DavidFontes1966

  10/26/21 Cross-Cultural Issues in Manners Should I shake hands? Should I eat it all? Should I say "Bless you? Not knowing the answers to these questions and many others while visiting foreign countries would make us feel puzzled, anxious, and with a strange feeling of unease.  But on the other hand, there will be solace if we ask in advance and try to copy experienced people's behavior.  I was once told by a former student one of his experiences that caused him a deep feeling of discomfort: While visiting an Asian country and as a way of being kind to a local man's child he touched the boy's head just to have the father being furious and trying to attack my student. Children's head is something extremely private and my student had to get a translator in order to explain this was an expected behavior in our culture. How could we cope with this kind of issue? I think that if we ask our students about their culture and have them explain to us how they feel will avoi...

                                                10/26/21                                 Week 7          Cross-Cultural Students in the Classroom I always enjoy Mr. Ivers' classes, today's one was not the exception. Cross-Cultural Students in the Classroom In this video, he covers a wide range of cultural notes which are a healthy source of inspiration and awareness as well. Most of us as teachers have experienced at least once in our classrooms different behaviors from students coming from other cultures.  How good it is to know that many times a student can be suffering to be pushed to follow certain rules which may sound natural and normal to us, but not for some of them. I would like to highlight here the imperative necessity we have to learn about our stud...

                        10 /23/21; Week 6: Response to                    Attributional Tendencies. My friend's words still echo in my mind, my wife had had a miscarriage and she asked: "What did you guys do wrong?" I was feeling sad and vulnerable and I had to struggle to find the proper words to answer that tough question. Many years later my wife and I found ourselves looking at each other through our tears having been told by our youngest son that he was leaving the church. Again the same words came to my mind: What did we do wrong?  The video  Attributional Tendencies in Cultures  provides us with some clear points of view and explanations about the differences between Internal and External attributions and how there is a wide range of cultural differences that can be clearly spotted and that as we realize that there are as many reasons as situations we hav...

                        10/23/21; Week 6  Response to "  Personal Space Differences" Would you please step away a bit? Nowadays due to the Covid-19 pandemic protocol, it would not be a strange phrase but was it like that some time ago, too? For sure it will depend on where in the world you are and the kind of relationship you have with the person. To illustrate this point I will share an experience told by a reporter from our country who had to be in jail for some hours after greeting with a handshake a female Arab member of the government. He had not been instructed previously about the kind of treatment. This was the first thought that came to my mind while watching the video  Personal Space Differences . I think this is one of the first cultural things we as teachers must learn and pay attention to while talking to our students and their families. I am positive this will make a difference in the kind of relati...

2021/10/19 week 06  Differences in Emotional Expressivity. When we think or talk about emotions and the way we express them we can have some clues if we know the culture a person comes from, but really there can be as many differences as people in the world.  As a way to illustrate this point, I am going to share a story I was once told by a friend serving in Mozambique as a military observer. He had been in contact with some local children, two of them were brothers and about the same age as my friend boys. They would visit my friend almost every day in order to share lunch with him. One day only one of the boys showed up and my friend asked about his brother. The boy answered: "We went fishing yesterday and he was eaten by a shark" My friend thought the boy was joking at first, just to realize moments later it was sadly true. My friend started to cry as the brother would comfort him telling: "no worries, I have more siblings" My friend was shocked at first thinkin...

  10 /16/21;  Week 5: Response to "Cultural miscommunication" I think that one of the worst things we can do about communication is to stereotype a culture and say/think that every person from this culture will act this or that way. We have to assume also that even when we are raised in a culture we are going to react only in one way. We have to remark as well that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the glue that sticks all of us together no matter our culture.  To sum up, I consider that there is a culture for members of the church, where we can feel citizens of the church and those differences start to blur.