Newport
Dakota paused in the middle of Itsy Bitsy Spider. His fingers stopped partway through the motions that always accompany that particular song.
“I forgot the end,” he said, almost in a whisper.
The aim of such an exercise, said Chavez, a middle school teacher from Campeche, Mexico, is to help the student be more comfortable jumping into an activity without fear of failure. If Dakota was comfortable with this, up there alone in front of the class, he would be comfortable with anything else Chavez would ask the students to do that day. This would include learning the children’s song in Spanish.
The interaction between Chavez and Dakota was part of a two-week program at Dartmouth College for a group of more than 30 public school teachers from Mexico. Their stay in Hanover and their visit to Newport on Wednesday were under the auspices of the Inter-American Partnership for Education, a program developed in 2007 by Worldfund, which expands education opportunities in Latin America, and the Rassias Center at Dartmouth, which is renowned for its immersive approach to language instruction.
IAPE has trained 2,062 public school teachers since it began, and IAPE teachers have reached more than 1.5 million students in English classes in Mexico. Participating teachers make a three-year commitment to advancing the program’s mission. Professor John Rassias pioneered the Rassias Method of language instruction; and died in December at age 90.
“The spirit of what he created goes beyond life,” Raul Lopez Acero said. “It’s a legacy, once you get it, it’s yours forever.”
Acero was a trainee with the program in 2008. He returned to Mexico, taught English to elementary school students using the Rassias Method for three years, and saw his students’ efficiency increase dramatically. He became the academic coordinator for IAPE in 2011.
The program, however, does not seek efficiency in the traditional sense. It seeks an increase in the speed with which students learn, but it is by no means businesslike. The Rassias Method, basically, is all about comfort, as in the interaction between Chavez and Dakota Bedard.
Dakota is one of about 75 students in classes at Richards this summer. Designed to prevent academic regression, the summer program is active for the month of July.
He stood at the front of the class, his hands still raised in front of him, unable to remember the words.
“That’s okay!” Chavez told Dakota. Just about everything she said to the kids was enthusiastic.
Dakota smiled.
She kept him up there while she taught the rest of the class Witsi Witsi Arana, the Spanish version of Itsy Bitsy Spider. Then she let Bedard back to his seat.
The class didn’t quite get Witsi Witsi Arana, but that wasn’t necessarily the point. As the exercises progressed, the students became more and more immersed in what they were doing.
“When I go back to Mexico, I’m going to change the way I teach,” said Chavez.
She used to teach kindergarten in Mexico. When she started working with adolescents, she became stricter, she said.
On Wednesday, after Witsi Witsi Arana, Chavez and the other teachers in room 102 led three more exercises. The first was “Frio y Caliente,” which involved jumping back and forth across an imaginary border between the United States and Mexico. The second was an exercise where the students had to organize themselves based on their favorite fruit, but using only the Spanish names.
Chavez replicated these exercises in a class at Newport Middle School.
“The program has taught me that I have to do the things I used to do when I taught kindergarten, and that is to have fun,” she said. “You understand as a teacher that you need to love what you do, and love each other.”
When it was time for Chavez and the other IAPE teachers in the room to leave, the first graders ran up for hugs, unsolicited. They were, of course, received warmly.
A chorus of “adios, amigos” rose from both sides of the cafeteria at Richards. The teachers, who spent time at both the elementary and the middle school in Newport, were headed towards the school bus, which would take them to their next destination. They initiated the chorus, and they laughed as the students responded.
“Our work is not just teaching,” Chavez said. In Mexico, “kids are thinking that they won’t get a job–”
Martha Davila, sitting in the seat next to Chavez on the school bus, interjected. “Suicide is a huge problem in Mexico.”
Davila is from Puebla. Her state has the highest suicide rate in the country, she said. Students come from across Mexico to attend schools in Puebla. But the pressure is so intense, and there is often so little support from parents, that sometimes students take it out on themselves.
Davila said that the close interactions, and the camaraderie between teachers and students under the Rassias Method, could make a difference in this regard.
“Heart to heart,” she said. “We spend so much time with our students, we can save a life.”
Henry Nichols is a junior studying journalism at Tufts University. He can be reached at Henry.Nichols@tufts.edu.