Having been back from my Colombia trip for a week now, I've been trying to acclimate to my life in the states and went directly back into work.  I've also been trying to wrap my mind around this really incredible experience that I had and what I learned from it.  One question that many colleagues at my school have asked is what did you learn in Colombia? Is there anything that you bring back to us from your travels?

The idea that keeps coming to mind is curiosity.  Whatever school we were at, whatever place we were in (in the classroom or on the basketball court or just in the hallways), Colombian students surrounded us and asked questions about our lives.  Students in Colombia have curiosity about other countries in the world that they have never traveled to.  They wanted to know "What are the states like?" "Do you like Obama?" "What is your school like?" "What do you know about Colombia?" and on and on.  We could go into any classroom and just answer questions for an hour and still the students had more questions.

It made me wonder, if a Colombian teacher came to my classroom for a week and sat down to answer any and every question, would my students have endless questions and curiosity? I know that they might ask about drugs and drug trafficking (they brought this up to me when they found out I was going to Colombia) but when I talked to them about my trip they couldn't think of anything else they wanted to know.   Do we cultivate enough global curiosity in our students in the states? Do our students have the luxury of not asking questions of other nations because we are near the top of the power structure in the world? 

So, one of the big take-aways for me from this trip is how do I facilitate my student's global curiosity about the world? I think one way is going to be by using current events in my classroom but I am open to new ideas on how to do cultivate this curiosity.  

We've had a day of rest and relaxation in Cartagena. We met back up with our friends who taught in this city and had a beautiful dinner and day at beach just resting and talking. The two weeks in Colombia have been amazing, rich and overwhelming. Today has been a good day for reflection. I've learned so much about Colombia and about education here. I've seen amazing teachers and inquisitive, intelligent students. Students really are more similar around the world than they are different.

The difference between Colombia and the US educationally is really a difference of resources and possibilities for further education and development. Colombia doesn't have as many and the US does. That manifests itself in all kinds of ways including that Colombian teachers are extremely limited in the ways they can teach. For example, a teacher was telling us that teachers get two white board markers per year. That's it, then no more. It sounds like a silly thing but in some classrooms all you get is a white board. If you don't have markers than you have no resources at all.

I'm very thankful for the resources I have and for opportunities, like this fellowship, that help me grow and become a better teacher. Can you be a great teacher with few resources and little professional development? Of course, but teachers also need support, encouragement to try new things, resources to help facilitate our teaching and opportunities to grow and learn from the world.

It was our last day teaching at Colegio Jose Joaquin Castro Martinez and teachers in different subjects asked us to give lessons on particular topics. Luis Eduardo, a high school social studies teacher, asked Wendy and I to prepare a lesson on westward expansion in the US for his high school class. As the public schools in Colombia have few resources- no assigned rooms, no copying privileges, no texts, no technology- this was a complicated issue. I decided to reserve one of the only rooms with a projector and computer and show art, photographs, paintings and even song (America the Beautiful) to show the elements of Manifest Destiny. I think it worked well because students, even if they have trouble with English or even if they don't have prior knowledge about a topic, can respond to the visual or a song. The two hour lesson went quite well and the teacher said at the end how much he enjoyed how I use art to teach history. The students asked great questions and really engaged in the topic bringing up great connections between westward expansion and conquest in the US and Spandish conquest of indigneous people in Colombia.

In addition to working at schools and visits to all different types of schools, we've taken time to see some of the landmarks and tourist attractions of Bogota and the larger country. We went to the top of Monserrate to get an amazing view of the extensiveness of Bogota. It's a huge city with variable weather- going from freezing and wet in the morning to warm in the afternoon. Since were at 9,000 feet, the light in this city is quite magical when the sun comes out.

One Saturday, we went to the Salt Cathedral, an unbelievable place where they built a cathedral (or actually many small ones) into a salt mine. You descend into the mine to find miles of tunnels and small places of worship as you go along.

One of my favorite things we have done has been to go to the famous restaurant Andrs Carne de Res. It is one of the most fun places we have been and hard to describe. It's a huge restaurant full of found objects, each cup and plate and decoration is unique and unusual. The food is great with a menu that reads like a book. People go there for birthdays and other celebrations so the whole place has music and laughter and dancing! Going to this restaurant is kind of like hanging out in a hip circus behind the scenes.

The people in Colombia have been incredibly warm and friendly to us as well. Inviting us over for dinner and out for dancing. This trip has had a great blend of work, learning and fun! Viva Colombia!

Blogging everyday has been a funny experience sometimes I just want to sit and watch the people walk by on the street or take a morning walk without writing about it! This is a picture of the three of us, myself, Sarah and Jessica, taken by Renata while we blogged at Juan Valdez- the Starbucks of Colombia!

My colleague Wendy and I have been visiting many different Social Studies classes this week at Colegio Jose Joaquin Castro Martinez. In some classes we taught and in others we just answered questions from students. I cannot tell you how amazing the questions and how satisfying the dialogue has been. Of course we have been asked the typical questions by students "are you married?" and "do you have children?" It's just the student's way of getting to know us.

But we have also been asked incredibly thoughtful questions about education and life in the US. "Is there racism in the US?", "what is US foreign policy on Cuba and Venezuela?", "what is health care like?" and "what do you think of Obama?" Can most Americans name the president of Colombia? Probably not. Poignantly, after the end of one discussion a group of about five students came up to Wendy and I and asked us about gay and lesbians students in the US, how they are treated in schools and society. I am just really blown away by the thoughtful and smart students we have worked with this week! The questions were great!

We've been teaching our hearts out this week and trying to fit in at our new school. So after a few grueling mornings of getting up at 5 and observing classes, having meetings, speaking with students and teaching mini-lessons in English or history, we were faltering a bit. Getting exhausted and just in general starting to fade. Then our host teacher Silvia looked at our tired faces and told us, let's go on a coffee break at the corner store and we all perked up! It's the best idea ever! So now it's become our favorite thing to do each day. At 10:10 the teachers leave the school and walk to the neighborhood baker where we get cafe con crema and different sweets right out of the oven. It's a lovely daily ritual, it perks you up for the rest of the day and it's a time to just talk and laugh with the other teachers. I definitely notice that there is more community here at this school than I see at many schools in the US. In the US it's rare to have time to have a coffee or lunch with colleagues and sometimes schools feel lacking in community to me. Now if I can just find a local bakery and coffee shop near enough my school...

We started our week of working in the Colegio Jose Joaquin Castro Martinez. Our sponsor teacher, Silvia, picked us up at our hotel and whisked us away to school. We made it in time to see a wonderful flag ceremony full of dance and color.

The day sped by meeting teachers and finding out our schedule for the week. After coffee break with the teachers at the local hang-out, we watched a social studies class where they were studying "La guerra Fria" (the Cold War). I was struck by how similar some of my teaching strategies were with this teacher focusing on causes (causas) and effects (consecuencias) of events in the Cold War. Later in the week, we begin to teach!

I would be remiss if I didn't write more about the public/private split in education in Colombia. Unlike the US where most students attend public school (roughly 90% of all students) and you can find people of all socioeconomic classes in public school, Colombia seems to show a wider gap between public and private school attendance based on socioeconomic class. I'm sure that an even wider gap is present in education between rural and urban schools but I was only able to view urban schools.

In one day we started at a public school which I wrote about in my last post, Colegio Codema, and ended the day in a private school. While we saw committed, great teachers at the public school, the resources available to them were minimal including technology and books. Additionally, even though bilingualism is an important agenda in Colombian education,very few students that I met could speak English well enough to have a conversation beyond a few words. Opportunities for speaking in English are very limited for the public school students.

At the end of the day, we visited a private all-girls Catholic school, Colegio del Rosario del Santo Domingo. What we experienced there had a very different feel.

We first met with a group of students who spoke English incredibly well. They answered our many questions about their school and about their interests in the future. One senior was heading to England in the fall for college and all of them, no matter their age, had specific careers in mind for their future. Chemical engineers, lawyers, and economists were some of the careers that they see in their futures. The private school students were so articulate, poised and together that they really impressed us. But what really stood out was the opportunities that they have had for travel, for learning English, and for exploring future career options in their lives. They have the skills, the education and the opportunities available to them that public school students do not seem to have in Colombia.

Today, we were able to visit the Colegio Codema, another public school in Bogota. Like yesterday's school, this school is in a working class part of town with less resources in general. But today, I saw great teaching. The school had a much more structured feel, students in classes and learning.

We started the day with an overview of the school and our indicidual schedule. Janneth Gomez, an English teacher in the primary school.

We were able to observe a few classes and I saw great, interactive, creative teaching strategies and lots of dialogue with students. The first class I watched was a fifth grade class and students were making presentations. Students were articulate and their teacher asked them two or so probing questions after each presentation. The topics for the presentations went from James Rodriquez (the Colombian soccer star) to human rights but the teacher treated each topic with interest and worthy of discussion.

We ended the day with a round table discussion with teachers and students on Colombian and US education. Many similar issues came up- how do we measure success? What strategies do we use for learning and behavioral issues? How do we make education more relevant to our student's lives? We found many common themes between the two country's educational issues. But differences that also came up including the use and access to more technology in the US classrooms and the issue of more diversity of languages and needs in the US. The teachers at this school were very engaged in trying to improve their work and school and that engagement really showed in the classroom!