School Visit, La Giralda

Am meeting Alejandra Rueda from Enseña por Colombia at 6.30am to visit one of her schools in an area south of Bogotá called “Barrio de las Cruces”.

Barrio de Las Cruces sounds beautiful, it means neighbourhood of crosses, so I imagine a colourful town with lots of churches, a bit like la Candelaria – the trendy area in Bogotá.

When Ale politely suggested it was “safer” to go to the school together, to dress down in jeans and Tshirt and that I should make sure to NOT take my phone out of my bag, I realized my original thought of a little cute safe “Barrio de las Cruces” might be off.

That didn´t mean I was less enthusiastic to visit the school, on the contrary, I was extremely curious and keen to see the work of Enseña por Colombia’s teachers (ecos) and meet their children!

Every single person I have met from ExC has an extraordinary interesting diverse background, highly educated, hardworking and passionated by their job, Ale is no exception to this.

Ale is fluent in English and Spanish, is well travelled, has a double degree, studied audiovisual arts at the university of Bucaramanga, Colombia, is a mother and even set up her own successful business.

All this was not enough, Ale felt it was time for her to give back to the community to make a change, it was then that she applied for a teaching role at Enseña por Colombia.

In 2015 she started working as a teacher for ExC and is currenlty still working for the organisation as a mentor and pedagogical training coordinator to the ExC teachers of the region Bogota and Bucaramanga.

After an enjoyoable 2 hour taxi drive, Ale and I arrive at the school “la Giralda” where children from different ages were already playing in the courtyard.

The first thing that stroke me was the size of the school! It was like a labyrinth, I was definately going to get lost here.

La Giralda has 60 teachers and 1367 students from the age of 5 to 17.

All children wear a uniform, on normal days a white polo, green jumper and blue trousers.

On days where they have gym classes, the children wear blue sweatpants and hoodies.

Seniors, 17 year old, get to wear a black hoodie to differentiate them from the others.

I got to witness Alejandra in action. She observed one of the ExC teachers at la Giralda- Javi´s classes last week and met with him today to give him her constructive feedback and observations.

After Javi´s mentoring sesion, I had a 1 hour break… after a 5am start, I really did need coffee unfortunatley the school had run out! That didn’t stop Alejandra nor myself, we decided to do the unthinkable… we left the schoolgates and went into the barrio to buy a cup of coffee at the local bakery! It was delicious!

There were several students running around on the playground when we got back so I took this oportunity to have a chat with them.

What an experience!

From the youngest to the oldest students, the welcome and interest I got was incredible.

A cute 5 year old came running to ask me where I was from,

(Seem my effort to blend in didn’t work THAT well…)

When I told him I was Spanish but lived in London he very proudly told me he spoke English!

He told me in the cutest way ever that “yellow” is “amarillo” and “Green” is “verde” :-)

A group of 17-year old girls wanted to put in practice what they had learned in Javi´s English class. They asked me questions about Europe and told me about their plans for the future, all in English!

I showed them pictures of London and explained how I believe that learning English is very important and is a way to create opportunities. All this as casual as I could be, without sounding like I am lecturing them.

My last class of the day was with Carolina Cortes, an other star ExC teacher. Her topic for the next 55 minutes was the different social movements in Latin America, one I have to admit I knew little about.

My first thought when I walked into a room with 25 students, knowing the subject that was going to follow, I have to admit was:

“No way anybody can make children interested and get them to work for the next 55 minutes with this subject”

Oh my, how wrong was I!

Carolina knew her students very well, she knew to give them the freedom they needed in the first 5 minutes to settle in class while she was making her objectives clear. After that ever single one of them proactively started working on their task!

After a long day with a very early start, I was ready for some food.

Ale suggested I d try the local cuisine and brought me to “la señora Gloria´s” house.

La señora Gloria lives opposite the school and cooks for the teachers and rector in her house! The home-made food is delicious.

I got welcomed with open arms and tasted for the first time the delicious colombian ajiaco (chicken soup with corn, potatoes etc)

I was too hungry to take a picture but this is what it looks like:

Ale and I finished the day with a quick tour in the trendy arae of Bogota, la Candelaria. We saw some Street art, went to the plaza de Bolivar and had a coffee.

and then… it was my time to introduce Ale to a piece of Europe!

A friend had recommeded “la Patisserie Francaise” in la Calndelaria and I knew Ale had never tried an eclaire!

A very productive day overall! My favorite so far.

*note that this article and whole blog is based on my personal opinion only.

#education #bogota #school #enseñaporcolombia #teaching