Community in Unexpected Places

When I was first shown around San Fernando Rey nearly two months ago, my mind was spinning...classrooms, cantina (snack bar), offices, small library and computer lab, patio, auditorium area...where is the student culture actually cultivated here? Equally so were my thoughts at the larger UNNE where I have been attending a history course. Where do students have time to sit and really connect with one another? Where do they go beyond "Well, such-and-such happened in my life yesterday" to being able to theoretically question the socio-political systems that guide and govern the professions for which they are studying (teaching, economics, architecture, etc)? So accustomed to the living-learning community at Denison that was my home for four years, I knew before starting this experience that I would encounter a totally new student culture. And so, initially, I pondered where students truly got to know one another without a gymnasium to go and shoot hoops or exercise, without the Bandersnatch (Denison's on-campus, student run coffee shop) to grab a pizza bagel or listen to some jazz, or without your best friend's room conveniently down the hall for sharing the best new YouTube video you found while procrastinating on your latest essay assignment. It's not that I entered with the mindset that any/all of these characteristics are necessary to form a distinctive and valuable community. Strangely, all the things that I listed above have little to do with academic studies at Denison. Nonetheless, it was amidst these situations of everyday life that I found myself engaging in profound ways with my peers during my undergraduate education. Thus,these places and experiences had defined my own acculturation to a unique academic community; here in Resistencia I knew time would be a necessary component for the discovery of my new environment's unifying qualities for students.

View from the second floor of San Fernando down into the school's patio

Since this first introduction to San Fernando, I've had opportunities to witness countless interactions at the institute, socialize and converse with students beyond the school's walls and observe young adult/student culture more generally throughout the city. As these experiences begin to intertwine, I've [only] begun to understand that the students' academic community stretches far beyond the walls of San Fernando Rey. Honestly, if the culture is to thrive, I think this must happen as a result of student efforts to connect with their academics, their peers, the larger discipline of teaching to which they aspire to be a part. Students must carry their academic pursuits beyond the walls of San Fernando Rey with a certain dedication. In the particular program where I work, students spend each morning together in the classroom but the guiding educational philosophy (due to large class sizes, Argentine educational traditions, or other contributing factors. The roots of classroom culture construction is certainly up for debate...) is one in which the teacher is the source of knowledge and students are primarily [passive] recipients. This is a drastic change from my liberal arts experiences that encouraged, and often demanded, students' active participation, dialogue, and research in the construction of knowledge. But I digress... the students of San Fernando are creating their own unique academic community: while sharing a Coke and some bizcochos at a kiosko somewhere in town, working on extra language practice at my house, having mate in the central plaza, creating a Facebook group to share questions, concerns and advice about homework assignments, and coming to extra roundtable discussions on weekday/weekend afternoons to practice their English speaking abilities and discuss cultural interests. Students are engaging in ways that are unexpected for me, an outsider of their culture, but fully logical, appropriate and effective for the context in which they live, work and study.

Community is probably a word that is overused in my vocabulary, but, I stand by the statement that this is what I, and arguably most every other individual of the human race, search for whenever I enter a new environment. We always share some aspects of the context in which we meet and struggle to reconcile the differences to understand one another better. Amidst this give and take of cultural values and community building, I believe, we march toward a better understanding of how we can contribute positively to the lives of those around us. Too theoretical or optimistically biased? Maybe, but it's also how I try and conduct my life :)

On a lighter note, a futbol game featuring the country's biggest rivalry is being played right now: River vs. Boca Juniors. A game of a magnitude like OSU vs. Michigan football or Duke vs. UNC men's basketball, but 100 times more heated/energized! Boca is up 2-0, twenty-three minutes into the second half. I can't wait to hear students' commentaries on the game later...