Travel day

We had our final meeting yesterday, Thursday, after coming back from school. The original plan had been to hold it this morning, but half the group was gone by 10am. Mariana and Simon had a final activity that was the perfect conclusion to the trip and provided a space for celebrating and healing, two things that everyone needed. Mariana placed a sack of bandannas in the center of the circle and instructed us to take turns and give one of the bandannas to another participant in appreciation and recognition. She started and gave hers to Jim. The challenge, of course, was that as the choices diminished the person giving the bandanna was forced to choose from among the remaining people. It wasn't simply picking the one person you wanted to appreciate. Dave gave one to me; I gave one to Christie.

Margot left yesterday to stay over in Bogota so that she could catch an early morning flight home to Salt Lake City. Edye had offered to drop off some markers Margot had purchased to give to the teacher she had worked with. I rode along so that I could see the school, Jorge Nicolas Abello. We had heard so much about the visit and the forceful and ambitious leadership  there that I was curious to get a "feel" for the school. It was much larger than Madre Marcelina with blue tiling everywhere giving it a very blue tone. There were two large covered courtyards, something Sister Marina really needs and wants, but the classrooms that lined the walls surrounding the courtyards were tiny. We saw one where about 20 students were crammed in side-by-side from the back wall to the front. It felt like a more serious school environment. This is the model bilingual school in Barranquilla. The students study English. but also take math and science in English. Wish we could have seen a greater variety of schools to better understand how quality is defined here.

We had a bus to the airport that left at 11:15am because three people had early afternoon flights to Minneapolis. Edye and I had flight around 4pm so I was fine to go early and hang out with her at the airport. After we got there I discovered a few things: most of the restaurants and shops are outside the security area and waiting areas; the domestic and international waiting areas are completely separate; there is no real food available in the domestic area, just lots of coffee and pastries. I left Edye at 1:30pm after we'd both checked in, she was off to Quito and I was off to Bogota. There was a coffee shop practically at the end of the conveyor belts for the security check so I sat there and read. I had a nice new Avianca plane and watched Modern Family, first in Spanish and then in English. It was strange to hear a dubbed voice speaking Spanish for Sophia Vergara who comes from Barranquilla.

Checked into Hotel Castellana near Esperanza's house and only ventured around the block for a little dinner. I had missed lunch because I was in the airport for so long and when I walked down the first street there was only Subway and Domino's. I walked another block and discovered a little smoothie shop that just opened last week. He gave me the menu and told me that they deliver!

Today's words: No entiendo. desayuno, cena

July 30, Final day of school visiting and last night in Barranquilla

It has been a physically challenging 48 hours. I was up much of the night before last between bed and the bathroom and have developed a chest cough. The moving between hot and humid temperatures outside and frigid air conditioning indoors has made it hard to get comfortable with either the hot or the cold. I am also itching from bug bites, mostly from the beach day in Palomino, but maybe also from smaller bites sitting outside at the school most of the day. Everything here is open air. Two more days of malaria medication. While we were at school two of us were offered Pedialyte, the answer to diarrhea in children. I can say with certainty, it is much better cold than room temperature.

Christie woke up Wednesday morning with a case of vertigo. She was wisked off to the hospital emergency and put on bed rest for the day. Wednesday night as we got ready for bed Christie remembered that she had locked all of her medications in the room safe, but when she went to open the safe she couldn't remember the combination. She had done it as soon as she woke up in the morning and was quite dizzy at the time. I had watched her put in the combination, but between us we couldn't get it open. She called the hotel desk for help and after three people tried to use a computerized tool to unlock it, they gave up at 1:30am. I was sound asleep. We left for school this morning and when we returned in the afternoon someone came again and opened it within minutes.

We had a very pleasant last day at school. Three of us started the day in the Transition A, kindergarten. The children are five turning six and the missing teeth of one little girl I met was evidence that these children were definitely kindergarten age. When we arrived at the classroom the teacher was instructing them on workbooks. They were coloring in the pictures that answered whatever question was posed. It was a modern version of the kinds of workbooks I used in school; more colorful, more text and more detailed pictures.

The lesson that followed was a cut and paste. The teachers started by giving out small plastic bags, a small sleeve, that the children immediately started "inflating" by blowing into them. Then she handed out a word sheet that had little boxes with words in them that the children had to cut out. When they had finished the cutting she distributed a second sheet with pictures where they had to paste the words under the correct picture. It was a complex, multi-step exercise, a word review the teacher told us. It was great to observe the range of strategies: one child cut out each word then carefully laid them out on the picture sheet before pasting. Most children cut out the words and then immediately starting pasting them one at a time on the picture page. The challenge came when they found two words that seemed appropriate for the same picture and one word was already pasted down. There were also three "extra" words on the word sheet that didn't apply to any pictures and that created another difficult challenge. For some children the cutting took most of the time. There were lots of scraps and many lost words that didn't make it into the little plastic bags they had been given to hold the cut out words.

The teacher distributed glue in little bottle caps. An efficient process. By the end of the activity some children had a completed sheet, though few had the words correctly placed as many came to adults to ask how to read the words. A few were pairs that had slight differences in spelling, but big differences in meaning: nudo (knot) and nidi (nest); sopa (soup) and sapo (toad). At the end, the children put the worked completed or not in their desks. Two parents arrived to celebrate a birthday and the work session ended.

GabriellaLaura

All during the word activity Laura wanted to do anything but the task. She dawdled and delayed, talked and finally I let her try my camera. She was quick to figure out how to take the picture and change the screen to show the photo. Other children came for a turn and took photos of one another including these:
 Our visit ended with lunch when the teacher put in a video for the children to watch. As they gathered their lunch boxes and cold drinks from the fridge, she started a Pixar movie. Turned out to be Inside Out, a film currently running in US theaters. We left at 10:30 after 2.5 hours to see a surprise the school had prepared for us. We crossed through the courtyard and walked through the elder care space to get back to the main building.
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This is the iguana that lives in a mango tree in the courtyard. It comes down when it feels like it and occasionally enters a classroom. We spotted it the first day on our walk through the school. 

This started out as a photo of three friends and quickly turned into a cumulative group of friends. It was a repeat of the gathering of friends that I had witnessed in the kindergarten at Sabio Caldas. The children love clustering together and they loved having their pictures taken.

The surprise was a performance by the students all in English, from the Lord's Prayer to a song performed by 2nd graders to the thank you at the end delivered by a senior. The real surprise were the dancers who came out in traditional dress and halfway through their performance ripped off the long skirts to change rhythms and dance in shorts. The students were very excited to cheer on their friends. There was also a young girl who sang in English, very off key, but very passionate. The robotics students also showed us what their robots could do. They had received materials to build the robots as a donation, but when they opened the donation there were no instructions. The girls went online and found instructions in English. They had to translate the instructions before they could begin building. These girls have such great confidence and determination.

 

Professional Development Day at Colegio Madre Marcelina

When we arrived at the school this morning there were parents everywhere. They had just completed a meeting to hear about the new law from the Ministry of Education, extending school in 2016 to a full day. It means that students will not be dismissed at 1:30pm (currently the end of the half-day), but will be required to attend until 3pm.

We headed for the library and sat and listened to the end of a class with the seniors (11th graders). They were the only students required to come to school today.

At 9am the teachers arrived to start their professional day. The first session was to learn about the implementation plan for the new law extending the day to a full day. The goal was to begin the full day in 2016 (they start the school year in January) and to address the need for infrastructure during the time between now and the implementation. A major concern was building in a lunch period and meeting the government's requirements for a space where the girls could eat. Currently, only one grade from first to fourth grades can be fed lunch in school and so they rotate the lunch period and on those days that grade stays later for afternoon classes. Others are dismissed after the half day. Students in grades above 4th must bring their own lunch or buy it from the canteen.

The new full day schedule will require more tables and chairs and a location for lunch. The teachers are asking for a cover for the courtyard so that it won't be so hot. Teachers will also need lunch and though the government doesn't require the school to provide teachers lunch, Sister Marina says that if they are hungry they can't teach. She has promised to provide lunch for them. Finally, the teachers will need to be assigned a rotating lunch duty for the first time.

Other concerns were raised about the schedule, the longer hours for the teachers (2 per day) and how they will make use of those two hours. Sister responded to any opposition with a firm statement about the benefits to children of the new plan. She said that if the children are in school longer hours the school can take care of them. This is especially compelling in a low income community. She also believes that the extra hours will allow teachers to do innovative things in the classroom that don't have time for currently.

The options for teachers were outlined: teachers could accept the longer hours and receive additional pay or the school would hire a complementary teacher to cover the extra hours at one end of the day or the other. She reminded them that having a complementary teacher would require coordination between the two teachers. Sister later told us that teachers are free to stay or leave, but she is sure that they won't find a better school and will stay.

The teachers' main concern was that they had not been consulted by the government prior to the passing of the law. This seemed to be a long-term problem with education law and the reality is that the school will have to develop infrastructure at the same time that the government is mandating implementation.

During the second session we, the GCC participants, facilitated a discussion of Global Competency. We asked the teachers to brainstorm words and ideas that help to define the term "global competency." Marian explained that in Spanish the word "competencia" can mean competency, but it can also mean competition. Among the words the groups came up with were, for competency: efficient effective, involvement, talented, abilities, ability to apply knowledge. They said that the government defines competency as knowing what to do with knowledge. For global: interdisciplinary, knowledge, students cannot learn alone, transnational world, remove barriers, not the view of one person.



A discussion afterwards led to one teacher saying that it was all about finding Unity within diversity.

We ended the day with a discussion about teaching English. Listening to Julio, a World Teach visitor from Minnesota, talk about being asked about America all the time, it sounded so much like my experience in Taiwan 40 years ago. The fact that he represents a culture that is attached to the reason these students need English is all that matters. Their ability to connect to him is evidence that they are more connected somehow to the English-speaking world. They have been "exposed." It is amazing to think that with all the change that has occurred for students since 1975, the introduction of the internet and social media, the development of a global economy, the ease of travel especially for business, that this is the case. Is it that the human connection is primary to any meaningful interaction across languages and cultures? Is it that the internal violent conflicts within Colombia have kept it isolated from any engagement with the world outside of Colombia for so long and they are just catching up?

First full day at Colegio Madre Marcilena

I have just showered to refresh myself before heading out for dinner. It's 6:45pm and we are due in the lobby by 7:00pm. It's been a full day of classroom visits, conversations with children, a tour of the school and planning for tomorrow. It was a very hot day and the teachers tried their best to find air conditioned spaces for us; even moving whole groups into empty classrooms just to make it more comfortable. The third grade classes were on the second floor of the main building and were the rooms without air conditioning. In one room there were four fans mounted on the walls and two standing fans in the front of the classroom. The teacher said it still gets pretty hot most days. It is interesting to think that the seasons never change here. This is it. Hot and dry or hot and wet, humid and occasionally rainy. When asked by the children what the weather is like in America it was hard to begin to describe a country with seasons in most regions. I have not yet figured out if they have a word for the season that we are in and that endures all year long.

We observed 5 classes in 3-5th grades and the children had prepared interview questions for us. They didn't have a strong grammatical structure, but they had good vocabulary and were able to write down answers with some accuracy.

4th grade Englishlunch

3rd grade English
1st grade
The tour of the school included a walk through the nursing home that is in the older part of the property and belongs to the church. The school is funded and run by the Ministry of Education, but the nursing home is run by the church. The building is over 100 years old and is a Caribbean style architecture and tiling. All students in Barranquilla are required to complete 200 hours of community service, 80 hours in theory and 120 hours of service, before completing 11th grade, their final year of high school. This school decided to complete the requirement in 9th grade because they said that 11th grade is too busy. The students go over to the nursing home to help care for the residents, bringing them activities such as word puzzles and coloring books. As we entered the area where the students and residents were gathered at tables we heard one student explaining to a group of women that their life decisions were their own; no one else, they said, could decide what you need or how you should live.

We also walked through the area where elderly nuns live, separate from the nursing home. A picture of Pope Francis was on the wall and when asked, the head of school said that she was very happy to have him in charge as his humanitarian values were what religion was all about.

As we walked through the church Sister Luz Marina pointed out a St. Anthony statue, the patron saint of lost things. She gave us St. Anthony bread that symbolizes promises to help the poor in return for favors given by St. Anthony to those who pray for his help. 

A few thoughts on the culture of Colombia that contributes to differences in approach to education. The sense of group is defined in these schools by large classrooms. Here, at least 30 per classroom; in Bogota as many as 45 in one classroom. The large number, however, has not prevented interaction between teacher and students or between students and other students. There is a lot of consulting with peers when a question is posed and a lot of pushing forth one student to respond to a teacher's request for a single voice. Another concept is the dominance of oral language rather than printed word. There are few signs around the school except for the official signs of mission and vision, church-related signs and location signs. There is not a heavy presence of signs that inform or reinforce content knowledge and no signs of behavioral expectations or articulated values except for those associated with the church. A concern for all is evidenced in the interactions among students within and across grades. Today we watched a volleyball session where older students had been paired up with younger students to teach them.