First Visit to a Colegio

On Friday I got to do my first bit of research for one the professors I am working with. It is something I have been waiting to do ever since I started working with her and finding out about the project and going to the meetings, but it has taken a while to get everything coordinated so I could go. They didn't want to send me by myself the first because a) my Spanish isn't perfect and they wanted to make sure someone could do the tests with me the first time and b) I don't know the area where the colegio is/they think I will get lost if they send me on my own ;) Anyways, it was definitely worth the wait because it was a lot of fun.

I went with another one of the girls who works the professor-she is working on her master's in developmental psychology and will be using some of this research for her thesis. We met up at the metro station near my house at 9 in morning and took the metro allllllll the way down the blue line (on the way south-west end of Santiago). Fernanda (the girl who I went with) showed me the "tests" we would be giving the kids and we practiced during the metro ride. As Fernanda said, according to Katy (the professor) this school is the most flaite (aka ghetto) school we are working with. When we got off the metro, we had to ask about 4 people for directions to find the school. However, we eventually made it there. When we arrived, it reminded me a lot of the schools in Guatemala. We had to be let in because the whole school was surrounded by a big, yellow fence. Once we went in, we got shown to a room where we would be working with the kids. Then, the first kid came.

Fernanda administered the first test, and I observed, following along with an additional copy. There were 6 parts-the first 5 consisted of reading stories to the kids and showing them images and then asking them questions about what we had read. They all had to do with memory and being able to see things from someone else's point of perspective. For example, one story is about Ana and Sophia. Ana has a ball, which she puts in her basket; then she leaves and goes outside to play. Sophia takes the ball out of Ana's basket and puts it in her box. Then Sophia goes out side to play. Ana comes back inside. Then we ask: Where will Ana look for her ball? Where is Ana's ball in reality? Where was Ana's ball to begin with?

It was really interesting to see how the kids responded. We got a couple of really interesting answers, including "in the plaza"...okay...where did that come from? The last test was a little different from the first ones. (Well, they're all different, obviously, but the first few are fairly similar). In this one, we have a list of words and each word corresponds with a picture. For each word, we show the kids 4 different pictures and ask them to pick the picture that best represents the word. The was definitely the test (or "game" as we called them) that they enjoyed the least...by the middle of the test most of the kids looked bored out of their mind. I can't say I blame, it does get a little old after 20 words...

Anyways, all the kids were really cute. One of the girls corrected me when I was asking her one of the questions...I asked her "show me which one is the kangaroo," she looked at me and said "you mean "Can-goo-ru"" pronouncing it correctly. I was like "oh, yes, sorry" and she was like "okay, I just didn't understand what you asked me". It was really cute and funny. And, a major accomplishment for me...I understood what all the kids were saying apart from when one girl answered one of the questions (she had a little bit of a different accent, and was stuffy, and she used a word I didn't know...all things that complicated my understanding her), but apart from that I felt pretty good. (Katy had been concerned that I would have a lot of trouble understanding the kids, because they would't take pity on me and realized that I'm a gringa who doesn't speak perfect Spanish, they just talk how they talk.)

Anyways, it was a really great experience and I really enjoyed working with the kids. I hope that I did well enough that Katy will let me go again!

As Fernanda and I were walking back to the metro we started talking about the school system in Chile. She told me that the colegio where we had just been was the reality of most colegios in Santiago, not the colgeios that I'm used to seeing in Providencia (where I live, a nicer area). Then she was explaining to me that there are basically three levels of school: public, semi-public and private. The public and semi-public ones tend not to be very good; the only difference with the semi-public is that the parents pay a small amount of money for their kids to attend. But, the quality of education is not much better (if any better). However, just paying for your education in Chile gives you status, even the school is not any better. I was like "well that seems silly," and Fernanda was like, "yep, but that's how it works here." I shared a little about the education system in the US, but as I told her "I have a bit of a warped view because I grew up in a middle class town where the public schools were excellent." Anyways, it was interesting.

And, a note about Santiago, I know that cities are divided by social class in the US and schools are better in some areas than others-but take that and amplify the problem by ten and that is how it is in Santiago. Where I live, Providencia, and the surrounding areas (Las Condes, Vitacura, etc) are very nice. They are where the people who are more well-off live, the schools are good (although most kids attend private schools anyways, because, as I said earlier paying for your education gives you status), but as you go farther away from city center, east, south, especially, it's a completely different Santiago. It's like Santiago has split-personality-disorder, it's one city, but with many, many different sides. I guess that's inevitable in a city of 9 million (15 million, aka half the population of the country, literally, in the metropolitan area), but it's amazing how drastic the change is when you take a 30 minute metro ride. And I know that I haven't even been to some of the most impoverished areas of the city, I've been the lower-middle-class parts, which remind me a lot of places like Guatemala actually. Just the style of the architecture, the way everything is set up. It really hit home how little of the city I know and understand when I was out with one of my friends a few weeks ago. We were in a neighborhood called Quinta Normal which is the museum district of the city. I had only be near that area to Estación Central to buy tickets to go on the bus. I was asking him to explain where everything was in the city so I could orient myself (I couldn't see the mountains that day). He did his best to explain to me, but at one point he pointed to Providencia/Las Condes and he said "that's where you live. That's where your life in Santiago is. Everything you know is over there." And, I realized, that's really true. This city is huge. And I only know a tiny portion of it.