Today was something else completely.
A professor had to be sent into the city because she is sick, so the students don’t have a teacher for there class called Communication. They haven’t had one for about 4 days, and don’t know when they will have one again. It isn’t like they can just call up a substitute teacher because we are so far away and probably by the time one gets here the professor will be better, so the class is just free. No adult in the room, potential time for learning: gone.
The kids have asked me in the past to be their substitute. The principal of the school also invited me to enter whenever a teacher wasn’t available and teach whatever I wanted (not sure if it is trust, or just the fact that he doesn’t care and thinks it might make him look good). I have always resisted stepping into the classroom for many reasons, feeling it wasn’t my place. A. I am not a teacher. B. I would really rather work with kids that are motivated and want to work with me, not be forced to work with me, C. If I am writing lesson plans I am not working on my own project development, D. I think it would be illegal for me to just step in as a teacher. But, when I saw the kids literally having recess for two periods of their four period school day I decided enough was enough, and at least I would enter for tomorrow. Well, tomorrow was today.
I found some activities in a manual Peace Corps gave us called Escojo. The funny thing is the Escojo program looks a lot like my VALE program but it is more focused on PC goals and mine is a little more oriented for the specific needs and desires of my community. Both, a good thing. I picked a day in the program that took the least set up and I felt would be the most beneficial for my kids. The theme was discrimination, and I started the day with 13-year-olds.
It blew my mind how they have literally never been spoken to about discrimination. My PC trainers told me it would be hard to talk to them because it is so unacceptable to say words like lesbian and gay in the classroom. The funny thing is, the fact that talking about people who are different is so culturally unacceptable it was easy to get the kids giggling and perk up their ears to listen when I just blurt, “lesbian” like it isn’t a curse-word.
First we played a game to make them each think they would have to stand up in front of the class and receive undeserved insults, then we talked about how scary it felt to just think you would be that person, of course we didn’t do it. So, now that they understood what it felt like to be discriminated against I introduced a word they had never heard before, ‘stereotype’. The kids played social roles and had to group themselves according to stereotypes. They stepped a little more lightly to protect themselves, but I still found the HIV positive kid paired with the gay guy, the judge pared with the professor, and the prostitute paired with the drug user. Because a majority of these kids have never seen or met a prostitute, or a black man, or a lesbian (that they know of), it was easy to fill the stereotypes. They only know from the little bit of media that makes its way here, or word-of-mouth. I would switch out their little name plates so the judge was HIV positive and it blew their minds. Or, a political figure that was a drug user, or a prostitute that was a loving mother, or …. drum roll… the big one… a professor that was a lesbian. That one actually scared them a little. I asked a kid in that first class why they looked so frightened with that idea. Afraid to tell me, he got his friend to explain for him that if a professor was gay, they would molest the students.
It was SUPER unfortunate for me that we had to hit this topic today. I had carefully planned not to touch anything this heavy with a ten foot pole for at least a year, once I had everyone’s trust and had gotten most of what I wanted to teach out already. But, once again, how can I pass up an opportunity to teach? Still feeling the ache in my belly from the punch this classroom served me I explained what homosexuality is as simply as I could using myself as an example to remove any stigma:
-“As a heterosexual professor of this class, that only means one thing; When I go home at night, my partner, in my house will be of the opposite sex, a man. Does it mean that when I come to teach in the mornings I am going to flirt with or touch my male students inappropriately?”-wait for the resounding no- “It is the same for a homosexual.”
-“As a homosexual professor of this class that only means that when I go home at night, my partner will be of the same sex, a woman. When I come here to teach, I would be here to teach you, just like a heterosexual teacher.”
Literally, wide eyes and dropped jaws. In my head all I can think about are the parents that are going to show up on my doorstep this evening to ream me out and refuse to allow me to work with their kids again. As I sit here typing, I wait for the knock.
Then, one little guy says, “But it isn’t natural. A man can’t make a baby with a man.” And he says it with such sweetness, curiosity, and sincerity it brings tears to my eyes now. “So?” I said. “ Can they still love a child? Can they still care for a child?” to which, the sweet little thing with all sincerity says, “yes, they can”. “Aren’t there children that need loving parents?”, he nods. “I have read that there are even some animals that choose same sex partners. But, what I am telling you doesn’t mean you need to believe that homosexuality is right or wrong. We are talking today about discrimination and how you should treat people that are different. You can disagree with homosexuality, but that doesn’t give you the right to treat someone who is homosexual, transsexual, or bisexual badly. Remember how you felt when you thought you were going to be discriminated against in front of the class. Is that fair? Just like prostitution or using drugs might not be something you agree with, that doesn’t mean it is fair or just to discriminate against a prostitute or a drug user.” By the time I finished that speech my conscience was clear, the kids were all nodding their heads in agreement, and the butterflies were going wild in my belly.
As I walked out of that classroom I really didn’t feel on top of the world for teaching them something so novel, I had a stomachache for the sadness of what we are up against here in Latin America.
The great news was that first class was the hardest one. The rest answered questions more open-mindedly, for the most part. I thought that by the end of the day I would want to rip my stomach out for driving me crazy with nerves, but the rest of the kids were pretty on par (meaning they still giggled at the word lesbian, but knew it was bad to do so). There was one point in the role-playing game where a boy was randomly assigned the lesbian role. The entire class up roared in laughter, the boy kind of shriveled as the other boys started to literally push him around and away.
-“Oye, what if I was a lesbian? How would you guys laughing make me feel right now?”
Immediate silence and frozen arms that quickly returned to their pockets. That worked, way better than I expected. Their guilty eyes on the floor.
I was in every classroom of the high school except the oldest (which only has three students, coincidentally, when the rest have 10-20). Which means that I touched every teenager in town except three. I don’t know if anything I did today will stick. But, if nothing else, I spent the day planting an idea that probably would have never crossed their mind otherwise.
The conclusion of the class is how to prevent discrimination and stereotypes from spreading. Every single answer in every single classroom was passive. When I proposed the idea of something aggressive like women’s suffrage, WWII, or the indigenous people’s slave rebellion there was a bit of surprise that something so big should take place to fight discrimination. We are talking about a country where I regularly see signs on store windows saying something like, “Young woman needed to sell at storefront”.
