Our visit today took us to two public schools in Bogota. First of all, the amount of will that it would take for me to just to head up the extremely steep, narrow, curving mountain roads had me thinking everyone at the schools must be superhuman!
The goal was to see public school environments in Colombia and understand the strides that teachers and students are making in learning English.
The first school, Confederacion, serves students from early childhood to eleventh grade. The focus here is to prepare students for life through hands-on training. Three highlights of this program are the food service program, technology program, and dance. Students wear white coats, hair nets, and masks. They make all types of dishes, including Oreo cheesecake! They take great pride in their work, which we got to sample.😊 The technology class has a STEM integration focus. They have student-made robots and an animal museum that has life-size animals made out of recycled materials.
We were treated to a wonderful traditional folk dance. The students wore beautiful traditional costumes. They were confident, poised, and happy to share with us.
The next school, I. E. Distrital Usaquen, also serves early childhood to eleventh grade. Their focus is English language acquisition. Students are taught by grade, but they all play together during breaks. The highlight of our time here was a conversation with some very bright eleventh graders. They shared their hopes to travel or travel more (One student had visited Australia). They also shared their hopes of going to a university. That wasba major motivation for them to learn English. They also shared that they wanted to have more interactions with people from other countries, and they were so happy that we came to visit with them.
As I listened to them and talked with them, I realized even more that teenagers are teenagers no matter where they happened to be born. They all want to experience life, be accepted, and be heard. I think that's we all want.
