Sarah and I went on a tour of two villages near San Cristobal de las Casas. The tour was in Spanish but the guide also spoke English and said to ask him if I had any questions. His Spanish was extremely fast so even Sarah had to work to get it. At our first stop I asked him in Spanish if he could please speak a little more slowly. No, he informed me: he couldn’t because he speaks fast AND he’d just had a bunch of coffee.

Strike one.

At our next stop Sarah asked him a question during a pause in his monologue. “Let me finish,” he told her. “I’ll get to that later.”

Strike two.

Inside the church, when a group of men came in strumming guitars and playing accordions, I checked with Sarah: “Tocar” means play, right? Yup. So I tried to ask him in Spanish if only the men play instruments. Because I suck at Spanish and am getting worse, I halted, garbled, retraced. “Talk in English,” he told me.

Strike three. Out.

From then on I couldn’t pay attention to him. Anything he said that might have enlightened me never got as far as my processor. Further, I didn’t want to try to make another utterance in Spanish. That is to say, both my input and output shut down.

I wondered why this guy does this work, and I postulated that he is deeply interested in the subject matter: the lives and struggles of the Maya whose villages he was touring us around. But I don’t think he had an iota of interest in the people he “teaches”: who we are, why we’re here wanting to learn.

Oddly, he apologized to Sarah and me later, saying he was sorry he was curt with us but that it had been early and that he needs to set boundaries early in the tour. We wondered what he meant by that. Again, he had no idea who he was dealing with. I imagine that tourists are a varied and often unruly and disrespectful lot, and that there are loudmouths among them. So rather than finding out if that were true in this case, he made a preemptive strike and silenced us a priori. In my case, that control came at the cost of my attention.

Once again, we’re back to the subject of determining, first and foremost: who are your students, why are they there and how can you adapt your passion into a form that respects and engages them. Monologue in such an active situation — a small tour — was not appropriate. Had we been a group of twenty, it may (or may not) have been different. But there were only about 7 of us, and all of us earnest, interested and respectful — which he would have seen if he’d taken the time. Did he have to give us each a chance to say who we were and why we were there? Not necessary, though it might have been constructive and/or interesting, in a small group like this. But not required, since we were together for a one-time thing, so the idea of building a learning community is moot. However, he could have kept his eyes open and learned about us based on observation. Then he would have known we didn’t need discipline. But upon reflection, I think that it may be easier and quicker, even for a five- or six- hour-only affair, to have everyone introduce themselves. He did ask each of the three pairs where they were from, but that didn’t reveal anything.

Goodnight.