Last week in Madrid, to much applause and praise, the terceros (third years) from the comunidad’s bilingual schools tackled the world’s problems at the annual Global Classrooms conference. At our school, fellow Fulbright Hannah had been preparing her students for this moment since October, teaching them parliamentary procedure, how to write position papers and resolutions, and the rules of professional dress. Twenty of us Fulbrights from the original ten bilingual schools had also been meeting periodically to learn how to staff the dais of each committee room, as we would be running the conference ourselves.
Tuesday afternoon we took the students to the Asamblea de Madrid, where the comunidad’s legislature gathers, for the opening ceremony. For security reasons, schools had to arrive an hour early, and as we waited in the cold, Hannah’s students sized up the competition.
“They’re so much older than us! Look at them!”
Of course they weren’t. The students just weren’t used to seeing themselves or their peers dressed in suits and ties, sensible heels and knee-length skirts.
“Look at yourselves,” we told them. “You look just as grown-up and professional as they do.”
At the Asamblea, representatives from the various organizations that support Global Classrooms each year welcomed all of us. A woman from the consejería de educación spoke first, followed by María Jesús Pablos, Spain’s Fulbright Director, and Alan Solomont, US Ambassador to Spain.
Check out TeleMadrid's report!
My only criticism is about what the Ambassador's Spanish opening and conveys about the current state of language education in the US. I realize that English dominates as the language of business and diplomacy, but still, with the number of Spanish speaking individuals in the US, wouldn’t you want to send someone who can speak the language to represent our country? It worked well in his message to the kids, though. He knows firsthand how difficult it is to present your opinions in a language that isn’t your own, the students’ task throughout the conference. These fifteen year olds’ English level, however, blows away the Ambassador’s Spanish.
On Wednesday everyone gathered at CRIF Las Acacias, where we’ve had our jornadas de formación. Today, though, five rooms were set up as different UN plenaries. Three committees represented the General Assembly in order to explore solutions to the trafficking of wild animals, while the other two committees represented UNICEF and examined the problem of children in armed conflict. Four Fulbrights in each room played the role of chair (responsible for running debate), director (responsible for approving and assisting with resolution writing), rapporteur (responsible for timing, calling roll and counting votes), and staff (responsible for passing notes between delegations and ensuring that all notes were on topic - no flirty letters or requests for phone numbers!) I was director of GA 3.
Once our Chair banged her gavel and called the meeting to order, the delegations passionately educated each other on their countries’ positions on the issue (Wild animal trafficking is the third most profitable illegal trade.) and the resources they felt they could contribute to the collaborative effort to end the practice. After about half of the countries had presented their opening remarks on the speaker’s list, one of the delegations moved for a moderated caucus and the debate took off.
I had feared that in a full day with three two hour long debate sessions the students would run out of things to contribute. Nothing could have been more wrong. From one of the representatives of Denmark who continually ran over the set speaking time by talking as he sat down to the girl in Pakistan’s delegation whose voice took on an authoritative tone with each comment or question she directed at the others, from quick raising of placards during moderated caucuses to the frantic resolution writing during unmoderated caucuses, these kids were on.
I had also worried that the kids would focus too much on the competitive aspect of the conference and forget that we really sought cooperation between the delegations. Again, totally unfounded concern. The delegations quickly sought alliances and worked together amazingly well (until tempers flared slightly at the very end of the long day when we reached the actual voting on resolutions).
Selecting the delegations to receive awards from each committee turned out to be more challenging than I had anticipated. Each room awarded Best Delegation, two Honorable Mentions, Most Motivated and Best Position Paper (which had been selected in advance from the papers students had submitted prior to the competition). Ultimately and unfortunately, the awards selection proves more political than simply presenting certificates to the solidest delegations. The rule this year was that each of the ten schools had to get at least two awards, which is supposed to even the playing field so that the more economically disadvantaged schools receive just as much recognition as the pijo schools. I understand the motivation behind this; however, when our committee received our “corrected” list of award recipients, our chair and I fought to adjust the changes that had been made. No one who had been in our room for debate, especially the students, would have understood had the delegation who had been bumped from our list not received an award. We managed to reach an acceptable compromise, though even at that, there simply weren’t enough awards to recognize the huge achievements the students accomplished throughout the conference.
At the closing ceremonies in the Asamblea, the students were once again lavished with greatly deserved praise. As I watched the delegations go up for their awards, I pictured my segundos taking their places next year, all dressed up and on their best behavior. On their more mischievous days, I leave class repeating to myself: “Someday they will grow up. Someday they will be interesting, amazing, engaged people.” My students are so smart, but they have no attention span, which leads to trouble. It takes a challenge to get them to focus; next year’s Global Classrooms might be just what they need.
Check out more pics at the Embassy website: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usembassymadrid/sets/72157626187324098/show/.
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