Why I'm really in Peru

Well, this week, we finally started teaching. And can I just say, it has been nothing short of amazing. I have such a sense of purpose, of belonging here. I feel useful, respected and appreciated, and I have a clear vision of what I want the students to learn, and how I am going to convey those lessons to them.

We’re teaching at the school Villa Caritas San Pedro (VCSP) in La Molina, an up-scale neighborhood in Lima. VCSP is essentially the Cranbrook of Lima— also a Catholic school, it’s got a sprawling, large, beautiful campus set in an amazing setting. Whereas Cranbrook is in the woods, VCSP is in the dry, rocky, dusty mountains of La Molina.

La Molina. Right: out my window. Center: at school. Right: Towards the mountains.

These kids don't need Zack and I here. They're all bright, and we don't have to be there to bring opportunity to them. Instead, we're here because our strengths and passions allign with the school's mission, and, of course, a nice school like this is the kind of school that can afford to fly two Michigan students down to Peru for two weeks. I feel bad that we're not helping in more underprivelaged schools, but as you'll soon see, San Pedro's atmosphere has been nothing but wonderful for me to be in.

Remember, Lima is in a desert, after all. Since the weather here is warm year-round, and rain is very uncommon, the boys’ school actually doesn’t even have hallways! The classrooms all have doors leading to the outside, and nature is your hallway. VSCP is also a semi-immersion school, and all the professors who do speak English well will teach their classes in English.

The school is built on one really long incline, which makes sense, as the school is cornered on three sides by mountains. The girls’ school was built first, and hence, lower down, whereas the boys’ school is much higher up. The girls’ school is much more of your traditional school setting, with a few buildings with indoor hallways, but as you walk up the big ramp into the boys’ school, you’ll notice that pretty much alternating with the buildings are fields. There are so many soccer fields at VCSP, and they all get their fair share of use. It’s really fun to see all the kids—those we know, and those we don’t—running around and playing soccer. Zack and I have wanted to join in on a game, but we’ve never had the time, unfortunately.

Though we mostly teach at San Pedro, our “office” is down at the very bottom of the school, in the Villa Caritas makerspace, with our “boss,” Manuel. This makerspace is seriously awesome. It’s got stuff that you’d never expect a high school to have, let alone one in Peru (which isn’t known for its most wonderful K-12 education system). Most notably is the laser cutter, which would become a focus of my time very quicky.

At school, Zack and I sort of live two lives. One life is spent in class, mentoring the students on their science fair projects, while the other is spent in our office, as I work on some documents for classes I’ll be leading, and while Zack plans next year’s backpacking trek through Asia (he has nothing else to be doing, really…)

Starting out with the time in class—

The first thing you’ll notice about the environment here at the school is that everyone is very, very friendly. I like to think that in the US, we’re more friendly than, say, in Europe, where the power distance is very high. I frankly didn’t expect many places in the world to have a shorter power distance than the US. But Peru has shown me what a society with a very low power distance is like. When you enter the class, you’ll notice students with an arm around their teacher, asking them how they’ve been, and giving them a dap or a fist bump. They use their teachers’ first names and last names interchangeably. It caught me off guard at first, understanding that, at Cranbrook, I could walk into a classroom and make a joke to the teacher, but never would I go up and touch them in any way that wasn’t a serious handshake, nor dare to call them by their first name. Of course, in college, the power distance has been lowered some, but even for a college student having had a professor as lax as, say, Dave Singer, it still felt out of the ordinary.

But I liked it. A lot. In fact, by now, I’m the one initiating daps with my students, trying to beat them to be the first one to ask ¿qué tal? with a big smile. I want to try to bring some of it back to the US, though, of course, staying in bounds with what would be appropriate in an academic setting back home.

We teach 10th grade boys. Yes, of course they’re immature. They’ve asked Zack and I to call them nicknames which are clearly curses, or worse, very insensitive. They’ve asked us what drugs we do and how many beers we can drink in a night, and more harmless questions like what video games we play and what the password is to the uncensored, faculty/staff WiFi is.

But they all have very, very good hearts. They do go, after all, to a Catholic school. And unlike Cranbrook, whose traditions nowadays are but a shell of their Catholic roots, VCSP’s Catholic bones are still glaringly obvious. Today, there was a school-wide ceremony in celebration of the Visitation of Mary, where our regular class schedule was interrupted. Zack and I watched the ceremony, filled with a procession of an ornate display of flowers, surrounding a sculpture of the Virgin Mary (Santa Maria), artwork made of flowers on the ground, dancing, singing, and Hail Mary said about 30 times. I think that, though what the kids say, they say it to be funny, to try to relate to us, or just because they’re kids. They all have a very clear distinction between right and wrong, between acceptable and reprimandable behavior, and when Zack and I say no to something, they don’t push back, they don’t keep on begging for an answer. They take no, respecting our maturity, and understand that we’re trying to help them to become mature, respectable adults.

Pictures from today's ceremony

Now, all those jokes and questions are outside of the class. Inside the class, the boys are great. So, starting on our first day, they were tasked with starting their project for the school-wide science and technology fair in August. Unlike a traditional baking soda volcano science fair project, the demands of their project was to take a problem faced in their society—be it La Molina, Lima, or Peru—and design a solution.

Zack and I were there from the onset, helping them determine which problems would lead to interesting solutions, and which wouldn’t lead to much fruitful work. And again, just as they respected our opinion on what to and what not to say, they respected our input so valuably. If they disagreed or wanted to know why we said something, they’d ask. They’d ask respectfully and curiously, not in an attacking or whiny way. And by the end of the first day, nearly every group had asked me independently for my email so they can ask me questions in the future.

Once it came time to begin designing their solution, this is when my skills really flourished, and when their interest was piqued. Being in those ninety-minute classes—going around, from team to team designing a solution—felt like five minutes. Nearly every group’s problem and solution were both so interesting (though there were some that were more boring than others). I saw it as my mission to simplify, to break down, each group’s design into a single task that they can really perfect. Something that they can dig hours down a rabbit hole and really come to understand.

For example, there was a group that was focused on making portable water fountains that you could stick into a stagnant pond to move the water around. That way, mosquitoes couldn’t lay their eggs in that water, and over time, the dengue problem in the area will be reduced. I asked them to find me a specific lake that may have this problem, and consider how they may choose to power it. If it’ll use a battery, how will you keep it watertight? If it’s using some other source, what would it be—water? Solar? The local electricity grid? In what situations would those alternative solutions be useful?

Their problems focused on a vast swath of the problems plaguing Peru, from pollution on the major highway running through the city, to food at markets being cross contaminated across stalls, Lima’s massive litter problem, and to older people who can’t remember to take their medicines.

Nearly every project was very interesting to me (though there were some groups trying to design an app, to which neither Zack nor I were any help at all and were not interested really in the slightest), and each let me share a piece of knowledge through a lecture on the whiteboard, teaching CAD, or pulling up old homeworks I had done. I explained purposefully at a level where they would not catch everything, hoping that it would inspire them, showing them that if they did their research into this topic, these are the sorts of things that they would, in due time, grasp firmly. I could see it in their eyes, and I could hear it in the follow-up questions they were asking: they were interested. Immensely so. Maybe its because I treated them like adults—they had shown me that they’re very bright people who deserve as full of an explanation as I can give in a fair amount of time—or maybe it’s just because the caliber of student here is very high. But regardless, seeing them interested in the things that interest me—from 3D calculus to induction motors and alternating current, wind turbine design to what makes CAD so powerful—brought me the highest sense of satisfaction and purpose.

And yes, we had some fun. One of the days, the kids had an exam the next period, and instead of working on their projects, we just played mafia for the hour. It was fun to get to see them interact with each other in a more informal setting, seeing as Zack and I eat lunch with Manuel, and it was fun for them to turn on me or ask for my input on who I thought the mafia was (By the way, I only made one wrong accusation in the three games we played, and that wrong accusation was adjacent to who was actually mafia…). Also, though the kids all speak fluent English, and when working on the projects, we discussed in English, mafia was all in Spanish. So, Zack and I were, well, less help than the others.

We also helped out with a few other classes, all of which involved design in some capacity. The IB chemistry kids were designing their experiments for their IB projects, and they needed help determining an experiment to measure something cool. These projects are things like: does the presence of boats in a bay have an effect on the sulfate content of the water? Where the student would go down to two adjacent beaches, with a breakwater in between, and collect samples of the water. At one beach, boats are allowed, along with all activity, whereas at the other, the same activity occurs, but no boats are allowed. The shoreline composition of both beaches, as well as the seabed, according to her, are the same.

Some students had trouble with the idea of controlling variables, and the majority of conversations were about this topic. Though the boys’ 10th grade classes are at the cap of 18 students, the IB chemistry class was only 6 girls, so each of them got lots of individual attention from me and Zack.

Finally, we got to interact a little with the 5th graders, who were “designing” objects to improve the lives of people. Their ideas were certainly a little more out there than the older kids’—I mean, you’ve got your classic flying cars, but also cups that can walk and watches for blind people—but it was fun to give an adult’s input on these ideas. And some of them weren’t all that bad at all, despite being incredibly creative!

Us meeting with the elementary teacher, prepping for our time in their class

In the office, life is very different. We have more of a teachers’ lounge kind of vibe, where we can get snacks from the drawer, and we actually have spent breakfast there every day.

The Makerspace

Side note: the Peruvians love their “mixtos,” which are essentially just croque monsieurs. Being the good Jewish boy I was raised to be, part of me cannot STAND a mixto. But they’ve been basically forced down my throat every morning (and when I say forced, I was polite and made myself one), before I realized just this morning that I could actually just make myself a grilled cheese. i.e. a mixto without the ham. In addition to the mixto, they’ve had this Peruvian fruit called a cherimoya some of the days. A cherimoya is incredibly sweet and very creamy, actually. It's a weird texture from a fruit, and I haven’t decided whether I like it or not.

Cherimoya

Anyways, mixto aside, the time I’ve been spending in the makerspace I’ve been doing two things. Both relate to classes I’ll be teaching later this week. First is a design of a little gear fidget toy that I made with the laser cutter and AutoCAD. As soon as Manuel heard that I know AutoCAD well, he jumped at the opportunity to use me for his students. So, I came up quickly with a fun project for them to make that will introduce all the necessary commands to make anything you could ever want. The first thing that came to my head were gears, and upon further thinking, I felt it was perfect. It’s the right combination of complex yet doable, it taught all the commands necessary, though none were overused to a point of tedium, and once they design the gears, I have them going off to design their own accessories. For me, at least, I designed a little base plate, a holder, a crank, and I made different sized gears that mesh with the ones I’m helping them make.

My gear toy!

Of course, I won’t expect them to do all this by themselves in the class period I have them for, but I’m hoping that showing them what I’ve done may inspire them to create something more for themselves.

The laser cutter is awesome. Like super awesome, and I wish I had one of my own. But once I finished my little gear project, I was sad because, well, I didn’t have an excuse to use it anymore. So I created one. (It’ll take a second to get there, though… hang on)

Laser Cutter in Action

My second assignment from Manuel was to give a presentation about naval architecture to kick off their design & technology class’s cardboard boat project. I don’t think they were planning to do this project before I got here, but I think Manuel saw what I could bring, and wanted to use as much of it as he could. So, I’ve come up with a presentation to fill the 3.5 hours of lecture that I’ve been allotted. I cover the basics of ship design, mostly inspired by NA270, and I cover:

·      Facets of the marine industry: why we design ships

·      Buoyant force and center of buoyancy: both when sitting upright, and with a heel or list

·      Weight & floatation: where it should be placed relative to the center of buoyancy, and how we can use it to understand the stability of the ship

·      Technical drawings: lines plans of the ship, cross sections, and how you can use those cross sections to find volume, weight, and floatation properties of the ship

In response to both the buoyant force and the technical drawings sections, I thought that being able to see a ship’s cross sections may be useful. First, for understanding how we arrive at a lines plan, and second, for understanding what the integral on the screen means. These kids, after all, have not yet gotten to integral calculus. So, I laser cut something!

I found the lines plan of a ship available online, and cut both its body plan cross sections and sheer plan cross sections, and when I assembled them, you can kind of tell that they came from the same ship. It’s far from perfect, but it gets the point across more than fine. But truthfully, deep down, these were just another excuse to use the laser cutter.

Cross sections (currently a work in progress...)

I’m super excited to teach these two lectures on Thursday and Friday, given that I’ve put so many hours into preparing for them. I really hope they go well.

So again, teaching at VCSP has been one of my most rewarding experiences abroad. I am truly proud of the students and impressed by their work, curiosity, and interest, and I love being in an environment where everyone is so friendly and wants to interact with those older and superior to them. I mean, I told Zack that I could stay teaching here all summer.