Want to find out how my picture ended up in the Las Canarias news? Well, it's kind of a long story...
As I mentioned in my school blog, my school has a theme each year rather than using textbooks and this year’s theme is migration. They base their theme in a book: Alice in Wonderland this year. However, I didn’t explain the special circumstances surrounding this year’s choice of theme. You see, my school applied for and was chosen to receive a grant for a European Project. The project is a collaboration of six schools chosen from six countries: Italy, Greece, Lithuania, Northern Ireland, England, and, of course, Spain. The project is two years long and representatives from each country visit all the other countries on dates sprinkled throughout the grant years. As luck would have it, we, Spain, were chosen to be visited first. From my very first day “November 26th” loomed large as the date the visitors from these five countries would arrive. We had to plan a big welcome with all the students and were going to do a little bit of a play based in Alice in Wonderland – all in English, naturally. Monday’s visit included many moving parts, themes, and ideas, so I’ll do my best to be as clear as possible, but stick with me. And for the record, this wasn’t fully explained to me, I had to pick things up as I went along. So here we go. #1: Each grade level of primary school was given one of the countries to represent and learn about. 1st graders are Spain, 2nd are Northern Ireland, 3rd Greece, 4th England, 5th Italy, and 6th Lithuania. #2: Students who have parents or grandparents from other countries were to represent that country, and one representative from each of those countries was chosen for the play (i.e. we have many students from Cuba, but only one spoke for Cuba). I’ll refer to the students who spoke in the performance as the student representatives. #3: We had to choose students to play “Alice” and the “rabbit” in the welcome play. #4: We have the people from the European project coming – the very reason for this whole thing, i.e. representatives from the schools in the countries of Italy, Greece, Northern Ireland, England, and Lithuania. I’ll refer to these as the country representatives. #5: We also had some government people come to watch. The theme tied into this welcome meant that we had to teach the kids about geography, migration, their own country (Spain), their family’s country if it was different, and the country their class was assigned. This meant a lot of differentiating the United Kingdom from England and Northern Ireland and differentiating Northern Ireland from Ireland. Plus Alice in Wonderland. If you’re wondering how Alice in Wonderland fits in – we talk about her as a foreigner in a new place and we ask the kids how she must have felt etc. Some of the teachers even asked the students to ask me how *I* felt when I arrived to Spain and the Canary Islands and if I felt like Alice. I think it helped even the little ones understand a little more what it feels like to be in a totally new place, even if it’s for great and exciting reasons. The past few weeks have been crazy with activity. Besides working with the kids, we had numerous other jobs to take care of. We designed our playground and painted it with a giant, geometric map of the world (Raquel, of course, took the lead on this one and executed it beautifully). My jobs were also increased and varied. I worked on writing the script between Alice and the rabbit as well as the conversation between Alice and the kids representing their family’s country, I also wrote and translated welcome speeches and then, maybe the biggest job, I worked with the kids on their lines, especially on pronunciation and making sure they were understandable. All the kids have been fantastic, but all this work meant that our past weeks have been filled with missed breaks and post-school work writing, translating, and practicing. I actually loved this. I felt like I was helping out with a big picture, organizational project, which I love, and it gave me a chance to see how the larger goals of the school were implemented into individual classes. It was busy, but I had a blast. After weeks and weeks of work, Monday was the day. I’m not going to lie, I was a little nervous. The play was to take place out on the playground where the painted map set the scene and the sky was ominously spitting rain throughout the morning. We’d also had pronunciation and memory issues with the students, which is to be expected, but still, you want it to go well. I figured my day-of jobs would be pretty limited. I’d be around to help with anything needed, but I wasn’t in charge of anything. When I arrived Monday morning, I got to meet the teachers and directors from England, Northern Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Lithuania. I was especially engaged in a conversation with the representatives from England when one of them stopped me to say, “your English is sogood.” I paused for a second, confused, thinking honestly that this was a weird jab at American English and then I realized she didn’t know where I was from, so I told her laughingly I was from the U.S. She laughed as well, shocked, and told me she had thought I was Spanish. This is actually the second time this has happened to me on this island, where a someone from an English speaking country has told me that my English was really good for being Spanish and I’m going to take it as a compliment, but it does always make me wonder a little if I talk funny in English as to sound not quite right enough to be native. Alas. By the time all of the representatives were clear on who I was, we went to the playground, where it was no longer raining, to watch the students’ performance. First Alice (played by a sixth grader) and the rabbit (a 3rdgrader) performed their dialogue, with Alice welcoming everyone to our school and then telling them how sad and alone she felt in a new place. Our rabbit quickly ran out to make her feel better, telling her that here there were people from all over the world and that she’d never feel alone. She then welcomed in the students, grade level by grade level. They were announced by the country they were assigned to an entered waving the flags of the country they are studying and of the country they or their family are from. We also played typical music for the entrances, including The Beatles’ Love Me Do for the 4thgraders studying England. The students were all dressed in traditional dress from either their family’s country or from the Canary Islands. I had been a little skeptical of this before seeing it, because it felt like calling out kids who were “different” and asking that they represent something that I didn’t know if they felt they had any connection to, but it ended up being a blast for the kids and looking so beautiful. I was struck by how lucky they are to have this international community in the school. I think we take it for granted sometimes in the United States. Once all the students were in place around the giant painted map, Alice went to each student representatives to ask them where they were from and then something about that country. I felt like a proud dance mom as halfway through I realized I was mouthing all the words I’d written for the students to perform. I was bursting with joy as I watched them all get their lines and pronunciation (even the tough ones like “flag” and “biodiverse”) correct! Each student’s English was met with big cheers from our visitors and from the parents who had come to support their kids. The map was there so that once they had answered their question, the rabbit could grab the student and run them to their country on the map. Before the student representatives shared a traditional Canarian dance, each of them took ribbon and led it from their country to Gran Canaria on the painted map, showing beautifully intertwined links back to countries in every continent except Antarctica and Australia. We have kids from Germany, Ukraine, France, and Italy, kids from Honduras, Cuba, Ecuador and Brazil, kids from Nigeria, Senegal, and Togo, and kids from China, South Korea, and the Philippines and so many more. After remarks from our director, two students did a short interview of their father, who migrated from Venezuela to the Canary Islands 28 years ago in search of a better life. It was a touching experience and a good reminder that all the talk of migration hits close to home for many people here and is incredibly meaningful. Once the welcome was done, I, still beaming, breathed a sigh of relief knowing everything had went well and that my job was done. I went up to my class to talk with the kids about how they’d liked the experienced, but as soon as we were upstairs in our classroom, another teacher came looking for me, saying that the head teacher wanted me down with the representatives in case she needed help. I dutifully went down to the little auditorium and sat listening to her and our director speak a little bit to the parents, country representatives, and government officials. Then, when they invited the Vice President of Innovation-and-some-other-titles of Education to speak, our head teacher gestured for me to join him on stage. I was a little confused until she turned to the group and told them I would be translating for the VP’s speech. None of the students were there, so I wasn’t giving away my secret that I speak Spanish, but have you ever done a live translation? Or one you didn’t know was going to happen? It’s hard! My face was burning red as the VP talked in Spanish for 30 seconds, paused, let me translate to English, then proceeded to talk for over three minutes before taking his next break to let me translate. (See the photo below, published in this week’s online news, of me attempting to remember everything I needed to say). Both the VP and the crowd knew that it would be tough for me to reasonably translate all of that, so they assured me a summary was okay and smiled encouragingly through my best attempt. Once the meeting was over it was technically break time so the head teacher had me stick around for some more live translating – this time from English back to Spanish. The best moment was when one of the Italian representatives was reading a letter written in Italian. She was reading Italian and translating it to English, I was listening to the English, trying to determine what ideas the letter really wanted to convey, and then translating it back into Spanish. I know this isn’t in my job description, but it was almost because of that that I got to feel like I was just part of the school instead of a separated visitor who bopped around to different classes and I love that feeling. I wasn’t necessarily bringing something specific about my American culture to the table, but I hope that my willingness to jump in and try to meet whatever need I can, can represent my country in a subtler way, that I didn’t have to make it America First in order to share my culture, so to speak. Over the last few days, it has been delightful to welcome these guests into our school. They’ve brought fresh techniques and ideas, shared with us about immigration in their own countries, and seemed just as excited to be visiting us as we were to have them there. In March all the schools, including representatives from my own school, will go to Northern Ireland and then in May they’ll head to Lithuania. Then next year they’ll visit Greece, Italy, and England. I won’t get to see how the project develops over the full two years, but for now I am so in awe of and excited by the way that the countries in this project are already coming together. For me, the past few weeks have been way more fun than I would have imagined. I’ve seen my students eagerly learn about countries, knowing they’d be meeting people from those countries, I’ve learned about countries I knew next to nothing about in order to help lead lessons on them, I’ve watched my students become proficient in geography and migration, I got to work on a short play and see it executed – something I honestly never thought would happen as drama is not a skill in my wheelhouse, I got to practice intercultural communication between seven (including my own) countries, and I even got a taste of what it would be like to translate for someone as they speak. I know this project is bringing so much good to those involved, and I feel lucky to be included in the opportunity. Link to the article/photo in the news: https://www.noticanarias.com/lpgc-el-ceip-pepe-damaso-coordina-el-proyecto-europeo-intercultural-alice-in-wonderland-discovering-our-roots/
4 Comments
Molly King
12/2/2018 01:26:14 pm
Jordan, this sounds amazing! It sounds like you’re being fully utilized, which I can bet is so rewarding. 😊 And way to be a helpful, willing, and giving person -- a great representative of American culture, like you said. 😉
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Jordan
12/9/2018 11:51:49 am
Thanks Molly!
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Hildie Hoeschen
12/2/2018 02:50:43 pm
So thaaaaaaaaat's what our job is supposed to look like... Who knew? ;p Shade aside, so excited to hear you feel you're making an impact in the Canaries! Couldn't imagine a person better fit for helping host an event like this. #I<3JDOG
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Jordan
12/9/2018 11:52:38 am
Haha that's how I feel every day! <3 <3 <3
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