New APCD so I redefine my project

                This was a perfect opportunity to redefine my project. I’m writing this from the distance of two months’ perspective—it happened in early February and it’s now mid April—to see some things differently but think I can report such that you know what a piece of the puzzle this was. And it has not changed much in the intervening 9 weeks. Nine weeks is nothing, unless you’re here doing what I’m doing, in which case, it’s like a year into the past.

                I had done two things just a few weeks earlier: I’d given my students an “informational” math test—a test not for grades but one that simply lets me know what they know—and I had begun to teach them about window screens. Generally, we don’t have them here. There are some on several of the school buildings but none on the kitchen or cafeteria. I’d recommended screens as a possible “appropriate technology.” My first few months here when I was living with my host family I saw the need for them but many or most houses here have walls that are too permeable to make screens useful. It’s something I recognized seeing both the dog (and other) feces all around the my host family’s house and the numerous flies that swarmed into the kitchen and over the food on the table at meal times. Flies walk on the poo, then on the food and those eating the food get the poo. It’s a simple cycle. The school is of sealable concrete block buildings…unlike the wood slat affairs so many of the poorer people have.

                We were called to present our projects to our new APCDs. Our AT group was split into two 8 member groups, AT and Water. My presentation started with stating my project, the list of project partners (I’m on my third) and other reasons why I think my project has failed. It has failed as originally stated: for me to teach AT to a project partner who will teach it to the students. Some assumptions (more likely, promises) were made that I’d have one project partner for my entire project and that we’d have consistent classes. My project partner has been changed twice and we never know if my class will meet or not. So far, I’ve come ready to teach the class and, in the minutes before the class have been told, oh, the class has been taken to do [some other project] on/for the campus/school.

                I proposed that my project be redesigned to not provide a specific AT curriculum for the school but a tool kit from which an AT curriculum can be assembled per the needs of the particular class or year or ability of the class at the time. It also will be a kind of record of what I have learned in my 2 years about the realities of the class and school.

                The class had failed the informational test. They couldn’t do any of the problems. I turned the test into a teaching opportunity and lead them through the problems.

                About the screens, I had gone to one of the large ferreterias (hardware stores) in Santiago and gotten the parts prices and assembly method of the aluminum framed screens. As we started the unit on screens, I proposed a 3’ X 3’ screen and, presenting the component prices, asked what it would cost to make a screen that size. They couldn’t figure it out. What was worse, it turned out, they didn’t know the difference between perimeter and area. It seems all they could do was take any two given numbers and multiply them on their calculators and present that as their answer. Apparently this is what worked in the past. The brain was never engaged in this process. The students had no idea what the numbers they multiplied signified. They lack the ability to conceptualize. So I proposed to my new APCD that I refocus my class on the basic conceptualization and math skills the students would need if they were to meet the school mission as proposed in their mission statement. The students did not object to the new direction of the class. We’d study the basic applied math and could make things in the shop as those opportunities came up…or not, depending.

                The APCDs in the audience supported my presentation and suggestion whole-heartedly. It was a success. And so off we went into the sunset, except the sunset turned out to be a painting in front of a concrete wall. The wall was the school…and the fact that the students didn’t really want to do actual work such as think and learn. I now get the impression that the point of school is that it is a time when you go to be given a bunch of awards at various periodic ceremonies. The student is told they have accomplished some marvelous thing and they believe they have. It’s a sham. I think, however, that it is what the students have experienced and come to expect their whole lives…and their teachers have become used to this chain of events.

                My class is taken for a grade but has no tests or homework. Some in the class have actually tried to take over the class or to disrupt it, to sabotage the class by generally filling the space with noise. At one time, my second project partner spent the class yelling “silencio!” every so often, as needed. The class was chaos.

Host family house. Note slatted kitchen wall

The neighborhood. The house I stayed in is in the upper left.

Students working on a clay stove

Stove nearly finished

Trig problem students couldn't do. We have yet had the opportunity to go outside and actually do this measurement exercise. One thing I don't have is a 45 degree triangle. I'll have to make one in the shop. The students also couldn't tell me the significance of the 45 degree triangle so I've added a unit on triangles...and basic geometry.

And, so was added a unit on basic measurement. Turns out the students don't know how to use either the English or Metric measurement systems. We haven't had the chance to get into this in any depth, either. The screen, for example, is sold in inch widths by the meter.