Training at Colegio Mexico

Okay well, I just discovered that I think I can only show one slideshow at a time, so I'm going to post some other pictures for you here. In the meantime, look at that slideshow real good before I do something else exciting and I decide to take it away.

I posted previously about training teachers in using non-violence to solve problems. In the past two weeks I have attended two trainings at another school in San Jose called Colegio Mexico. With about 900 students, I've heard that Colegio Mexico is a medium sized K-12 school for the capital city.

A few interesting things happened during the two workshops that I attended. (The full training included four workshops, one each week.) The first thing was that during snack break in the middle of the the first workshop I went to they celebrated Father's Day. At first, this idea didn't phase me.

Somewhere around the time when they got out the pinata I realized, this would never happen in the US. Sure people celebrate father's day but they're mostly young kids and families. I've never heard of an American workplace celebrating anything besides a holiday party. Maybe this is all just a coincidence and the Costa Ricans are just looking for an occasion to break out the pinata (who doesn't?) but I'd like to believe that maybe they're onto something that we haven't picked up on in the US yet. Not only did they break open a pinata, but the gave a gift bag (coffee mug, coffee and chocolates) to each of the teachers in the room who was a father. So, if Ticos have picked up on a good habit that Americans have neglected to adopt, where did we go wrong?

As is clear from this picture, the fun of the pinata doesn't just come from watching a blindfolded person swing wildly at an object full of candy, but from deceiving them into thinking that they actually have a chance in hell of hitting it.

The other odd thing that happened in the training occurred during the second workshop that I went to, when small groups were presenting their dramatizations of conflicts that they have resolved nonviolently. One group, pictured above, presented a skit about two boys who were about to fight before they were stopped by the woman in the center. (The skit was a portrayal of a conflict that the woman in the center actually witnessed. She is playing her mother and the boys were her brothers.) Just when the boys were about to start fighting, the woman jumped in and said that they couldn't fight unless they went all out and actually killed each other. She handed them each a broomstick handle and said, ok go, I want to see two dead bodies on the floor. Fight. The boys dropped the broomsticks and didn't hurt eachother.

The first disturbing thing about this story is that the groups were presenting examples of conflicts that were resolved non-violently. Apparently, handing two boys broomsticks and telling them to kill each other is someone's version of nonviolent. I think it's a creative idea, but the majority of the 40-50 teachers seemed to agree that, if this approach was followed in their school today, the story might not have ended the same way. Also, during the skit when the fight was escalating, and during another similar skit, all of the teachers were hooting and hollering, cheering for a real bruiser. During a workshop on alternatives to violence. And these are the people who are supposed to be able to keep the violence from happening. I guess there's a lot of work to be done.

On the other hand, at the end of the first workshop a man said that during the training he resolved a conflict with a coworker that he had been at odds with for the past 12 years.