Tag Archives: Education

Three Years in Mexico with a Junior High School Student

 

We moved here three years ago. Today our son graduated from secundaria/junior high/middle school. He has gained enormously by living here, as have we.

When we moved here our son didn’t speak much Spanish; now he pretty much passes for Mazatleco if Mom and Dad aren’t around. Bilingualism is way better than speaking only one tongue, for sure. After 3 years our 15 year old is not yet grammatically perfect in Spanish, but then, he isn’t really in English, either 🙂  Key for me is he is now extremely comfortable speaking Spanish or English, one on one, in a group, public speaking, in a formal meeting with adults. He can lead his peers, he can motivate, he can tell jokes and stories and crack people up, in both languages. Three years well invested, and at least three more to go.

When we left the US, our son’s mind was on our neighborhood, city and maybe the state in which we lived. He didn’t think about much beyond that in the world, and he didn’t like languages or cultures. He was a science, history and math guy. Now, three years on, he knows what it’s like to live as a minority member of society. He has gained confidence making new friends, going into new situations and figuring out how to get along. Not much intimidates him.

He now loves languages and thinks he’s good at learning them, anxious to try out Italian and French. He’s gone from wanting to see movies dubbed into English to wanting to see movies in their original language, with subtitles if needed. He gets that the original provides the most honest portrayal and feeling. He is keenly interested in international affairs, environmental concerns. He can recite to you UN resolutions and the rights of women, children and people worldwide.  He still loves history, and likes science and math. He talks of going to university in, well, South America, Italy… he now sees that there is a whole world out there. This is the primary reason we moved here: to provide him a broader worldview, and I thank goodness that he has done such a terrific job in this regard.

As our son graduates to high school (or preparatoria), he looks forward to a new adventure in a larger school with only a few of his current classmates. Being in a small private school now, there is a bit of a reshuffling as students decide where to study for the next three years. His graduating class of about forty will be spread out across various schools in town, breaking up this close knit bunch of kids who entered and experienced the hardest years of adolescence together. This is in sharp contrast to the normal trek in the United States, of elementary schools merging into middle schools and middle schools merging into high schools, where groups of friends remain intact and take on new friends. With this new school, he will enter as a Spanish speaker and a bit of a “local.” There will be close to 275 kids in his grade, so the huge size increase may be the biggest adaptation he has to make.

Before we moved, our son gave us strict instructions that he didn’t want to live in Mexico like some “rich gringo.” While of course the average wage in Mexico is much lower than that of the US, which he was speaking to, his eyes have been opened to just how rich the rich can be in a country like Mexico, where there are huge gaps between rich and “middle class.” He is able to describe class differences, their customs and values. He has become a “blended culture” person in the sense that he now knows what he likes and dislikes, personally, about the various cultures with whom he has contact. He doesn’t judge, knowing every worldview is “right,” but he doesn’t let himself get lost, either. I’m proud of him for that.

Thank you, Mazatlán. Thank you to his teachers, tutors, mentors, Scout leaders and friends.

And to you friends, many of whom we now love, too: best of luck in prepa! Remember to maintain these precious existing friendships!

Other posts on this blog about schools:
High Schools and Foreign Residents in Mazatlán
Inauguration of Soccer Season
Moving to Mexico (Mazatlán) with School Kids

 

Foro Empresarial COPARMEX Mazatlán, 26 Nov 2010, No. 1

Yo soy fuereño nací de aquí muy lejos
y sin embargo les digo en mi cantar
que tienen todos ustedes un orgullo
el gran orgullo de ser de Mazatlán.

I love my adopted city. It is absolutely gorgeous. Our daily morning walks and bike rides along the seawall to buy fresh fish and shrimp, greet our neighbors, watch the fishermen play dominos, or talk to the oyster divers … make this place home. Some of the world’s most hospitable and happy people live here, in Mazatlán, nestled between some of the world’s most beautiful beaches and mountains.

But, as I’ve written about before, my beloved adopted home is sick. We hear the statistics about drug trafficking, we hear of murders amongst drug lords. As I look around my fair city I see more and more a numb reaction to the loss of human life, and, even in some of my most beloved (and internationally successful) banda groups, a glorification of violence. Living here drives a wedge between my extended family and us, as they cannot imagine why we would move to such a violent place.

We continue to feel much safer here than we did living in a US city. The violence here seems much more targeted and, honestly, carefully executed then what we were lived with in the States. Every Sunday as we set up for mass in the cathedral we lit a candle for each victim of a murder in Kansas City. By the end of the year it took me the better part of half an hour to light all the candles!

I struggle with what I can do to help my city. Our son participated in Model United Nations last year. They took up the theme of combating narcotrafficking. They didn’t find great solutions, as we might hope young people would. Rather, they got stuck, discouraged, just like all of us seem to. It’s a tough and complicated problem.

Today our local branch of COPARMEX held a business forum entitled Sinaloa: Un Futuro Extraordinario. I was able to attend, and it was incredibly educational as well as emotional! I learned a lot, for sure, and it’s going to take me a couple of blog posts to tell you about all of it (warning!). It was emotional for two reasons: the first speaker was awesome but depressed the heck out of me, but he perfectly set up the final speaker, who seemed to, finally, have some of the answers.

The first speaker was David Calderón, Director General of “Mexicanos Primero.” His presentation was excellent, full of informative, well-presented, meaningful statistics, all from their 2010 report (just released last week), which unfortunately does not yet seem to be posted online. So why did I find his talk so depressing? Because it caused me to think: Why in the world had we purposefully brought our son to a country in which 51% of its kids score “insufficient” on the country’s own national competency tests (ENLACE for secundaria)? And to a state where over 50% of the kids scored “below basic” on those same tests (ENLACE, PISA, EXCALE)? What were we thinking? I totally believe that education is the key to our future. Why had we brought Danny here? I know our reasons were precisely those: to get an education, a real one; to become bilingual, multicultural; to gain experience living as a minority rather than a majority member of society.

Today’s final speaker, a man with whom I would absolutely love to have a very long, wine-fueled, philosophical dinner, had such passion. He voiced clarity, he communicated his own inadequacies and gifts, and I found his message bringing tears to my eyes and hope to my heart. Yes! That was why we brought our son here! For him to learn first-hand that social inequality is not a good thing! We came here to motivate our son to want to help our world distribute power and opportunity, to understand in the marrow of his bones that an educated, empowered people is much healthier, safer, and saner than a populace filled with the vitriol and despair of socio-economic disparity and immobility. Our final speaker today was the former mayor of Medellín, Colombia, Sergio Fajardo Valderrama.

I figure I’ll need about three blog posts to summarize today, at least in my own mind.

  1. First, I hope to tell you a bit of the message I gleaned from Doctor Fajardo, a mathematician and architect’s son-turned-mayor.
  2. Second, I’d like to try to find “Mexicanos Primeros” 2010 report and summarize for you some of its powerful statistics.
  3. Finally, I’d like to do a lighter post on some of the cultural differences I found attending a business leadership conference like this, the first I’ve had the privilege to attend here since moving to Mazatlán.

I hope this introduction has whetted your appetite! Now I just have to find the time to write the posts ☺

Read post #2about this Foro.