I hope you'll pardon my chronological jumping around. Hopefully in a few more days we'll be all caught up. Before my trip to Arequipa, and before I developed my aforementioned appreciation for Olinda, I came to work in the mornings and left promptly at the lunch hour to avoid the uncomfortable fact that I was a self-appointed outsider at work and was, therefore, hesitant to join the lunchtime activities. As you might imagine, the emotional landscape changed soon after I stopped thinking of my work at the Ministry as a job I had to do (and couldn't possibly do well), and started thinking of it as a unique oportunity to work on redesigning the public English education of an entire country!
Two weeks ago I made my way to the southern part of the country to a beautiful city called Arequipa to observe a number of English classes, and to hold workshops for the English teachers to work on methodology and teamwork. I was so nervous! Much to my delight, the kind of help they needed was exactly the kind of help I could provide. The next three days consisted of morning classroom observation and afternoon workshops. In the evenings, I dined with the three women with whom I was traveling. As if I weren't already bursting at the seams with delight for leading a successful first workshop, I was delighted again to discover that my colleagues were smart, witty, funny, interesting, and caring. We went out for dinner and experimented with the "food" setting on one of our cameras. On the final day of the workshop, we reviewed the pictures, and much to our horror, we realized that we had many pictures of delicious food and smiling faces at the best restaurants in Arequipa, and practically no pictures of the workshops... And so, on the last day of the workshop, we ran around somewhat frantically taking pictures of each other in "work mode" so that our devotion to our work wasn't without proof.
I returned to Lima that Saturday evening happy, exhausted, and proud. The following Monday, I ventured, for the first time, into the museum cafeteria to lunch with my colleagues. What fun! And to think I might have missed it all together on account of my irrational and somewhat misguided nerves! I must admit, though, that the conversation moves so quickly that I have yet to become an active and involved participant, but I nevertheless hang on every word of those around me.
The majority of the workers in my department at the Ministry are women, and with the exception of the one male colleague at every lunch, we are working women. As Mother's Day approaches, many of them are thinking about how they should get the exact gift they want, without anyone knowing that they were, in fact, playing their cards just right. One technique: take one's children to the deparment store and point out what you like and what you don't like. Then, make sure that the husband goes to the same department store with the children so that the children can indicate your likes and dislikes. Another technique: Put on an outfit, and say something like, "You know what this would look great with?!" Yet another technique: Leave a magazine open on the counter with some sort of signal that this is what you want. A final technique: Call up the potential gift giver and say, "Have you thought about what to give me for Mother's Day? Were you thinking of getting me _________ (fill in the blank with the desired gift)?"
I remember hearing that women must always get men to do what they want them to do, without the men catching on to the fact that they are being led to just the right place. I only kind of believed it, though, until last Monday when I really met some of my colleagues. They are pulling strings like crazy to have exactly the kind of life they want without appearing to encroach upon the "man's space." Oh, and what games they play! I found myself thinking it might be easier to just be blunt about it, but also admired their tact, resourcefullness, and (for lack of a better turn of phrase) love of intrigue.
I wonder what games I play to get what I want without letting on. Surely when I was a child, I employed the puppy dog eyes, the tears, and the pitiful pleading to get something or other, but the greater the displacement from the toddler, middle school and high school years, the more I appreciate communication free of manipulation (though it be of a most benign kind), passive aggressive persuasion, and strategically placed glints of the eye. Have I ceased, I wonder, to play these games, or do I go on playing just as my collegues do, unaware that I'm playing the game and oblivious to any other option? Or, perhaps, do I play the game--batting my eyelashes and planning my outings--fully aware of my "game-like" behavior because, to this day, it is the most entertaining and most effective way of getting things done?
I arrived at the Ministry my second day in Lima after going to two different wrong places. The Ministry is located in the basement of the National Museum, and so as you might expect I had to check my bag, my passport and any malicious intent I might have had at the door to obtain a pass to enter. I walked down the stairs to a warehouse-sized floor that was stacked high with boxes containing years of bureaucratic proceedings and was divided into large cubicles each of which contained about six desks. I asked for Olinda (the woman I report to at the Ministry) and was seated at (what I now know as) the table for people they don't know what to do with. I waited for 45 minutes and was finally greeted by a woman with big eyes and an even bigger personality. Within the first ten minutes of my interaction with her, I understood that I was to monitor the various virtual classrooms with which they are experimenting, evaluate the appropriateness of a recently-created national English language curriculum, travel to all 26 of the Pedagogical Institutes to observe, critique and educate the teachers, and finally, hold a national rolling conference in July on English language education. I was given a desk, a somewhat arbitrary collection of "school supplies," a computer, and more responsibility than I'd ever had before. I returned home exhausted, nervous and doubtful of my own ability to do this job well.
In the following weeks, I had many meetings with Olinda trying to clearly define what my job should be. I came to anticipate these meetings with a hightened level of anxiety as the meetings were rarely clarifying and almost always concluded in an even longer list of things that Olinda would like me to do. Slowly, surely, steadily, dread set in. After each meeting my confidence wavered, until finally I concluded that I was not cut out for this job, would not have any more meetings with Olinda, and would do my best to fall into the background of the Ministry and wait while the months passed me by.
A number of weeks later, the Ministry was giving a workshop to professors from all over the country. I was to observe the workshop to get ideas for my own workshop. I didn't know what to expect from this workshop, and so I spent the better part of the week trying to figure out just what was going on. Finally I figured out that it was an extended brainstorming session regarding the implementation of the new national curriculum. The last night of the workshop, we had an unexpected visitor: Viceministro Idel Vexler (the Vice Minister of the Ministry of Education). Based on the somewhat frantic scurrying of my colleagues, I deduced that he was very important, and that this wasn't a meeting to congratulate us on our efforts. We sat around a modern-day Round Table, and he proceeded to ask us why Superior Education in the country is failing, why we aren't working harder, faster, better, stronger, and why we continue to give "waste-time workshops." Since I hadn't been at the Ministry long, I was astounded by this harsh "talking to," but not nearly as disheartened as others sitting around the table. Vexler, at long last, took his leave, and the rest of us stood up to follow suit. And this is where the story changes: Olinda asked that we take our seats again, and after a great deal of grumbling, we all sat back down. She asked us how we felt about the meeting. She told us how she felt about the meeting. She conceded that superior education in Peru was lacking. She acknowledged the hard work we all did every day. She ended with, "In a country where a great deal of lip-service is paid to superior education, but resources are handed out infrequently and policy remembers us only now and then, it is easy to be disheartened. There is one thing, however, that keeps me coming back to work to do a sometimes thankless job: I believe in the importance of a strong public education system, and I hope that as a team, we can change the educational landscape of Peru so that all students have excellent opportunities." I sat at that table and seemed to see Olinda for the first time. She is a smart, brave woman in charge of a team of at least 30 and dealing with a great deal of pressure from above. Olinda has created a comfortable, forward-thinking, validating working space, and oh, how I appreciate her.
I thought it might be prudent to introduce myself, but really I'm sure that most of you know me. And so, I'll cut to the chase. As you can see, the title of this blog is "...no se nace en vano al pie de un volcán..." The English translation is (approximately) "...one isn't born in vain at the foot of a volcano..." I saw this saying in Arequipa (a town that is in fact located at the foot of a number of volcanos), and it spoke to me. I've been thinking a lot about "my goal" in Lima, and despite my attempts at thoughtfulness and clarity, I always come back to something like "tear it up." I'm not exactly sure what I mean, either. But something along the lines of affect a great deal of change in the educational system here in Peru as I push the limits of my own independence and knowledge.
I am working at the Ministry of Education as part of an effort to improve the English language programs at the Pedagogical Institutes across the country. It's not a job that's well defined, and so slowly but surely I am getting accustomed to plotting my own course within the context of this assignment. I am referred to as "professor," "specialist of English," "linguist," "phonologist," and "technological developer." These titles are a dramatic departure from the reality of my situation, for I am just recently a "college graduate"... Despite my obvious insufficiencies on paper, I feel like I can actually do a great deal with the experience I do have. So, this is why I have chosen to think about this blog, and indeed this whole experience, as "...no se nace en vano al pie de un volcán..." for I hope that when my confidence falters because I look in the mirror and see a college graduate, not an everything woman, I will grit my teeth and say "I wasn't born at the base of a volcano for nothing!" Many of you know that I wasn't, in fact, born at the base of a volcano, and so there exists a certain bending of the truth in the title of this blog, similar to my title at the Ministry; nevertheless, "I wasn't born at the foot of a volcano for nothing, " and I intend to muster up every fiber of confidence, capability, and chutzpah to boldly go, well, where I've never gone before. Please hold me to that.
Two weeks ago I made my way to the southern part of the country to a beautiful city called Arequipa to observe a number of English classes, and to hold workshops for the English teachers to work on methodology and teamwork. I was so nervous! Much to my delight, the kind of help they needed was exactly the kind of help I could provide. The next three days consisted of morning classroom observation and afternoon workshops. In the evenings, I dined with the three women with whom I was traveling. As if I weren't already bursting at the seams with delight for leading a successful first workshop, I was delighted again to discover that my colleagues were smart, witty, funny, interesting, and caring. We went out for dinner and experimented with the "food" setting on one of our cameras. On the final day of the workshop, we reviewed the pictures, and much to our horror, we realized that we had many pictures of delicious food and smiling faces at the best restaurants in Arequipa, and practically no pictures of the workshops... And so, on the last day of the workshop, we ran around somewhat frantically taking pictures of each other in "work mode" so that our devotion to our work wasn't without proof.
