the poorest school at which I worked. They did everything themselves, scooping out spoonfuls of peanut butter and wiping swaths of it along the bread... Como profesionales, like professionals. We had a blast making it, eating it, and then we played frisbee and watched a Michael Franti & Spearhead music video. Ha! Also a blast.

Some students loved it and tried to make more than their fair share, and some were grateful at being reassured that it was OK not to eat beyond the first bite. (And some resolutely refused to try it at all. Ha!)

The time for frisbee was brief, because depending on the class we had either 40 minutes or 80 minutes, and in addition to this I wanted to show Michael Franti & Spearhead's "Hey World" music video (I printed the lyrics and we said them line by line together and discussed their meaning), and prepare and eat peanut butter and jelly.

This is the entrance to the school that serves young people on the lowest end of the socio-economic spectrum. It is located in Barrio Mujeres Argentinas, cerca al golf club, en Resistencia, Chaco, Argentina.
There is some neat art work along the walls of the school.

Here is some more wall art, and the English professor's car. Her name is Angelina, and she really cares about her kids. She has a big heart and reminds me of my sister Sarah.

This is a picture of a heart-shaped tree which is just in front of the bus stop in Barrio Mujeres Aregentinas. It's appropriate because the teachers at the school are really great!

This is one of the students in the act of making a wonderful peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

These students are from the Escuela Normal Sarmiento, the first school at which I taught, it is located in downtown Resistencia. This was the wealthiest school at which I worked.

Here's the school itself. Just across from it is a great plaza where I have been known to eat, observe ciesta (aka take a nap), play frisbee, visit with hives of students, and study for the LSAT.
I still work here every Tuesdays because of a particularly nice, talented class. I'm only required to work at the college in town, but I will keep coming here because it will be fun to see how they advance until I leave in November and because frisbee at recess is way fun.

Here we are! I look taller somehow. Claudia Gomez is this professor's name. (They call high school teachers professors here.)

The lunch that I eat in the plaza comes from here, Rotiseria Natural. Everything here is vegetarian! Ha! Yeah! And the owners are super sweet, and have invited me over a pair of times to visit, share green tea and talk Taoism. The value of a vegetarian restaurant to this vegetarian... well, it means a lot to me. And in this country, where the average person consumes 40 kilograms of beef per year (compared to 25 in the USA), it is even more special.

Pablo Ricchieri was my third and final high school. Socio-economically the students here probably have less problems than those at Barrio Mujeres Argentinas, but their opportunities are probably generally fewer in number than those of students at Escuela Normal Segundaria.

Claudia Susana Rios, an English instructor at Pablo Ricchieri, loves her students. And she is very persistent, very intent on having me come back and visit her classes. She is like all the English professors with whom I've worked in that she is super sweet and speaks great English.
An aside: I always remind students that the Fulbright is a two-way street, that provided they work and do well in school and take advantage of their time with such wonderful teachers as those pictured here with me, well, I always remind them that doors will open. Doors that could lead to more education, a job, travel: to who knows what. This is a new idea for a lot of my students.

"Todo esto es el trabajo de los estudiantes," or "All of this is the work of the students." The students are in charge of maintaining a couple of greenhouses and even an organic vegetable garden, from which students reap vegetables.

On the left is the professor, Claudia; this picture is pretty neat because if you look closely you can see a few of the things that their questions led me to talk about: there’s a map of the USA with Arkansas being the only state drawn in, there’s “Michael Franti and Spearhead” (they must have asked about what kind of music I listen to), “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and “Loaded Weapon 1” (I’m not sure if these were actually on the board, but they were if they asked me about my favorite movies), Sarah and William (my sibling and her child), Fulbright (the scholarship that brought me here and could some day take them to the USA), a drawing of China and Tibet (the question that prompted this drawing may have been, “You said that you liked one thing that George Bush did in eight years, what was it?” And then I would explain about how he gave the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal and hosted His Holiness in the White House. It may have been, “What other languages do you speak?” And though I do not speak Tibetan, I can say hello and how are you, and the students get a kick out of that.), there’s the word curfew (they were interested in the idea of having to be back home by a certain time; for them parties often last until 6, 7 or 8am the following morning.), and a drawing of South America in relation to North America with South America being on top for a change.

As allegorically appropriate as the heart-shaped Weeping Willow outside Barrio Mujeres Argentinas, this tree at Pablo Ricchieri seems to be growing from brick.

I have finished working at the high schools (except for the Tuesday gig) and now will concentrate on the Instituto Terciario San Fernando Rey. It may be that the closest thing we have in the U.S. to an Instituto Terciario is a community college. The young people from here graduate in just three years. My students are to become English teachers. I am very impressed so far with their enthusiasm, the professors' level of English, and the students' level of English. We have fun together. The school has a website, and it is: http://ispsfrey.cha.infd.edu.ar/sitio/index.cgi

Earlier I mentioned that the professors and I will be getting together to talk about poems and movies. Well I have already chosen the first two poems and here they are. Thank ya'll for reading my blog!

--Stephen

All Those Women on Fine September Afternoons
by Katrina Vandenberg

When she baked a pie, my mother’s hands were blackbirds;
they flecked butter at heaps of sugared apples.
Her hands were wings around the piecrust’s edge,
and she fluted it until it swooped around
and down. Never worry the crust, she said.

You love crust like a child; roll it
and imagine it pretty and whole.

My grandmother could weigh flour
with her hands and measure vinegar with her eyes.
She rolled her crust with a rolling pin
cut by her father from a single apple limb.
My mother cut out star cookies from what was left.

I think about my mother and her mother
and every mother before they came along
on the days I roll out piecrust with the rolling pin
my grandmother gave to me: the rolling pin
that was part of a tree, swelling apples
from blossoms, apples to swell and dimple
crust. My God, think of it, all those women
on fine September afternoons like these,
rolling piecrust and not worrying,
seeing things whole.


"The Traveling Onion"
by
Naomi Shihab Nye

"It is believed the onion originally came
from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship --
why I haven't been able to find out. From Egypt
the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence
into all of Europe."
--Better Living Cookbook

When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,
crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way knife enters onion
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed.

And I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.