On my ISP

It’s been a while.  Whoops.  I’d say I’ve been busy, which is true, but also nothing has been feeling really urgent to blog about.  (I also have to write down everything I do/observe/think/feel in my work journal.  And that gets tiring….

So, we’re a little over a week and a half into ISP.  So far, the main stuff I’ve done:

1. Decide on a topic.  I’m putting this first not because it happened first chronologically, but because I’m benevolent and don’t want to confuse my faithful readers (also mild OCD tendencies).  First I was going to look at social class and early socialization and how that works with young kids in Bolivia.  After explaining this to my mentor at the daycare center/preschool (I’m just going to call it the guardería because that’s the Spanish word and I keep writing it accidentally anyway), my SIT (program) advisers said it was a little too big of a topic to do in 4 weeks.  So enter my next idea—focusing on how the preschoolers relate to the written word (in the classroom, books, activities, etc.)  My guardería mentor said that was good, but that how kids learn is studied all the time.  She suggested looking at the teachers at the guardería and why they chose to work there, despite less-than-awesome pay (the teaching profession in Bolivia operates outside of minimum wage).  And to also look at the parents, and why they send their kids to this particular guardería even though it’s not the cultural norm here to have other people care for one’s kids.  So we set off on that topic, until this Friday I talked to my SIT adviser, who said that I probably wasn’t going to get really deep answers from parents and teachers.  (ie. Why did you become a teacher?  Because I like kids.  Why did you send your kids here?  Because I want them to get a good education.)  So now I’m doing a general ethnography on the guardería, which is great because it can incorporate all of my previous topics to some extent, but also lets me wait and see what info I discover.

2. Volunteered at the guardería where my mentor works, with the prekinder kids.  They’re adorable.  I help them with their book work, where they trace and color (and sometimes paint and glue).  I join in their cute games of pretend on the rug or do puzzles with them (this guardería does a LOT of puzzles—twice a day for all the ages—so these kids are GOOD at puzzles.)  So the kids think I’m fun, which is always nice.  It also means they come up and tell me things, and I have to pretend to understand or extrapolate since they’re too little to explain what they mean using other words.  (The worst is when they ask me what something is, in a book, puzzle, etc.)

3. Visited another guardería today, as a reference point.  This one had a surprising number of white kids (Cochabamba doesn’t have a big white population, except foreigners, and there aren’t a lot of those either.  When I see a white person on the street, it’s like a rare animal sighting.  “Look!  A white person!”).  I sat in on two art classes with 2 year olds and almost-2 year olds.  They were also pretty adorable.  A few of them thought I was HIL-A-RI-OUS since I made some fun animal noises.  Winning.  (Although it’s not as easy as you’d think, since animals make different noises.  Like dogs say “Gwow” instead of “woof.”

I also should mention that my project has involved calling many strangers on the phone, in Spanish, to ask if I can interview them.  It’s gone pretty well so far.  Granted, they’re all people who know my SIT advisor, but they’re still remarkably friendly considering I’m a stranger/foreigner/person they have no obligation to help.