Session 2: Discussing Social Change

Earlier this week I completed my second round of facilitating session with English as a foreign language classes at Haapsalu Rahvaulikool. Similar to Session 1, these sessions lasted for 2.5 hours and were facilitated with the same groups of learners as Session 1.

For Session 2, I decided to focus the discussions on two different topics of social change because this is a huge part of the IMAESC course and of my life and was also one aspect that I felt like the learners hadn't fully grasped the meaning of when I had briefly described it to them in Session 1. For an overview of what social change is and some of the prominent theories that are used when discussing social change, this is a good resource. To clearly demonstrate and talk about social change, I wanted to give one very obvious and large example that has happened in U.S. history which was the Women's Suffrage movement of the early 1900s when women first obtained the right to vote in the United States. The second topic I wanted to address was that of the primary school education system in the United States. This is a currently controversial topic but many agree that the primary school education system is in need of reform and restructuring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWX4H6sAgtY

I started off the session by explaining why I wanted to talk about these particular issues and what social change meant to me. I then talked about the Women's Suffrage movement in the 1900s in the United States and described the struggle that many women had to face in order to get the same right to vote as men. During this conversation, I showed the following YouTube video which explains in short detail what the circumstances were like for women who were on the frontier of this social change movement.

After this discussion and the film, I asked the learners about women's history in Estonia. We had a conversation on any similarities and differences between the women's rights movements of both countries. Typically, the conversation ended up focused around current politics in Estonia as the first female President is currently serving in office. We also talked about the pay gap in Estonia (one of the worst in the EU- which you can read about here), the role of women in Estonian society and why there are differences between the women's rights movement in the United States and Estonia (a lot of this has to do with the Soviet history of Estonia and the influence of that on their progress and development). More on the history of women's rights in Estonia can be found here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xdfVAPvv9A

The second topic discussed during this session was the primary school education system. Specifically, I wanted to focus on what is known as "High School" in the United States and consists typically of grades 9-12 where the youth are ages 14-18. I wanted to share some of the current struggles happening with this system in the United States and find out how that compared with the school system here in Estonia. I also wanted to explore this topic in relation to social change and what can be done to address any challenges identified and how we create change as individuals in our society. One of the biggest problems with the High School education system in the United States is that the youth are supposed to all graduate with the same level of education but that does not end up being the case. Funding for school systems is based on the tax input from the area where that school is located- and youth must attend the local schools in their district (if they would like to go for free). So, a student who lives in a wealthy area of town will have access to better education, better equipment and better resources than a student who is from a poor, inner-city neighborhood. To demonstrate this inequality, I showed the short YouTube video on the left.

Following this presentation, I once again asked about the situation in Estonia. In several of the classes there were learners who are teachers and/or headmistresses at schools in and around Haapsalu. In fact, at the end of one of the classes, one of the learners approached me and invited me to visit her school in Haapsalu (which will be the subject of the next blog post). The learners spoke about the overall equality of the school system in Estonia. When initially asked, they said there were no problems and that inequality as seen in the United States does not exist in Estonia. After we talked about this for a while, I started to ask more challenging questions to try and get the learners to think more critically about the education system. Eventually they started talking about the challenges (and some benefits) of being in a smaller town and so having a smaller school and fewer resources. Then, some of the learners also brought up that often in the smaller towns there are "social" issues that the teachers might also have to deal with in the lives of their students. They talked about "social" issues such as drug and alcohol abuse along with domestic violence and poverty. It is also interesting to note, that overall, according to PISA, the Estonian education system is one of the best in Europe. More information can be found in this article.

The discussions with the learners were very helpful because the learners were able to think about and articulate aspects of the Estonian education system that they had not reflected on previously. While the United States education system and the Estonian education system are very different, talking about how we can address and change the challenges in each country was inspiring and could be applied to either context. It was also an interesting experience to see the learners apply their English language skills to a subject that is difficult to talk about but very applicable to real life (instead of based on language text-book type conversations).

Throughout the different topics, to lighten the atmosphere and to get the learners to engage and practice their English skills, I played a variety of language games. The first game was simple word-association where the learners said the first word that came to their mind based on the word the person before them said. I also facilitated a game called Scattegories in which the learners had to brainstorm words that started with a given letter of the alphabet ("c" for example) to fulfill each criteria (such as an article of clothing; a boy's name; an occupation etc). The final game I played was a variation of the game Password where the learners had to get their partner to say a word written on the paper in front of them, by only giving one-word clues (for example, they would try and get their partner to say the word "teacher" by giving the clue "instructor"). These language games helped to break up the day and add variety into the session.

Reflection

Overall Thoughts

My overall thoughts on Session 2 was that it was incredibly challenging but also went really well. Getting the different groups to think critically and converse in English about social change was a huge challenge. In most of the sessions, I had to get the participants warmed up to talking by playing various word games. I also had to gain their trust by speaking vulnerably and critically about my own culture and the challenges we have faced in the past and continue to face today. Even after doing these intentional things, the learners were still initially hesitant to engage in these conversations. I think part of the reason may be that they were nervous about their language capabilities when discussing these topics. I also think one of the reasons they were hesitant to engage is because there is a barrier to exposing faults in your own culture to someone who is not from that same culture. I experienced this in many settings in the past both in the Philippines and during my placement in Malta and find this to be one of the biggest challenges to having open, critical conversations. However, many of the students did eventually engage in the discussions and we were able to have good, interesting conversations that I think were beneficially for my own knowledge but also for the learners. During one session, after the initial conversation of women's rights had not gone so well, the learners left the room for a coffee break and Mari and I were in the classroom discussing the conversation. All of a sudden Mari said, "oh, they are continuing the conversation on women's rights just now, I can hear them outside the classroom talking about it in Estonian." That, to me, was the highlight of the week- knowing that even if they didn't want to or couldn't share their ideas with me, they were still talking amoungst themselves about the conversation even after the discussion had ended.

Good Experience

One of the best experiences from this week happened during the last session. This was a group of about 10 adult learners who were all very friendly but also kept themselves distant from me. Out of the 10, there were several who were very talkative and did most of the interacting, a few who were somewhere in the middle and then two of them in particular who were very quiet and did not tend to speak when I asked questions. However, when it came time to have the discussion on the education system in Estonia, I discovered that one of them is a kindergarten teacher and the other is a headmistress. When we got to the topic of education, they had a lot to say and spoke up the most during this conversation. It was clear that they were nervous about their English speaking level and had a hard time fully expressing what they wanted to say, but all of a sudden when I found the topic they were passionate about, they were much more willing to try. During this discussion, they had a lot of critical input on the education system in Estonia and talked a lot about what life is like for teachers and the expectations that are put on them as well as on their students. These two learners spoke the most during this conversation even though they often had to ask Mari or other students for support in coming up with particular words or phrases in English. It was really rewarding to see them taking the challenge of speaking up in the class especially when it was a topic they were so passionate about. This instance and then the instance where the learners continued to talk about women's rights movement in Estonia even during the coffee break were the absolute highlights of my week. I did not care if the learners spoke in English or even if they spoke at all, I just wanted to get them thinking about the issues that are faced in Estonia and talking about them with each other or with friends and family. I think that I was successful in this goal, at least with a few learners, so that made this the best experience of the week.

Bad Experience

There were two experiences in particular that were the worst of the week and, interestingly, they were pretty much the same experience except they happened in two different classes. In both the session I taught on Monday and the session I taught on Thursday, there were very few men in the class (in Wednesday's session, there were no men in the class). In each of these sessions there was one man (a different man each time), who had trouble talking about women's rights. In the Monday session, one man in particular was very vocal saying that maybe women should not be in politics because they are better suited for the kitchen and having children. He was very vocal in his opinion that women should not be in positions of power, or if they are in positions of power, they need to be beautiful women so at least men will have something nice to look at. In the session on Thursday another man was saying that he didn't see any problem with the pay gap and that women were simply not as good at the job as men, so why should they be paid the same? He also went on to mention that women should probably just stay in jobs like teaching or secretaries as those were low enough paying jobs that suited women and their position in Estonian life. It was really challenging to hear these men be so vocal and dominate the discussion in the class when we were trying to focus on confronting and dispelling these exact sentiments. It made the classroom no longer a safe environment for many of the women and shut down the conversation nearly completely. I tried to address these men and what they were saying by asking if anyone had alternative views or something to say in response and I was pretty effective in making sure they did not interrupt other people or completely dominate the conversation, but the words they were saying were very poisonous to the environment. I did not feel like I could call them out directly the way I would have if this was a friend of mine saying these things especially as I did not want to be seen as the foreigner who came in and told them that their view points were wrong- this is something I strongly feel needed to come from and be said by the women in the room. Some of the women tried and were successful in confronting the men in what they were saying, but overall they were taken as a joke and it changed the focus of the conversation and left me feeling uncomfortable and depressed after the session, feeling as if nothing I would ever do will make any difference.

What would I do the same or different?

In future sessions, I would do many things the same. I think the topics of conversation I picked were really well suited to the environment and to the learners. I learned a lot from the discussions and I think the learners did too. I would also continue to do the word games because that broke up some of the tension that was created in the room by the topics of conversation and made the session more interactive and engaging. I would also do several things differently. I would start with the YouTube videos I showed. While I felt like they were relatively simple and straight forward, it became clear that they were hard for the learners to follow and understand. I put on the subtitles to help the learners, but the subtitles were not great and often did not match the words that were being spoken. I would also try and figure out a better approach in the future for dealing with the men who made up the bad experiences from the week. I still do not know the best way to handle or approach the situation, but I think there could be a more effective way to do so. Also, I think I would tell the learners the topics we would be discussing in advance to give them time to think about the topics as well as time to research any English words they think they might need or to ask people around them about their thoughts and inputs to be able to bring those into the class. Otherwise, I am pretty happy with how Session 2 went and hope that I get another chance in my future to make adjustments and make this session even better.