Mai's school

Tonight I'm writing about our daughter Mai's school in Oaxaca. It's called Alecrim, a very small private primary school with about 80 students, housed in a renovated house (albeit pretty large, accommodating 7+ classrooms, library and an office) with a small yard. There are only 11 students in Mai's 2nd grade class, 6 boys and 5 girls. It was recommended to us by a colleague of Dan's. Dan interviewed a teacher on the phone from the States and we decided to sign her up there sight unseen.

The background to this is that Oaxaca public schools are not known for its excellence. The political violence of 2006 was started by the union of school teachers, who protest and strike often to agitate for more pay. My first-hand knowledge of this situation is limited to what my Spanish teachers said, which is that the public school teachers make good money compared to teachers in other states, and they have good benefits compared to most other workers who must work longer hours and more days to make a living wage. In any case, what this seems to mean to families is that anyone that can afford a private school education for his or her child does. There are many choices for private schools.

Alecrim turns out to be a genuine parent initiative. It was started 6 years ago by about 10 parents who wanted a different option for their kids entering primary school from the Alecrim preschool. The educational philosophy is to teach holistic skills by encouraging learning from individual projects for homework. The vast majority of learning in Mexico apparently happens through rote stuff and worksheets (not too different from American schools, I'm afraid), and these activist parents didn't want that. In practice, of course, much depends on how the philosophy is administered through individual teachers. Mai's teacher is young and somewhat stiff in the traditional Mexican fashion, and it seems the philosophy is not translated well in her classroom.

The operation is sanctioned through a Catholic group based in Italy, and the director (principal) is an Italian. He's not a priest, but took a vow of celibacy to dedicate himself to this work. He happens to be an extraordinary individual who has a uncanny grasp of every single child in this school, and has been helping Dan and I help Mai adapt. He has a psychology degree and uses it to work with kids and parents. I've never seen a school director pay so much individual attention to each student and parents. To us, he makes our experience at Alecrim very special.

She has a school uniform of white polo shirt, beige skort and a red jacket in cold weather. There is also an athletic uniform worn on Wednesdays and Fridays. She looks pretty smashing in the uniform, I might say! School uniforms are a fact of life in Mexico, and even preschoolers have uniforms parents have to buy. It kind of seems like a drag in terms of the cost and keeping them clean, but then you realize that you don't have to buy so much street clothes, and there's no need to choose clothes for every school day. I've gotten used to them and don't mind them. I think the Alecrim uniform is less formal and more practical than typical Mexican school uniforms. Walking around town, one sees school girls wear long, heavy pleated skirts and boys in pants in dark colors.

Mai is in school from 8 am to 2 pm, with a short lunch break at about 10:30. We are fortunate to have the school secretary (one of the founding parents, it turns out) pick her up in front of our house every day. It's still a struggle to get her ready on time every morning. We pack her a simple lunch. We pick her up at 2 pm, often by car but sometimes Dan walks there for exercise and returns with Mai by bus. There is a nice social scene with parents, and exchanges with the teacher. Mai usually has worksheet homework every day, and about every 2 or 3 weeks she has a big project homework. For these assignments Mai has made a neighborhood map, a family tree, comparison of urban and rural environments, etc. It keeps Dan busy to help her with homework every day.

Her progress in Spanish is quite remarkable. She needs much less help with homework compared to when she started. In the beginning she was with an English-speaking friend most of the time getting help from her (the teacher does not speak English), but the report from this friend about 2 months ago is that she now understood everything. I guess this is not a surprise, but she corrects my Spanish and uses reflexive verbs, which I find so difficult, with little fuss. Now she's reading more in Spanish. In English she continues to be an intrepid reader, having recently finished and was completely enraptured by Matilda, the Roald Dahl book. There is an hour of English taught by a young American teacher, during which she writes in English.

She's really soaking up the atmosphere and fitting in (one hopes). For a while she was singing the Mexican national anthem at home every day. Mai being Mai she has drama to report to us time and again, but by and large she seems to be getting along socially. The school being so small she has opportunities to make friends with kids from other grades. She's had a few play dates with friends outside of school, and I wish there have been more. Like in the States, middle class families are busy and special arrangements have to be made to get together outside school. As we get to know friends, we're finding out things like a sister of a classmate taking piano lessons from the wife of Mai's violin teacher. Hopefully next semester we can take advantage of these connections and get mutual help with driving while making time to be with friends.

The matter of social class is always interesting to figure out in Mexico, and in this school families tend to veer towards the upper-middle class, it seems. There is a smattering of the capitalist ownership class, as in a family of Mai's classmate Eduardo who owns a hotel in town. Another classmate is a grand daughter of an ex-governor of Oaxaca and the daughter of a high-ranking government official who almost ran in the recent mayoral race (I don't understand why he had a public campaign going on with his face and slogan plastered over buses and billboards, but in fact he did not win the endorsement of his party to be its candidate). Some of the others seem to have regular jobs, but I don't know yet what all the parents do.

It's for sure the school experience for Mai is much more positive than when she was in Spain for spring semester last year. It seemed like she learned very little Spanish then, but who knows, that experience might be helping her now. In any case, this is a much more personal experience, and Mai will in the end will have learned so much and have enriched her life. The end of the semester will be marked by a school-wide play and a party to raise money for playground improvement. I think next semester will be much easier for her.