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MELISSA LEIGH GIBSON, PHD
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    • SS Curriculum Review
    • Big Questions, Big Issues
    • Getting Proximate
  • Home
  • CV
  • The Present Tense
  • Teaching
  • Writing
  • Presentations
    • SS Curriculum Review
    • Big Questions, Big Issues
    • Getting Proximate

the present tense

A collection of writing.
​
​​​​Part personal, part academic. ​
​Always a work in progress. 
​
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Becoming bilingual

6/19/2013

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Picture
Photo by Melissa Gibson | All rights reserved
I know that look.

The awkward, flat smile. The glazed over eyes that quickly give way to desperation. The deep breath before any words are spoken. The pursed lips and shrugged shoulders.

I know that look. It’s the look of not understanding a damn thing going on in the world around you.

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school days

6/14/2013

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Picture
I know schools. I spend my life in schools. I study schools, I work in schools, I pretty much live in schools. And school here in Mexico…Well, it’s different.

My head swims with a constant stream of, “Wow. In the States, it’s like X, but in Mexico, it’s like X.” Some are improvements, some are infuriating, and some are just baffling cultural differences. But different nonetheless. Never mind that I am teaching at an “American” school. This place is definitely not American. Plus, I get the added benefit of Anna being in a local Montessori program, a non-Americanized (but still private, so relatively affluent) school. And man! These schools are just…different.

Here are just a few of the things that just don’t match up between American and this little sample of Mexican schools (with the full acknowledgement that my n=2 sample is skewed heavily toward upper-class Mexico).

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    About 

    While living in Mexico, I joked that speaking Spanish forced me to be far more Zen about life: Since I could only speak in the present tense, I was forced to just live in that present tense.

    This blog began as regular travel emails when I was a naive undergrad exploring the globe, my meditations on wherever I was on that school break (or break from school). It has since grown into something more, a record of parenting, teaching, politicking, community-building, struggling, healing, exploring, growing, and laughing -- a record of my present tense.

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    Like what you see? That's mostly Ross Freshwater. Check out my talented partner-in-life's photo gallery.

CONTACT

melissa.gibson [at] marquette.edu
office | 414.288.1421

Marquette University College of Education
Department of Educational Policy & Leadership
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Photos used under Creative Commons from tedeytan, Stig Nygaard, Matt From London, shixart1985, Ted Rabbitts