As a Poly GIP Trip leader, you have to be ready to wear many hats. You go from being a travel agent to an activity guide, a photographer to a money dealer, or even from an emergency medic to a lively jokester at a table of hungry adolescents. The role is dynamic and rich.
Having had the opportunity to work cross-divisionally in the World Language Department this past year at Poly– shuffling from the Middle School to the Upper School between periods– I have gotten used to shifting from one context to another. Also, working in boarding schools– my past teaching experience, as well as my upcoming teaching experience– where one often serves as a teacher, coach, and dorm advisor (the famous, ‘Triple Threat’ approach to education), I am well acquainted with shifting between roles. However, one thing that struck me during our time in Córdoba was the number of hats a typical Argentinian teacher wears– not just in their respective schools, or even across the divisions in their schools, but rather, across different schools altogether.
The hike. On our fourth day of the trip, during our outdoor excursion to Casa Bamaba– a geographically stunning, though demanding hike along the Primero River– I met Profe Sergio. A quiet, deliberate, yet friendly man, Sergio was rounding out his 20th year of service at Escuela San Martín (ESM) as a science (biology) teacher. I quickly learned that his impact on the school community was undeniable. Our morning trip guide, Profe Gastón, for instance, one of the school’s beloved P.E. teachers, was a high school senior at ESM when Sergio was in his first year of teaching at the school. From their interactions, I could tell that Gastón looked up to Sergio as a mentor. Moreover, the fact that ESM had these kinds of outdoor trips, to begin with, was in large part due to Sergio’s pioneering efforts: he was the one that proposed the idea and got it approved by the school administration. Still more, filled with rich insights about the power of teaching students the value of scientific observation, deductive logic, and critical thinking, it was very easy for me to see how much Sergio cherished his work with adolescents. Intuitively, I got a sense that he was a morally astute individual– this was due to what he talked about, and how he talked about it, as well as how the students fondly related to and respected him.
As we trekked through narrow paths that brisk morning, talking at length about education in Argentina, Sergio mentioned rather matter-of-factly that he worked at another school. This puzzled me. He was not the first educator at ESM that had alluded to this notion; the English teacher I had talked with on Monday afternoon, and the social science teacher I had met during our museum visit the day before, had also made similar comments when sharing about their work as educators in Córdoba. This could not have been a coincidence.
“Is it common for teachers to work in multiple schools?” I sheepishly asked Sergio as I dodged a low-hanging branch.
“Oh absolutely,” he affirmed while hopping over the running creek. “That’s just how the system works here.”
Being in two (or more) places at once. As it turns out, it can be quite normal for teachers in Argentina to work in multiple schools at the same time. This is due to an unfavorable combination of the level of compensation and the number of teaching opportunities at a single school; teacher pay in Argentina can be relatively low, and there are relatively few classes offered for a given teacher to teach. Add hyperinflation to the equation, and teachers are forced to work in multiple schools to make ends meet– even if you are a beloved 20-year veteran of a school, with top-notch credentials, and are esteemed by your students and peers, like Sergio. Frankly, this fact floored me. I needed to make sense of it.
In taking a deep dive into the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) current data report (Education at a Glance 2022: OECD Indicators) on Argentina, however, I could not find any reporting on this phenomenal to triangulate with Sergio and his colleague’s insights– let along gain a deeper understanding of it. Despite also scouring through several blogs by Argentinian educators, the only thing I was able to come across was this quote: “Many teachers also find themselves giving classes for two… schools at the same time in order to have a more secure amount of hours each month.” But even then, that was from The Teacher’s Handbook, a language teaching site, and may be specifically related to foreign language educators teaching in Argentina. Ultimately, however, the lack of data is not to discount Sergio’s truth, rather, it’s to underscore how invaluable it is to be in direct contact with people; how there is no substitute for being able to connect cross-culturally in another’s language. In other words, I would not have gained this perspective without having been on this GIP trip and engaging with our local partners.
But what implication does this perspective leave me with?
It’s complicated.
For one, I see great pedagogical value in working across schools at one time. Given that the other school in which Sergio worked is a low-resourced institution (vastly different from the gated community of Escuela San Martín), I could envision ample opportunities for the cross-pollination of ideas– from informing teaching practices, scheduling, and school policies. Above all, I could see how it could equip a teacher with a nuanced approach to differentiating their pedagogies to best serve individual students, regardless of the context. It would be like me working at Poly in the morning, then driving to Long Beach to work at Jodan High, a recently low-performing school in the LAUSD receiving Title I federal funds. My intentionality in, and my appreciation for, each school context would perhaps only increase!
At the same time, I sense ample inefficiencies with this setup. For one, continuously transporting oneself from one school to another means time lost that one could otherwise devote to prepping lessons, grading, or working directly with students. Secondly, as Sergio shared, “there are either ample redundancies or scheduling conflicts,” such as needing to sit through multiple orientations or workshops one week, but then missing department meetings the next week because one can’t be in two places at once. Above all, the implicit message that this whole structure seems to send is that teachers are exchangeable cogs in a system of education. And this is not just my and Sergio’s opinion. According to the OECD’s Teachers and teaching conditions, primary and lower secondary education (TALIS 2018) summary for Buenos Aires (the Country’s capital in which ~40% of the country’s population resides), only 8.6 % of lower secondary education teachers in Buenos Aires reported that they "agree" or "strongly agree" that the teaching profession is valued in society. This puts Argentina’s average at a ranking of 46 out of 50 (lowest). For perspective, the reported average of all participating countries is 35% with Vietnam’s average (highest, 1/50) at 92% and Slovenia's average (lowest, 50/50) at 5.6%. Needless to say, in getting to know Sergio, it is clear to me that he is not exchangeable; he is invaluable to a school community– and the country. This is especially true as I adamantly believe that the process of (a liberal arts) education is the act of sowing the fabric of a democracy; moreover, I’m also convinced that in order for Argentina to manifest the promise and hope of “Nunca Más”– of cultivating a collective memory so as to never forget the suppression of civil liberties and the atrocities of human right violations and crimes caused by the brutal dictatorship of Videla– then a modification to Argentina’s education system ought to be considered.
Recognizing my positionality as a privileged U.S. citizen who works in an independent school, and conceding my limited understanding of the history, structure, and practices of the Argentinian school system as a whole, I offer this reflection with great humility. My intention rests largely on paying homage to a great educator, hiking partner, and amigo that I encountered on that brisk morning trek to Casa Bamba while being lucky enough to wear one of my hats as a GIP Trip Leader in Argentina.
Profe Arceo
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