Beyond Drugs and Violence
Colombian students surpass their country’s image
Article and Photos by Elizabeth Stokely
I was waiting alone in my classroom during the first week of the semester when a quiet, tall, adult Afro-Colombian student appeared in the doorway with a skeptical look on his face. “Who are you?” he demanded.
I caught a breath of humid air, end-of-summer stale, and slowly responded, “I am the new English teaching assistant here at the university. You must be here for an oral evaluation from the class next door? Please take a seat so that we can talk for a few minutes.”
Irritably, the student entered and plopped into the desk across from me. The professor next door had advised me to ask simple questions in English to make the students feel more comfortable talking with a native speaker. After exchanging names, I inquired, “Tell me a little about your family and where you live.” Instead of an easy conversation, I got a stone-cold stare.
“Why are you even here? Who are you?” he asked in reply. Mustering all of my confidence, I explained that I was teaching English for a year at the University Santiago de Cali with a scholarship awarded in the United States called the Fulbright. I managed to salvage the remaining two minutes of the interview by promptly changing the subject, and I ultimately gave him high marks on his oral English skills.
At first I did not fully grasp what had just happened. I had already learned to let uncomfortable encounters roll off my back, and I was adjusting to the attention I attracted as the fair, blue-eyed English teacher, the first American teaching assistant that the university had ever had. I focused on my primary responsibility—teaching English—and rationalized the tiff as a meeting with an angry student who was probably just having a bad day.
A week later, as I rushed into my classroom to prepare for an evening conversation club, the same student knocked on my open door. Startled to see him looming in the doorway, I attempted to sound animated, “Hello again! How are you?” “Could I talk with you for a minute?” he asked. Wondering why in the world this student wanted to talk to me again, I ushered him into the classroom and closed the door. He quietly said, “I hope that I didn’t offend you during our interview last week. I realize that I may have come across too harshly.” He continued, “You know, my teacher sent me to you without explaining the situation or who you were. I was expecting to walk in and see an older person, and then I saw you, and your first question was about my family. It’s just that we’re in Colombia, and you never know who you can trust. My family and I have had very bad experiences, and I left my hometown to study here and be safer.” I immediately reassured the student that I appreciated his explanation and hoped to continue working with him in the future, and we made amends.
How naively I had asked such a sensitive question in Colombia, where innocent families have suffered the consequences of paramilitary and guerrilla violence for years. Paramilitary groups, widely known for links with the Colombian army and politicians, arose in the 1980s and 1990s as fighters against leftist guerilla forces such as the FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia). In recent decades, both the right-wing paramilitary groups and left-wing guerillas have financed violence with illicit drug-trafficking and kidnappings. As a result, millions of Colombian citizens, particularly in the provinces bordering Cali, have been forced to leave their homes as areas were cleared of suspect enemy sympathizers.
Many of my students fled to Cali to escape violence and look for employment opportunities. This means that many of my 80 students are internal refugees, or desplazados (displaced citizens). In the entire world, only Sudan has more internal refugees than Colombia, and it was these complex demographics that brought me to the University Santiago de Cali as part of my Fulbright.
I arrived at the university on a scorching August afternoon, typical in Cali, a sprawling city of three million inhabitants still struggling to get back on their feet after decades of cartel-driven violence. Jet-lagged and dizzy from my introduction to Colombian drivers and roads during the ride from the airport, I stepped onto a campus unlike any I had seen in the United States. A barbed wire fence and security guards surrounded a smattering of concrete buildings, soccer fields, and restaurant kiosks. One of the buildings was the Language Institute, where students from all departments complete the dreaded English requirements. The school’s decrepit physical condition reflected the poverty of the surrounding Cali neighborhoods as well as the general lack of funds for education in Colombia. For the past decade, the Colombian education system and other public programs have suffered as the U.S. and Colombian governments funneled the available financial resources into Plan Colombia, an American anti-drug initiative based on spraying both legal and illegal crops with chemical herbicides. In this kind of environment, English seemed irrelevant to many Colombians, as was made clear by the physical conditions in which students were expected to learn.
The first weeks of class were a blur of new faces and constantly changing teaching schedules. I didn’t dare admit to anyone that my intellectually inspirational liberal arts degree—a foreign concept in Colombia—was a completely deficient pedigree for formal pedagogical training. I took on the role of full-blown English teacher, not included in the job description of English Teaching Assistant. Some of my students underestimated me because of my young age, and others teased me in Spanish when I proudly mentioned the Boston Red Sox and other cultural references in class, assuming that I could not understand their words. Yet another unexpected obstacle was the distraction of the trickle of students entering the classroom up to 45 minutes late. No matter how strict the professor, when a class begins in Colombia, about half of the students are present. Professors themselves frequently arrive late.
In and out of the classroom, I quickly realized the myriad challenges of teaching English in a developing country. A deeply-rooted controversy over teaching methods divided the English faculty. Many argued that the students at this university, unlike those who attended Cali’s fashionable universities after graduating from wealthy bilingual schools, would never have the money or opportunity to travel to an English-speaking country. Therefore, they claimed, technical, profession-specific language skills surpassed conversation skills in importance. Other faculty members argued that ignoring conversational English dangerously perpetuated Colombians’ lack of perceived need for the language as well as the education system’s failing English programs. What, they asked, is the point of learning a language without being able to speak it? Since I was in charge of all levels of English conversation club, I decided to continue to require my students to speak the language. Based on my own experience with Spanish, I found speaking with others the most difficult yet most gratifying aspect of learning a language. Depriving students of the ability to speak a language strips them of the power of communication.
Every aspect of my experience in Colombia has contributed to my internal cultural adjustment, which has in turn made me a better instructor. I learned that to teach English effectively, not only did I have to learn to understand Colombian culture, I further had to change and integrate myself into that culture. Still, cultural sensitivity is not as simple as learning to be prepared for the tardiness that is the norm in Colombia or ignoring the urban decay that first struck me upon my arrival in Cali. I realized that my genuine desire to learn about the community that I served was as important as any other contribution I made. In conversation club one day, when I was leading a discussion activity about students’ favorite Colombian traditions and places, an outspoken student, Alejandro, raised his hand and told me, “You came despite what they say about us over there. And you enjoy our country. As proud Colombians, we appreciate that. It’s special.”
And so I learned that just by being there, enjoying my students’ company, and doing my best to learn about their country, I was making a difference.
Elizabeth Stokely is teaching in Colombia for a year through the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship program (http://us.fulbrightonline.org/thinking_teaching.html). She graduated summa cum laude from Dickinson College in May 2008 with a double major in International Studies and Spanish. During college, she volunteered as an English tutor of Hispanic immigrants in rural Pennsylvania and a medical interpreter in a clinic for the uninsured. She has also interned with several international education organizations such as LanguageCorps (www.languagecorps.com).