Why choose to learn?

                I’ve had some interesting experiences in the last week as I have observed students in various classrooms. In many instances I have seen students sit through a class lecture completely disengaged and appear to have gained nothing throughout the entire class period. On the contrary, I have also observed other activities where students seemed to be excited about their learning and even go beyond expectations to further their understanding of the concept being taught. Knowing that I will be trying to understand the aspirations of high school students in Mexico, it seems important to try and understand what makes students choose to learn.

Today I participated in an activity in my physics exploration class where a teacher gave us, a group of four college students, two remote control cars. We were given the objective to find the velocities at which they travel and then prepare to make predictions. One of which was to calculate the distance that one car would need to travel so then when it approached the other car traveling a perpendicular paths, they would collide. I have to say I was really motivated to complete this objective and I put in a lot of effort in the algorithms I would use to cause the collision. I also knew I would be able to accomplish this objective and that added to my motivation.

I believe there are two variables attached to the reason why students choose to learn. First, that the students need willingly commit to a short term goal and second, that students feel capable of accomplishing that goal; or in other words, a motivating objective and self-efficacy. 

               I find this conclusion interesting because I believe it applies to a much perspective than crashing cars in a physics lab. If learning lacks a clear and motivating objective, there is no purpose to learn and the students won’t try. At the same time, if one feels incapable of understanding a certain principle and gives up, they again cease to try.

In Mexico I will specifically be testing these two variables. What are the aspirations of students to learn? What do they feel is the level of their capability?  What is the teacher doing to encourage learning? These are all questions I have that I hope to be able to answer in the field. 

My hopes for my field study

My hopes for my field study

I would like to start out by explaining how I originally got involved with field studies. It was only after winter break that I decided to go abroad for the summer. I knew I wanted to do something that would provide experience with the Latino education system, but I had little understanding of what programs were available. I looked in to a few studies abroad and some internships, but I felt like they were cookie cutter programs. The programs weren’t mendable to my expectations; they were very set in stone. I quickly realized didn’t want to study abroad; I wanted to be in the classrooms, to be a teacher’s assistant and to work one on one with students. A study abroad would not provide that kind of involvement.  I started looking outside of BYU  and found about ten other programs in which I emailed for more information. They were slow in their response and in the end I never felt comfortable with any of them.

When I found out about the field studies program, I instantly got excited about the idea. Here was a program that put me in charge of my own experience. There was no set outline of what I would be doing; I could make my experience exactly what I wanted it to be. I also understood that this would mean a lot more preparation on my part, but the workload didn’t bother me.

Now after having finished most of my preparations, I have become even more impressed with the experience that awaits me. As I had originally hoped, I get to be in schools and work with teaches, students and parents. I will even live among then and get a feel for life outside of the schools. I didn’t expect to have wonderful mentors who have worked with me and my plans and provided me with resources to study while I’m there to gain a better understanding for the Latino education system. I will travel in a small group which will provide safety and a more enjoyable experience. (Many of the programs outside of BYU involved large groups and that less desirable to me.) The greatest benefit of all is that I have become very passionate about my research topic and plan to continue my research throughout my entire college experience. Unlike a study abroad or an internship, my field study experience can evolve into a project of a few years. It also has the potential of being published and providing me with that huge opportunity.

By the end of this field study I hope to develop skills in conducting research, publishing and presenting, building rapport, and in preparing to be an effective educator. There is also the great advantage in building for myself a cultural awareness and familiarity with the Latino culture.  As speculated by the U.S Census Bureau, in 2025, half of all high school students will be Latino; this means my three months in Mexico will be a great asset to me throughout my future career. 

Lessons from the IRB

After having a dramatic experience with finishing my IRB proposal, I feel it adequate to talk about my experience. In short, I have to thank the IRB for their strict requirement because it caused me to better develop my project and learn a valuable lesson on revision.

Let me give a quick overview of my experiences in the last week. After much compiling of my annotated sources, researching effective methodology, constructing my own methods, and filtering through all the risks and ethics of my project, I managed to compile a rough draft. That draft was then revised and then critiqued Friday during class. After a few hours of personal revision, I deemed it ready for submission.  Shortly after that personal conclusion, I received a call from my mother about the many spelling and grammar errors in my proposal. Thanks to a loving parent and a ninety minute speaker phone conversation, my proposal was revised and corrected.   It was then emailed to my professors who graciously responded with much constructive criticism. David Williams critiqued my data analysis and provided me with resources to study and to improve it. Erin Whiting met with me for about forty-five minutes as she walked me though some needed corrections in harmonizing my question and background information. After a few more hours of correction and applying the received advice, the proposal was ready for one last revision by Erin Whiting and then for submitted.

I wanted to explain this process because it taught me a valuable lesson. Revision! Revision! Revision! Up until now, my concept of a final draft was “the second draft.” Professor Whiting eased my frustration as she explained that some of her papers had required up to sixty revisions or drafts. This concept is vital to research. Quality research is meaningless unless it can be presented clearly.  The need for the skill of communication hit me unexpectedly hard this week, but I am excited that this field study will be great opportunity to develop that skill.   

Latino in Action conference

Today I had the chance to volunteer all day at the Latino in Action conference at UVU. To summarize the conference, it aimed to motivate Latino teenagers to seek a college education and a professional career. Four motivational speakers, including José M. Hernandez an astronaut, gave powerful discourses about following your dreams and choosing your own destiny. Workshops were also provided to inform students about colleges they could attend and how they might receive financial funding for their future education. There were approximately 1000 Latino students that attended; all from the middle schools and high schools within Utah.

What was so interesting to me is that the leaders of the organization, the speakers, and most of the volunteers were all of Latino decent. That means all the advice and council given to the students was from a Latin to Latin perspective. I however am not of Latino decent, so from an outside perspective I observed how the speakers tried to relate to the student by sharing about their struggles and difficulties as they progressed through their education. This was key for my project, because in essence they are saying, ‘because I was Latino, this was difficult; whereas it was not so much for the Americans around me.’ That is the feeling I got as the speakers talked racism, the challenges of uneducated parents, learning English and the many times they were stereotyped as being a handicapped learner or incapable of success. Other derogatory stereotypes caught my attention, such as alien, illegal, unintelligent, indifferent and trouble maker. To me that seems to be one of the biggest problem for Latinos in America, that they have to brush off the negative generalizations that are often imposed upon them. And if they don’t, they fall into the trap of degrading their self-worth and living below their full potential.

                I really enjoyed that the speaker’s attempts to reverse such an attitude was pure positive and uplifting commentaries such as the following: “You are all so beautiful.” “You are our future, you are the future of our nation.” “Your voice is power.” “Hold on to your culture, you can accomplish whatever you wants, but don’t lose your Spanish.” “People will always try to define you, say you’re lazy, illegal, without papers, unintelligent.  Are you going to live according to these labels? Define yourselves!”

 I also found it effective when the speakers would yell things to the audience to repeat such as: “When I say ‘you are,’ you say ‘talented,” You are TANLENTED! You are TALENTED! You are TALENTED!” Or, “Knowledge gives you power, knowledge gives you what? POWER! Knowledge gives you what? POWER!”

From the faces glued to the speakers and the energetic applauses throughout the motivational discourses, I was convinced that the intended strengthening of the self-worth of the Latino students was working. Their energy proved that they felt more capable of success.

I also find it very interesting contrasting this to what we read in class in Octavio Paz’s book, Labyrinth of Solitude: that the Mexican culture as a whole thinks of themselves almost as a defeated people comfortable in solitude. I wonder if Hispanics view themselves with the same vision of capability as is promoted in the US.  I mean, I have always heard from my youth, you can be anything you want to be, there is no limit to your potential as long as you are willing to put forth the effort. While in Mexico, It could be interesting to pay attention to whether or not this same ideology of being incapable to achieve greatness originate from Mexico, or is it first stimulated by the racism received while in the United States? I would really like to investigate this a bit further, because if it somehow it is ingrained in the Hispanic culture, it is affecting the way Latino students learn. I think a great question to ask the students in the interview is if they truly believe they could achieve a college degree. 

How to build rapport

As I have thought through my methods I have realized that a lot of my project will be based on building rapport with my subject. This includes students, parents and teachers; three fundamentally different groups of people. That means for each group I will have to adapt the way I present myself.

Today I was observing a physics class in Mountain View High, and a student teacher was leading the class. She had only been teaching for two months or so, but from my point of view, she seemed very comfortable. She laughed and was very energetic as she the difference between speed and velocity. I was impressed at the level of involvement from the students consisted the majority of them were “mathematically challenged.” When she announced that she would finish her student teaching in a few weeks, the students were legitimately sad about it. They really had developed a strong relationship with her.

There are however there are two student teachers that teach this class, and to me the other gives off a different feel.  She seems at times less sure of herself.  When she lectures, I feel like her mind switches on to “lecture mode” and the class disappears from her conscious. She is not a bad teacher, but her personality doesn’t shine as bright as the first.

The reason I mention these two examples is because I believe self-confidence is a huge part of rapport. The first student teacher was herself and the class trusted her for it. I think about the interview we listened to in class, about the researcher who studied a polygamist community. When she took pictures, she did not act super formal and serious, but was playful and happy. I believe that will need to be the core of how I will build rapport in Mexico, especially with the students. They must see me as an equal and not a future American teacher wanting to use them as subjects for my research.

Now I would like to think of a few specific examples I could use in building rapport. For example, I think that how I present myself is very important. They need to feel that I am normal and can relate to their lives. They may find it interesting that I lived in Chile for two years or maybe that I’m a triplet. In interviews with parents they might find in insane to hear about how my mother raised five kids with only a four year age span between us. I could even carry around a wallet size picture of my family to let them feel even more personal connected with my family. I really believe that’s the trick, all my subjects should feel that I am open and honest, that I have nothing to hide.  My opinion is that once they feel that I am open with them, they will feel that they can be open with me.

It is then when I can use the famous rule found in the Bernard article “Get people on to a topic of interest and get out of the way. Let the informant provide information that he or she thinks is important.” Once they feel comfortable opening up to me, it’s my job to simply let them tell me what they think is important for me to know.

In conclusion, to build rapport, my plan is to be confident in being myself and be very open with my subjects.   By doing so I hope that they feel a confidence in me that will cause them to be more open and honest with me. 

Good questions to ask

My last blog talked about the idea of situation questions. These are questions that cause the subjects to imagine themselves in a certain situation and to explain how they would react. This got me thinking about what kind of situations I would want to present to the students. I’m sure that when I am in the field my questions might change a little, but I can at least have a foundation of situations to build off of.  I also wonder if I should phrase the questions in third-person or first person? Reactivity may be affected if students pretend to give advice from third-person perspective, for example: “If a student arrives late, what would you expect …” or his/her personal perspective, “you arrive late to class, what…”

The following will be a list of topics and questions that could be interesting to investigate for my research.

Retake a test

‘You receive a very low score on a test that you feel does not reflect your knowledge of the subject, how would you react?’

“If you confronted the teacher about it, do you think he/she would provide an opportunity for you to raise your test grade?’

Parent-teacher relationships

              A parent discovers that his/her son/daughter is failing a class, how would she react?

A teacher realizes that one of his/her students never turns in his/her homework, should the teacher contact his parents? What would you recommend to that the students does his homework?

Would you recommend that your parents speak with your teachers on a regular basis? Why/why not?

Teacher –student relationships

A science teacher explains a difficult concept in class and when the school bell rings to indicate classes are over, he/she warns all the students that the following day there will be a quiz on that same subject.  You feel like you didn’t quite understand the concept is not ready for the quiz tomorrow.  What would you do?

After graduation you and your family host a casual party with food and music. You feel an appreciation for a few of your teachers, would you invite them?

Late policy

Friday during school your teacher assigns the class a reading and to write a summary of the article, you arrive Monday at class and realized you forgot to do the assignment, what do you do?

A student turns in an assignment a week late, what reaction would you expect from the teacher?

Absence

A student is absent from school three days in a row with no indication of parental consent, what would you expect from the teacher?

This list also causes me to think about other questions I could ask. I could try gran tour questions such as: If I was a transfer student from the United States, and I asked you to explain to me … what would you tell me? And add in questions like:

What to expect during one day at school what would you say to me, what?

What help should I expect from the teacher?

I could even ask: If you were to travel to a school in American, can you describe to me what you would expect throughout the course of one day? This type of question would really help me understand what the common ideology is about American schools.

I’m sure I could explore much more in depth possible questions to contribute to my research but I know more ideas will come as I continue to visit local classrooms.  To close I must say, just thinking up the questions above got me really excited about the interesting information I will be able to find while doing this project.

Idea for interviewing

I recently read a research paper of a study done to compare the teacher-student relationships in Mexico and America. The data was very interesting, but what I found most interesting was the methodology they used. The study consisted of four questions they asked to students and teachers. These questions had the students (or teachers) put themselves in a situation that could occur in the classroom and respond on how they would react. 

These were the questions the survey used:

1) A student draws a funny picture of the teacher which exaggerates a part of his or her body, like the stomach or hair. The student leaves the picture on the teacher’s desk with no name on it, and the teacher discovers it’.

2) ‘A teacher says something that one of the students disagrees with. The student tells the teacher his/her point of view’

3) ‘The students complained that an activity was difficult to understand and boring. They said they didn’t want to do it but they didn’t mind learning the material some other way’.

4) A student comes to class without having done his homework, what would be the reaction of the teacher?

 After reading this study I was very amazed but the effectiveness of their methods. The data was clear and easy to interpret. The conclusions were hard to deny because of the strong evidence from their study. This study caused me to think about what methods I could use and how I might be able to use situation questions. My original plan was to gather my data with informal interviews.  The idea of sitting down with a student one-on-one seemed overly intimidating. I feel as a one who is blatantly not Mexican, to do individual interviews will require a lot of tact and skill.  But, I remembered that according the research I have found, Latinos prefer a community setting. I gathered that they feel more comfortable in groups. From the Inquiry conference I heard about focus groups and how effective they were in a Navaho education study. I concluded that I can apply all these methods to my research.  I have decided to use mini-focus groups, of three students and ask them a couple of situation questions. 

I still have much to decide, specifically, what variables I want to focus my research on and possible situations to use in my questioning; but for now I am excited about this new ideal to gather data. 

Role of a teacher

Today I was interviewing a few staff members of the Latinos in Action program and I learned something very interesting about the role of an educator in Rural Mexican cities. The guy that I was talking with was a Latino teacher, and had many experiences as evidence of what he told me. This is what he explained:

Traditionally in small communities the pope held the role of judge, officer, governor, financial advisor, leader of the community and whatever type of concealer you could imagine. They were the go-to men whenever there was a problem. Well with the advancements in education teachers have become the problem solvers.  The teachers are the ones with the most education in the community and therefore earning them the position of the Universal problem solver.  When the Latinos want medical, financial, or political advice, they typically go to their teacher to get it.

In Mexico parents trust the teachers to make a lot more decisions. They are allotted more power. For example, teachers have the right to punish the students. The Latino teacher I was talking to told me that he has had Latino student ask him about how to handle their credit card debt or other random councils. He would answer, “I’m just a history teacher,” but he sensed that they still expected him to be a qualified multi-subject helper.

After hearing about this unique viewpoint, I searched for an article to provide evidence to support it. I found strong evidence that in the Hispanic culture, teachers take the role of an authoritative leader.  This can cause problems when Latino students transfer to an American school because they have a different expectation for the role of the teacher in their education. It will be interesting to dive in deeper to see what are the specific challenges that this cold cause for the transferring students.