Two more random preschool stories

Lila

Each class had a mascot that was used to introduce some social-emotional components. Lila was ours. (Lila is happy when she has her star...what makes you happy? Lila is sad when she does not have her star...what makes you sad? Look...Lila's star is gone...she is sad because you behaved so badly today). Children had the chance to take Lila home for the weekend if they earned five Lila stickers each week. In order to earn a sticker each day, they had to work hard on their workbooks, participate in activities, arrive on time (like 4yearolds have any choice in that), and arrive happy. I was amazed by the number of kids who admitted that they did not arrive happy, even though they knew it meant that they would not get a Lila sticker that day.

Lila, in her funky purple wig,
and Spiderman. I never could
get him to say that his spidey
sense was tingling.

At parent night, the teacher started to talk about the three parts to Lila. I thought she was going to talk about social learning, emotional learning, and respect or something like that (vocabulary that I wanted in Spanish), but she talked about the literal three parts to Lila that needed to come back after spending a weekend at home (Lila herself, her star, and her backpack).

Cultural Awareness Week

Each week the teachers and assistants put on an obra de teatro for the kids. Sooooo much time was dedicated each week to preparing crafts and costumes and scripts for each show. The kids definitely enjoyed them, but it was an amazing (read: a super frustrating) spectacle to watch half the staff get ready for the show while the other half of the staff tried to get 50-60 kids to bring their chairs outside and sit quietly and patiently for up to 20 minutes while they were waiting for the show to start each week. 

Cultural Awareness week show.

It's hard to see, but that's "Africa" second in from the left, represented by black face paint and a bone in the hair.

Mind. Forever. Blown. 

There is not a lot of diversity in Chile, and it's likely that that none of the staff had ever met a black person.  There are indigenous groups, and Chile is one of a few Latin American countries with a positive migration rate (most new immigrants are from Peru and Argentina), but the majority of Chileans self-identify as white.  At some point, I am going to dig deeper, and explore what I observed (and did not observe) in terms of cultural diversity, but in the meantime I remember how jarring it was whenever I picked up on comments about groups of people who were unfamiliar. (Everyone knows that chinos are cheap! Americans are fat! (CNN Chile does a lot of coverage of Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign). That/he is sooooo gay! (Good Lord. I haven't heard gay jokes since the 90s!)

I found it refreshing when someone asked me a question out of genuine curiosity, though (I want to go to New York, are there black people there? Tell me about the black people), because I would rather the questions be asked and the discussions be had rather than portray Africans as dancing monkeys.