Yesterday I called Magda in Mexico and succeeded in reaching her. I’m worrying about everything: what will she be like (she sounds a bit brusque and bossy)? How will it be to live AND work with her, and perhaps do recreational things as well?

So there’s that. And then there are the logistics: how and when will I get where? I told her I’d be coming to Mexico in early January to explore a little and take a Spanish class, and when did I need to arrive in Pachuca? First she said a week ahead, but I’m not sure she understood the question. I explained I wanted to visit Chiapas the week before teaching begins and would it be okay to get to Pachuca around Thursday, and she said yes.

Then she asked about my teaching. Was I willing to work with kids? That was the first I’d heard about kids. Without a single filter I told her that my teaching experience in ESL is extremely limited, though I’ve got lots of life experience and teaching other things. And as far as teaching kids, I said, “I’ll do whatever you need me to do.” I may regret that. I told her my only hesitation about teaching kids is that I don’t have experience dealing with classroom management issues. She reassured me (if you can call it reassurance) by saying that no class will be bigger than eight people.

So I don’t know what to think. I really hadn’t wanted to teach kids in Mexico — my lesson plan thinking has been more along adult lines — but I don’t want to impose my preconceived objectives on this, either, since I know nothing about teaching and who knows: maybe I’d like working with kids. If they’re well-behaved. I don’t know.

She won’t know who the students will be till the week before, and suggested I just not worry about anything.

Bwa ha ha.

I awoke this morning in the midst of a dream. I and a few others (Mike Jerald was one, and Marlene Carroll another) had to take over another teacher’s class for the day. There was a huge snowstorm, and we were to go on a field trip that the teacher had arranged: to a movie that involved violence and bloodshed, frightening nightmarish images, and more. The children were five. I was appalled that the teacher would arrange for the children to see such a movie. I was worried first about the children: terrifying images would forever be burned into their susceptible minds. I was worried about what the parents would say when the found out they we had subjected their children to something so clearly inappropriate and, to my mind, damaging. And I wondered about the school: did they allow such a thing? I looked into it and found out that they did, and that this excursion was with their knowledge and consent. So the teacher and the school were behind the “lesson,” while the children and the parents would clearly be upset by it.

I drove my car full of children through three-foot-deep snow through a wilderness, worried that we would get stuck in the middle of a vast whited-out nowhere, and that I would be responsible. But I willed my car — truly, the force of will, because no car could drive through that — and arrived at our destination.

I was with about half a dozen co-teachers. I was clearly in a subordinate role, the lowest in the pecking order. There was the absent classroom teacher and the institution at the top. It was their orders we were carrying out. And the people I was with were all veteran teachers themselves. Some agreed with the plan (like Marlene), others (like Mike) didn’t think it was a great idea but felt, “What can you do? Orders is orders.” He was playful and happy.

So the kids went in to watch the movie. It was not one they wanted to see, or that was appropriate for them, but that the teacher had deemed educational. It couldn’t have been more inappropriate for this group of students. The children were scared. A few little children turned away from the movie screen, and we — doing the duty that the teacher wanted and institution condoned — had to force them to turn back and watch. The teachers left them in there to watch alone, even; the teacher’s only role, as far as I could see, was to make sure the children absorbed what they were told to. I felt helpless and miserable and worried. I wanted at the very least to be able to sit in there with the children and turn their heads away during the parts that would scare them now and haunt them later, but I wasn’t allowed.

Some of the pedagogical symbols are obvious, but I’ll point them out just for fun:

• How does a teacher take a stand against an institution or policy with which they don’t agree?
• Who decides what content is important for a student to learn?
• What is that content: what are its themes and how does it serve the students?
• What effect — good and bad — can certain content have on the students?
• How is that content delivered? In my dream, it was disembodied: not only in the form of a movie, but the teachers weren’t there by the sides of the students to give context or direction, or to redirect and reshape the content when it was downright wrong.
• How does one collaborate with one’s peers: to be heard, to work as equals rather than in a hierarchy?

I suppose that the SIT MAT who doesn’t quote “If” in his/her portfolio is few and far between. Elka handed out a copy on our last day of SLA. It seems fitting here, as I step into this unknown where I feel very insecure and ill-prepared — particularly in the context of the dream, in which I was unable to stand up for what I believed in. Thanks, Rudyard:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies
Or being hated don’t give away to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!

(I italicized the parts most relevant to my state of mind.)