Today our group had the pleasure of sleeping a little bit
later, as we did not have to be at the school until 9 a.m. We were in our
respective classrooms until 11 a.m. In Rachel’s class of three students, they
were going over the different forms of the conditional tense. In Stephanie’s
class of four students, they learned about the different forms of the
subjunctive tense, read a passage of a story in Spanish as well as a review of
the imperative. After the grammar review, her class had a conversation hour.
At 11 a.m. our
Fulbright group left the language school and went to a public school that is
equivalent to a junior high school in the United States. The school contains
grades 7-9, but they refer to them as first year, second year, and third year
students. The students wore clothes that showed their grade and class. For
example, one girl was wearing a shirt with a red A on it. Red showed that she
was a first year student and A was the name of her classroom. There are six
classes in each grade level, so 18 classes in total (A-F). Second year students
wore blue and third year students wore green. What’s interesting is that the
school divides the day into two parts, with about 720 students attending in the
morning and about 500 attending in the afternoon. They split the day like this
due to limited space to accommodate students at one time. Surprisingly, there
are about 40 students in each classroom. Many parents came to see the showcase
of the students’ work and they had commented that they chose to send their
child to “Secundaria No. 1” because it is the best in the state.
The best part of the visit was when a student named
Francisco sang “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. The sound that came out of his mouth
was incredible and it sounded like Sinatra himself. Later we toured a class
full of student art work and projects to promote recycling and saving the
environment. The students proudly pointed out their projects and explained
them. It was interesting to see all of the different workshops the school had.
They have classes for art, electricity, blacksmithing, cooking, carpentry and
so much more. The school truly was incredible and the students seemed to really
be interested in what they were learning.
After lunch (or dinner her), around 5 p.m., we returned to
our language school to watch a video called “El granito de arena”. It was a
documentary about a school in Mexico called Moctemactza. The documentary went
through the struggle that the teachers were going through to keep the school
alive and running well. There were many strikes and much violence against the
strikers and their families. The enthusiasm of these teachers was amazing. Most
importantly, teachers were fighting to democratize the union in order to be a
part of the decision making process and fight against the privatization of the
education system.
Stephanie Jeffery and Rachel Neukom
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