Maria
Today I met Maria outside CIES and we sat in front of Landis
on some benches to talk. She told me that her and some friends went to Disney
last weekend. She had her iPad with her and so she showed me all of the
pictures and videos. She had some really good ones of the parade and a show in
front of Cinderella’s castle. It has been so long since I have been to Disney I
had forgotten how exciting it was being there. I could honestly feel the energy
and excitement just from watching the videos. I know her students are going to
love watching them.
We talked about some things she has learned about American culture.
Mostly how independent people have to be here. She said while she was driving
to Orlando her group had trouble putting gas in the car because in Brazil you
never even get out of the car at the gas station. The workers come up to your
car and you just give them the money. She also said that in Brazil it’s rude to
just get up and leave while a teacher is lecturing. I told her that in school
that you usually have to ask permission to leave but once you are in college it’s
understood that everyone is an adult and can leave if they want. In college
classes, especially large classes, it would be rude to interrupt the teacher
because you are slowing the class down. It is even common in large classes for
everyone to get annoyed at someone asking questions about the material and
slowing us down. We may say things like “Can’t that wait until after class?” or “Isn’t that what office hours are for?” I
told her the reason is that teachers expect the students to know certain
material whether they explain it or not so if they do not cover it the students
have to do more work on their own to catch up.
She said she really liked this about the culture of America.
The big part of the Brazilian culture is being reliant on others. As a teacher,
she has to basically spoon-feed the students because this is what is expected.
She tells them repeatedly to study something sometimes three or four times
while here a teacher says to know something once and that is it. I’ve had
teachers ask test questions from an assigned reading even though that material
was never covered in class and this is completely acceptable to us. I thought
this conversation was really interesting and it is really making me think about
how we have an almost sink or swim
attitude in America. Though it may have its fallbacks, I think it is a positive
aspect of our culture.
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