Clementina’s class

The first class I would like to share with you takes place in a kindergarten in the town of El Sauzalito. As is common in this area, the children are separated in two different classes depending on the language they speak (^{Unamuno & Nussbaum, 2017}). In this class, as in most of them, there are two teachers, one of whom is a Wichi teacher and another who is not. Although they are both in the same class, their roles are usually clearly different.

These kindergarten classrooms are the stage of the first instances of school socialization for Wichi children, and are often the first time when Spanish is used in situations in which Wichi children participate.

From a very early age, Wichi children learn bilingual formats of participation. In many of the classrooms, this involves learning to distinguish between moments of the class that take place in a language that they are learning and that therefore seem opaque and others that take place in the language they are familiar with. However, these interactions in the familiar language often occur on the sidelines of the main sequences of the interaction, although they are nevertheless crucial sequences (^{Unamuno & Nussbaum, 2017}).

Estas secuencias laterales parecen pasar desapercibidas desde la perspectiva centrada en la persona adulta. Sin embargo, son fundamentales desde la perspectiva de las y los niños: son ellos quienes muchas veces las inician y las protagonizan.

The class I want to share with you involved 4- and 5-year old children, and was part of a project we conducted in collaboration on the work of Wichi women with clay to make large pots. This project, which culminated recently with the writing of a book of stories and accounts of experiences, included several moments such as the one described in the following transcription.

Fragment 1: Iñot (clay) 

In this project, the teachers planned a first class in which the children had to compare the work they did in the kindergarten with play dough (“plastilina” in Spanish) with the work the women did in clay. The non-Wichi teacher pulled a piece of clay out of a box, showed the children the material and asked them if they knew its name. The Wichi teacher mediated continuously in the conversation. Not only did she translate, but also anticipated possible misunderstandings. One of the children proposed “Plastilina!”. The non-indigenous teacher asked again for an alternative answer. The children sought the answer in their own linguistic repertoire. They seemed not to know the Spanish Word for clay (“barro”) and proposed (i)ñot, the Wichi word for clay. The teacher insisted several times in search of the Word in Spanish, and finally accepted the answer in Wichi.

In Sequence 2, the teacher asked the children about their mothers’ jobs. The children took some time to answer, and the teacher insisted. She reformulated her question and they kept on saying ñot, not understanding what they were being asked. Finally, in Sequence 3, after reformulating the question again, she took the answer in Wichi (ñot) and reformulated it in Spanish (“con barro”: with clay), lengthening the vowels. One of the children said ñot again, followed immediately by another who said “lodo” (mud). The teacher accepted the answer, but turning to the researcher explained that it was a local variant of the Spanish word “barro”.

While this was taking place, Lucas, Hin’u and Lucía called to Celis, the Wichi teacher, who walked continuously among the little chairs the children were sitting on. Not only did they ask her for a piece of clay but spoke to her, one by one, to compare their ideas about what was happening and what they were expected to say (and do).

Lucía said something to the teacher which I could not understand. Celis walked towards her. From that closer position, she mediated between the child and the white teacher, inserting in the conversation what the Wichi child had told her from the lateral mode of it. Lucía had obtained Celis’s attention and, with her support, had been able to contribute to the interaction of the class.

Mario’s class

In the second case, I will discuss the notes of my visit to the Second Grade B group, where a non- Wichi teacher (Raúl) and a bilingual assistant teacher (Mario) collaborate.

I observed their classes for a week to compare the use of Wichi and Spanish in this kind of contexts that I call bi-managed. Although my observation focused on the use of the two languages in the classes, here I will discuss my notes on the way they are used by the children. My analysis of their performance could be seen as a window into the meaning of what happens and is done in these classrooms.

Vignette 1

The classes are organized by subjects (Mathematics, Spanish, and Science). Today is Math class. Raúl is sitting at the teacher’s desk, on the left side of the classroom and by the chalkboard. The attendance list and a Second Grade Manual are on the desk, as well as his pencil box and eraser. Mario greets me and I sit at the back of the class with the children who are coming back from recess. He greets me in Wichi and I respond. He smiles. We have known each other for years because he is married to a Wichi colleague with whom I worked in another school. Mario stands at the back of the class, his back leaning on the wall. The children take their places at their desks and pull their notebooks out of them or out of their backpacks. When they are all seated, Raúl stands up from his desk and tells them to copy some calculations he will write on the board. The children take their pencils and copy them. Mario remains standing until a little girl turns around and looks at him. He walks to her without saying a word and tells her in Wichi to copy the calculations on the board, leaning towards her and assisting her to copy. “She’s new in this class”, he tells me when he walks by me. Raúl goes back to his desk. There is complete silence. While Raúl fills in the attendance list, Mario walks by the children’s desks as the children look at him. After Raúl tells them that the time to solve the task is over, he asks the children for their results. None of them responds verbally. However, Mario walks towards one of the girls who have already finished, and touching her shoulder tells her to walk to the front of the class. She answers the first calculation on the board. The other children whisper to each other and to Mario in Wichi.

I would like to call some attention here to the formats of participation proposed by these Wichi second-graders, or those in which they participate. Through their movements, their gaze, or a seemingly subtle gesture, they contrast their ideas about what is taking place with the adult in the class who speaks their language. The children choose Mario as their addressee, and it is to him that they turn their eyes in the class dictated by the other teacher.

For his part, Mario moves around the classroom in a different direction from that of his non- Wichi colleague. Through their movements and the direction of their gaze and gestures, both the children and the teacher are able to reconfigure the scenes I observe. The non-indigenous teacher, sitting at the center of the scene constructed by the desks, is blurred from the viewpoint of what takes place among the children’s desks in the classroom.

As Goffman (2001) has pointed out, participating requires subtle but complex coordination among participants, who actively negotiate participation frameworks that change constantly. Participating in a social interaction requires correlating different semiotic modalities. The gaze and the position of the body, the gesture and the posture participate in the creation of interactional meaning (^{Mondada, 2011}).

In the case I analyze, these multimodal elements coordinate in a peculiar way to establish formats or participation that run parallel to what happens at the main stage, and provide clues to approach the ways in which children give meaning to what is happening. The semiotic production of other modes of participation becomes evident mainly when faced with problematic situations, for instance when they have a question about the homework or they want to share the progress in their individual projects. The children deploy multiple resources that manage to define the situation and give some meaning to the activity in which they participate.

At Alejandra’s class

Vignette 2

The class begins in Spanish and Alejandra offers to tell them a story. She tells it little by little, using brightly colored pictures. The children look at her in bewilderment. My camera tries to capture the moment and zooms in on a group of children, until it stop son a girl who is about to cry. The girl looks at Alejandra and says to her “vos no” (“not you”). She is about to cry. Alejandra looks at me, as if she were asking for my approval to switch languages. The girl asks her to tell the story in Wichi. Alejandra explains to her in Wichi that it is only for a while, that she can speak Wichi if she wants. The girl is still uncomfortable, and finally Alejandra decides to tell the story in her language.

There is something I remember about this class and that I find difficult to explain. That “vos no”, complains about something that goes beyond some correspondence between language and speaker. It goes beyond a complaint to the teacher about the language she is using in class. It goes way back to the times when teachers have told stories in Spanish as though the children could understand them, as though their silences, their lost stares, were signs of something that “is happening”. As if it were not evident that most Wichi children - like the ones I observe in Alejandra’s class - cannot understand what they would love to understand.

In this class of Spanish as a second language, Alejandra, a Wichi teacher, had decided to tell the story in Spanish. Nevertheless, she switched languages and continued the story in Wichi. The girl smiled. After the class, some children approached the teacher and asked her for a copy of the story. In a corner of the classroom, three girls told the story to each other.

Luis’s class

Storybooks are an object of wonder for the children of the elementary school in the town of Los Lotes, where Luis and I work: their illustrations, their shapes, the shapes of the letters. One morning I went to a class in which Luis told a story about a cow that wanted to be white. First he read the story, as the children enjoyed the pictures in the book.¹ Then he told the story again in Wichi and the children couldn´t stop laughing. They were fascinated with the story, and they all wanted to take the book home to tell it to their families.

The book tells the story of a cow who did not like her spots of color and wanted to be like any other “spotless” animal. After telling the children the story, Luis asked them what was happening to the cow. Matías spoke aloud and said in Wichi: “She doesn’t want to be herself. She wants to be another animal”. Luis went on: “Does this happen to you?” Matías replied: “Sometimes I’d like to be a criollo (an Argentinian of European descent)”.

Luciano’s class

Vignette 3

When I arrived to the class in the little school of Tres Pozos there were two teachers in the classroom: Luciano, a Wichi teacher, and Pedro, a non-indigenous teacher. Luciano was sitting, as usual in these classes, next to the children at the back of the classroom. Pedro was sitting at the front, next to the chalkboard. I placed my camera at the front of the class, as we had agreed.

Pedro began the class by introducing me to the children and explaining to them that I am Luciano’s teacher. Then, with a subtle but authoritative gesture, he signaled to Luciano to hand out some photocopies he pulled out of a folder. As Luciano walked towards Pedro’s desk, a little girl asked me my name. Then she told me in Wichi that she was afraid. “Of what?” I asked her. She looked at Pedro. “I am afraid of him too”, I said. “Scream” she told me.

These notes refer to another aspect of the participation of the Wichi children that is seldom considered, but that is noteworthy: the way in which they interpret the volume of the voice of white teachers and the meanings they attach to it.

Broadly speaking, the perception we have as non-Wichis is that they speak “in a low voice”. I remember a class of Wichi language I took. The class was full and I sat at the back to take notes. I felt as if I were deaf, because I could hardly hear what the teacher said but I noticed that all the other students took notes, asked questions and made comments about what was being discussed. At the end of the class, I asked my classmates if they had noticed that the teacher spoke in a low voice. They laughed and said that he did not, that I had the “white people deafness”.

The volume of the voice is another semiotic feature that is often overlooked when discussing participation. In the cases I analyze, however, it is fundamental. It is a feature that is categorized with regard to the meaning of the interactions; specifically, the meanings that the children give to their interaction in the classrooms with white adults.

For Wichi adults, speaking with children requires special care because they think that children “have a sensitive ear”. A low voice, whispering, and choosing “soft” words is considered part of the upbringing that constitute positive environments for their children.

In contrast, we white people shout and, in their view, always seem to be angry. In general, they do not quite understand why. Nevertheless, shouting and anger are part of their corporal and sensitive experience in the classrooms, experiences that are very far from friendly ones that invite them to participate.

Macarena’s class

Macarena is a non-Wichi teacher who works in a place near El Sauzalito. This fragment of my observations of her class helps me to consider other aspects of the children’s view on what happens in the classrooms where they study.

As I mentioned, most non-indigenous teachers do not speak the children’s language. However, this lack of knowledge is not described in the interactions as a problem, as if it did not exist. The interactions at school in which non-indigenous teachers are alone (without bilingual assistants), take place in such a way that there is no trace that they happened in exo-lingual contexts. Rather, they point to a fiction that is locally produced but socially sustained: that Wichi children understand and speak Spanish. Their silence is described and acted upon as a “cultural option”.

However, it may be relevant to point out here the tension between silence and communicative hegemony, or rather silence as a resource and being silent as a product. In classrooms with Wichi children this difference is fundamental both from a theoretical and a methodological viewpoint. From a theoretical viewpoint, it invites us to examine the opposition between the verbal and the non-verbal, and from a methodological viewpoint it involves considering the multimodal as data.

The notion of communicative hegemony employed here is part of the work on the ethnography of speech and points to something that is not restricted to linguistic ideology but goes far beyond it: hegemony is linked to naturalization and ideological saturation. In the case discussed here, it is related to what is seemingly unheard, unseen, unrecorded: the children’s voice - and the language in which it materializes - becomes invisible, inaudible (^{Unamuno, 2019}).

This is linked to the ways in which school classes are structured: the use of multiple resources oriented towards minimizing the children’s participation in them, such as the prominence of closed questions that elicit mostly non-verbal responses, incomplete utterances that project their syntactic structure on very formatted responses, monological homework, and so on.

I will now show a fragment of Macarena’s class, from Los Lotes.

Vignette 4

Maca is a criolla. She has been working as a “common” teacher in this zone for almost 20 years and she has known the Wichi since her childhood. In my first visit to her class, Maca entered the classroom with me. She seemed to be angry. The children were still sitting down at their desks and looked at Maca with fear. Maca, in a loud voice and in an authoritative tone, said: “Let’s see… Are we people or ututus (lizzards)?” “People!” responded the children in unison. “Then don’t move your head like ututus. Look ahead. Be well seated, with straight shoulders. We are people. Peo-ple”. Maca turned around to write today’s date on the board. Nicolás, a Wichi boy I have known since he was a little child, laughs and with his right hand on his temple he makes the gesture of “crazy”, referring to his teacher.

This gesture made by Nicolás is particularly interesting for me, because somehow it made me reread the notes I took in these classes. In these notes, I observed especially the children’s lack of participation, the way in which Macarena pretended that her classes were “normal” while the children were absentminded or physically absent: they left the class through the door or the window and did not come back. Little by little, there were fewer and fewer children in the classroom, but Maca continued explaining calculations or asking them to complete multiple photocopies and then glue them to their notebooks.

The ideas around not seeing, not paying attention, not listening, not saying, appear as gestures linked to non-participation, formats of participation that produce absences. Nicolás, however, provides me with another clue. Through his gesture, he shows me that there is something anomalous in all this, and that they know it. This leads me to consider another approach to what is happening: the children can learn - and they do - to interact in these classes through their non-participation, although this does not mean that what is happening seems “normal” to them.