From Miss to Maestra

Had a rather intellectual day today, as these sort of days go from my experience, at our teacher workshop. The primary teachers went on their merry way to put up their bulletin boards and those of us teaching secondaria stayed together. The topic of today's study and discussion was UNESCO's goal of decreasing the world's illiteracy rate 50% by 2015. The goal is particularly aimed at the high level of illiteracy in women. We were put in small groups and each group had to read and prepare a PowerPoint presentation from the material provided to us by the Mexican government. (the group that got me was polite, but I am sure not happy about getting a Spanish illiterate) Nevertheless what happened was quite impressive. Teachers took turns getting up to speak to the group with much style and professionalism. The directora de secondaria kept calling people either maestra or maestro rather than my name. At Mission it always bothered me that the female teachers were referred to as Miss and the male teachers were called the diminutive for professor: Profe. I found this offensive in two ways. Men somehow seemed more respected by the use of their title and the term Miss I found dismissive in comparison. What was wrong with "profa?" A title I never heard used. This shift in school culture and the formality here at Libertad I do not really understand at this point. Tomorrow the topic continues and we have to study up at home tonight. I just happened to take my little dictionary computer with me today and it helped a lot. My brain gets very tired trying to understand the gist of what is being said, but there are more moments when I float along understanding completely. I find that I speak more Spanish in this setting so far because fewer people seem interested in using their English when speaking to me. My team-mate Patty, whose English is excellent, came right out yesterday and asked me why I didn't speak Spanish. I didn't really have a good answer for her.