Striking contrasts

As I was substitute teaching at the St. Louis Park public school across the street from me one day last week, I stood waiting for the first graders to come back from lunch and I suddenly flashed back to my classroom in Mexico. I stood soaking in the richness of this American classroom remembering the stark Mexican classrooms I taught in at Libertad. I took out my camera to take the photo below.

The classrooms at Libertad School were so painfully stark and bare, I found it at first very difficult to adjust. The classrooms in my suburb of St. Louis Park are rich in everything: beautiful decorative walls, lovely furniture, educational materials of all sorts and kinds. My classroom at Libertad was literally empty when I moved into it after a month of being a "traveling teacher" who used other teacher's classrooms. The classroom provided for me last year in late September was equipped with three round tables, chairs and a teacher desk. That was it! And Libertad was a private school where families paid tuition. The public schools I saw on my teaching tenure in Mexico were more bleak than Libertad; forty students crammed into tiny classrooms sitting at long tables with no books or materials in sight. Probably the way most students in third world countries experience education.

I know that I never really appreciated the comfort and ease of the classrooms I taught in during my career in the States. Today the classroom I taught in had two wonderful rotating fans that cooled the room perfectly on a warm Minnesota day. What I would have done for them at Libertad where the air conditioner did not work half the time and the temperatures reached close to 100 degrees. I bought a fan at Costco in Mexico to use in my classroom. The walls were flimsy and one could hear whatever was going on in the classroom on either side as well as the screaming from the playground just outside my classroom windows.

Most American school students would have have no way of knowing how good they have it. Mexican students at Libertad however knew how unpleasant their classrooms were. One day I had my middle school students at Libertad write and draw a picture of their "dream" classroom. They described classrooms where the paint was not pealing off the walls, where the air conditioners worked and where there would be pictures on the walls and room for them to move around.

Today the 5th grade class I taught was extremely difficult. I had several students who were belligerent as hell. I again flashed back to my Mexican students at Libertad who could be challenging at times, but I would never desribe them as belligerent. Again the thought that if they had any idea what they had going for them they would display a nicer temperment. I wish all young students could have a beautiful classroom and I wish those who have beautiful classrooms would know just how lucky they are. Sometimes experiencing a third world country is a dangerous thing. You keep having those flashbacks.