Crazy work week

Last week, I had the opportunity to witness the ability of a great mediator while working in my Thursday TG (Tutoria Grupal) in Polonia Gutierrez. The kids had to prepare for their Ceremony and, to do so, they had to prepare something: a show, a promise, etc...Because it was our last TG before the Ceremony, the kids opted for a promise, so, we helped them prepare artistic promises which they would read out loud on the day of the ceremony (A promise is something like: I promise to come to all of the Adopta gatherings, etc...). It was going pretty well until, the monitors and I decided to get a bit ambitious and create a poster with the Adopta logo splashed all over it. One of the girls in the group, a very shy but well behaved girl, immediately offered to help us (for the purposes of the story, we'll call her Ashley). She did a great job on it, but two of the girls in the group (one of which is her aunt...weird) became extremely jealous. They started mocking her for being a goody two shoes and for always wanting to help the monitors (its true, she always offered herself to help and always participated in the activities to her fullest extent). It started getting out of hand, these two girls stopped working and started chanting "We want Ashley out! We want her out!".

As monitors, we tried to difuse the situation, but to no avail. They kept up their mockery and then, one of the monitors overheard the girls scheming to wait for Ashley after the session and beat her up. Obviously, we couldnt let that happen so, when the girls all of a sudden took off after Ashley, we sprinted into action. We forced the two girls to leave, and waited for the coordinator of our school to come back and drive Ashley home. On the drive home, we ran into the two girls again and our coordinator pulled over and orchestrated the most effective mediation I've ever seen. By the end of it all, the girl who was Ashley's aunt was crying uncontrollably on Ashley's shoulder, asking for forgiveness. It was a truly touching moment in which, these two girls who didnt like one another (even though they were family and neighbors) wound up being friends for the rest of the ride (I'm not sure if it carried over to the next day, I wasnt there to find out).

Then, the next day at Lampa, we ran into another extremely serious affair. The TG at Lampa is famous throughout the Adopta program for its disfunctionality. I hadnt witnessed it yet, but Friday certainly gave me a taste of what it was all about. The problem lies in the basic fact that the boys and the girls of the group cannot stand each other. Even worse, all of the kids in the TG live right next door to each other so that, problems from home get brought into the TG constantly.

I dont recall exactly how it all started. We were trying to calm the kids down so that we could begin the first activity of the day: evaluating the Ceremony carried out in the last session. We never calmed them down. One of the girls, angry that the guys were making fun of her for liking a certain soccer team, stormed out of the session. Obviously, the rest of the girls followed. Since we couldnt let them leave, I went out with the girls and tried to convince to come back, but they wouldnt listen to me due to the fact that I was a newcomer and the fact that I had a Mexican accent. Oh well, I gave up on them and went back inside the classroom. The boys were working extremely well, doing everything we asked of them, until the girls came into the room and started throwing oranges at us (this was entirely surprising to me, usually its the other way around: the boys throw the oranges and the girls work dilligently). The boys, feeling the need to defend themselves, got up and chased the girls around. There was a lot of shoving and pushing going on for about an hour, one girl was slide tackled to the ground by a boy and started crying, we couldnt get her to stop and we couldnt get the guy to apologize. Eventually, we, the monitors, would manage to separate them, and then one boy or one girl would say or throw something and it would start all over again.

Finally, we separated them completely. The girls stayed inside playing games while I took the boys outside and played soccer. The TG ended like that and, when we were leaving, we tried to get the guy who had slide tackled the girl to apologize, which he never did willingly (because he claimed she was faking it...which it was obvious she sort of was). While we tried to convinve this kid to apologize to the girl, some of the professors of the school went to a neighboring lettuce patch and started stealing lettuce, an activity in which most of our kids accompanied them. We couldnt do much about that because, ultimately, the professors have authority over us and if they allow the kids to steal lettuce with them, then we cant do anything about it. Anyways, after a half-hearted apology, we allowed the kids to leave and we headed back to Santiago, absolutely exhausted by having to break up fights.


I constantly ask myself why there are so many problems within the groups. Is it the poverty, the conditions is which these kids live? Could it be that they dont have anyone looking out for them? Every job I have ever had has been working with groups of kids and never have I seen such problems within a group of children. Even more surprising, I have never seen kids so unwilling to ask for forgiveness (most of them claim that asking for forgiveness is equivalent to humiliating yourself like a dog). To me, that indicates the type of dog eat dog mentality these kids have adopted in order to survive in the poverty in which they live. It really is a sad story, because all of these kids have shown flashes of brilliance, politeness, and open-mindedeness, only to have that glimmer of hope erased by a mocking comment from a classmate. But, what has surprised me the most is what I conversed with my coordinator after Friday: the boys in both schools are more willing to work than the girls, they are the ones that are less problematic and, in fact, are more invested in the program. In both schools, my coordinator said, the girls create the drama and expound any problems that exist. My previous experiences had taught me otherwise, I had always found it easier to work with girls than with boys, but the opposite is certainly true in Lampa. I guess its only fitting that this be so because working in Lampa has turned my perceptions of education and working with kids upside down.