Learning Is Rich at a Poor School in MexicoBy Steve Lopez GUADALAJARA-U.S. schools may have more rooms and equipment, but in Mexico, with its family-centered culture, the schools have parents on their side. Students generally remain respectful of adults, even into their teens.
This fact is a well known to those of us who teach immigrant students. We know how recently arrived a student is to the country by how respectful they are of adults. Then, tragically, the longer they are here, the more "Americanized" they become. One of the first signs that the acculturation process has begun is that they learn to talk back. Then you start to see the little bad habits: tardiness, forgetting to bring materials to class. By their third or fourth year they know how to cuss you out. In English. (My signature line: "I didn't teach you that!")
However, no matter how bad they may get, because you know the culture, you know that you can always call home. And calling home means something for a Mexican student. You may not know what happens after you hang up that phone, but when they come back, that simple phone call has bought you two to three months of respectful behavior in your classroom.
Call the home of an American kid who cusses you out and disrupts your class, his momma may cuss you out too. And he stops doing his homework.. 'Cause he thinks he's doing it for you, not himself.
So look around for the happiest teachers at your school. They are the ESL teachers. If you ever wondered why, you now know. And the non-ESL teachers who have figured it out? Rushing to sign up for those endorsement classes like flies to butter.
11:27:16 PM 
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