April 15th, 2019

Today I share a song by Kase O, Esto no para.

Recently, I met again with a young man I had worked with for two years in a UEU, during an activity. During that course, in some interventions, we had agreed to listening to music and it was always them the ones that wanted to pick the music because they said that our music “would be shit.” However, the thing was that the songs they picked, despite musical taste, often had lyrics with chauvinist or poor messages, and we had to censor some of them.

After a few months, when we got to know each other better and knew the

music they liked, I convinced them to let me pick the music. I put Kase O, Chikos del Maiz, and Zoo.

A few days ago, we met again with this student, and when they were able to pick the music, he asked me to put Kase O or Los Chikos del Maíz, which he listened to from time to time, and that made him remember the days at UEC and some

anecdotes, and that he had changed a lot, etc, etc.

Often during an educational intervention, we transmit more things related to the relationship and respect established with the users (teenagers, in this case), than what you originally wanted to transmit with the activity itself. With this, I mean that there is a series of learnings/reflexions or impacts that you can generate to the students and that are not tangible or quantifiable like noticing if they know the result of 23×45, for example. On one hand, because there are often changes that are not programmed, because if there were, they wouldn’t work. They are – or should be – inherent to the relationship established with the teenagers and how you have positioned yourself to the

situations that have come up and been shared.

On the other, I think that these changes occurred in details that are hard to see, from asking how they are, to offer them time to talk one day if they need it, to give them the space, to give them responsibilities or to suggest a song with different messages to the ones they listen to more often. 

In these contexts, the teenagers will rarely come the next day to tell you thank you, you weren’t aware but what you said touched me and I’ve been thinking about it and it was good for me.

That’s why I was moved that, after two years, he remembered that song or some anecdotes and that he was able to look at it from that perspective, because when 

he talked about them he did it with details that are hard to see and often are the fruit of how our relationships are.