Today, Barranquilla's Bilingualism Week comes to a close.
It's my second one, here, although as a trainee my participation in the first one was limited to visiting schools (my native presence a "reward" for English well-done).This time around, as a full-fledged "teacher," I had a bit more of an active role.
The week itself is an interesting concept, designed around promoting bilingualism in the city, bringing teachers together to share best-practices and talking about current successes. On the one hand, it's pretty amazing that the city is organized enough to do this--this year marks the 4th annual. It's also a huge step forward in promoting the network of English teachers that the district so desperately needs.
The problem that I see is that it's mostly about "inspiration," and lacks tangible outcomes. Although teachers shared their successes, there weren't many takeaways for other teachers to use these for their own classrooms. Although the theme was technically tourism and global outreach, as inspired by the US-Colombia Trade Agreement that should bring a great deal of English-speaking business to this city in the next years, including the plan for a huge port to be built to support the trade influx, most presentations did not reflect this.
And, of course, the week was held during a school week. Which meant, while teachers gathered to receive inspiration, the students were left without English class all around the district, in one of the few productive weeks left in the school year (Though classes technically end late November, between end-of-year celebrations, two Monday festivos/days off, finals, reviews, clowns, and elephants, we're just about done with any productive class)
I hope that teachers were able to forge connections with other schools, to make some meaningful relationships, and to receive some of the tools they so desperately need--like, how to make curriculums without textbooks. How to teach English when too many teachers don't actually speak English. How to move forward in schools without resources of even the most basic sort, while meanwhile the district is taking away English teachers from schools and increasing the already high numbers of students per class. I hope that one of these years, things start to add up.
On a super high note, Peace Corps at the least has been establishing one of those free "tools" for teachers as best as possible, including the Saturday classes that Jessica and I, and some of the other volunteers, teach. But hey, I won't bore you with more typed explanation, when you can check out the super-cool video Jessica and I (well, really mostly Jessica) put together to advertise our classes for next year, and talk about our progress!
Good morning how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Colombia? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Colombia in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
28902 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez
Nice post! This is a very nice blog that I will definitively come back to more times this year! Thanks for informative post.Bilingualism
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