EIL Intercultural Learning

Sorcha Grehan is a teacher from Dublin, she wrote to us with news about her volunteering with the San Francisco school in Santa Fe

Hola Anton...

How are you?
How is everything at home? 30 odd degrees here each day so the idea of Christmas seems a long way off!!

Ive wanted to write before but I´m working really hard here and don´t have the time for even keeping in touch with fiends and family hardly. Also there is so much to say and tell that I don´t even know where to start!!

Everything is going really well here in the family. I´ve just really tried to slot in to their lives here and it´s worked really well. They have invited me to spend the holidays with them and they want me to stay for my next placement instead of going to Ecuador...so I guess that´s a good sign :) I prepare the Mate in the mornings before school or at the weekends I get up a bit earlier so I can drink it with them....think Ill have to export it to Ireland before I leave...Ill send you a box to Cork! Love the tradition of drinking it..the way every Tom Dick or Harry (Irish expression) no matter who is invited to drink it...can´t imagine the same tradition with a mug of milky tea being passed about in Ireland..can you? :)

E.G. The other day I was in a little kiosk waiting to so some photocopying for the school and the lady who owns it asked me if I wanted Mate while I was waiting for the photocopies. Now I had never been in this kiosk before, never seen this lady before and had spoken less than 5 words to her and she invites me to drink Mate with her over the counter....amazing...that is what I love...of course I accepted and we chatted and drank Mate like old friends:)

Sometimes I forget where I am...I try to fit in so much that it is life now and I feel comfortable. In the school I'm so busy also that I have to consciously take a few seconds now and again to realise where I am and who I´m with and take everything in. The children are all so loving and affectionate. Many of them have behaviour issues but none of it is their fault. I try to find out as much as I can about their backgrounds so that I can try to understand them better and what life is like for them. In this way I can get closer to them. With many of the most rebellious ones if you spend a bit of extra time with them and give them extra attention they respond a thousand fold!!

I´m teaching classes from Jardin (Junior Infants) to 6to Grado. With many of the classes I´m doing the "Intercambio", exchange of cultures through questions, answers, photos and languages with classes from San Francisco and classes with children of the same age in my school in Dublin. For me, it is something that I want to do because I believe it is creating a great awareness and understanding at both ends for the children. A huge and very important learning experience. I was hoping to be able to do this through Skype and so the class in Ireland and here could literally be talking to eachother and feel a real connection however, there is no wireless connection in the area of the school so this unfortunately was not possible.However, the next best thing we have been doing.
Each week we have been choosing a new theme...I leave it up to them to choose and that way they have more control and interest,
and we discuss it in the class and they write down all the questions they have about the theme and they give it up to me. I read them all after school and translate all the questions they have and put them together into an e-mail for the appropriate class and mail it with the appropriate photos. Each week each of the classes in Ireland respond to the questions and send their own questions and photos. I translate it all, print it and colour photos for the children. Each week we choose a new theme and we compare the theme here for them in San Francisco and their lives and the theme in Ireland for the children there.
Hoping through this that the awareness will have a long lasting affect for both sets of children and the children here can see that life can be different for them outside Santa Fe.

Hope I´m explaining myself...there is so much to tell and so many experiences that it is hard to write but a few.
Now I am going to buy meat for a good barbecue!

Abrazos

Sorchita