Floridablanca, Santander, Colombia
Two months ago, as part of my department head duties, I was sent to a conference in Cali, Colombia (not California). The Forum on Teaching and Learning was held at Colegio Bolivar on March 10 and 11. On Thursday, March 9, a group of 6 teachers from Colegio Panamericano traveled from Floridablanca to Cali, Valle de Cauca.
9 de marzo 2017
Floridablanca, Santander, Colombia
El Dorado Airport, Bogotá, DC, Colombia
Cali, Valle de Cauca, Colombia
About the time I would've gone to school on Thursday morning, I found myself at the Bucaramanga airport. I met up with my fellow travelers: Ryan, Rafael, Yenny, Luza, and Mariela, and we embarked on our first flight: Bucaramanga to Bogotá. It was (thankfully) pretty uneventful. At the Bogotá airport, we grabbed some Dunkin Donuts and Bogotá Beer Company to pass the time until our next flight to Cali.
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| The travel there was effortless. If only all my flights could be this easy. |
After collecting our luggage, Ryan, Rafa, Yenny, Luza, and I squished into a cab for the (long and expensive) ride to our hotel. The Cali airport is about 45 minutes to an hour north-east of the city, and our hotel was all the way on the south-west corner of Cali. This journey cost us nearly $80.000 COP. For context, a cab ride from my apartment to the Bucaramanga airport is $25.000 COP. This was an official airport cab too, not a guy trying to scam us.
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| Cali is a very sprawled city. Everything seems to be so far from anything else. |
We finally got to our hotel and checked in, but only one of the rooms was ready, so we dropped our luggage and headed to the mall across the street to get some lunch. Many malls (and schools) in Colombia are a combination of indoors and outdoors (for you Chicago-area folks, think Old Orchard Mall). This mall had tons of green space within it, and with all that green space came MALL CATS (which would be a good name for an 80s movie). Everywhere we looked, we saw cats simply chillin' - on benches, hidden among the plants, walking around the mall...
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| How many cats can you find in this picture? |
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| They aren't strays, they've been adopted by the mall and vaccinated and everything! |
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| The cats even have little houses where they can chill away from all the people. |
After a siesta, I joined Rafa, Luza, and Yenny to explore a bit and find some dinner. We ran into Ryan, who had decided to do some wandering of his own, which sparked a discussion about the words wandering and wondering. My Colombian colleagues are quite good at English, but like most language learners, are always ready to learn. It was quite an interesting linguistic discussion - who is a wanderer? Are homeless people wanderers? How is wandering different than wondering? How does wandering compare to exploring or simply walking? I love conversations like this, since it makes me think a lot about my own words and their meanings and etymologies. I, of course, pay back in kind by asking similar questions about new Spanish words I learn. It's a fun exchange.
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| We found a delicious Italian restaurant to eat at. (Photo originally posted by Rafael) |
After a delicious dinner (I had tricolor lasagna, which looked like the Italian flag with pesto, alfredo, and marinara sauce on it), we headed back to the hotel. (Side note: In Colombia, what we know as marinara sauce is called salsa neopolitana. Salsa marinara is generally a white sauce with seafood in it [mar = sea].) Our hotel was pretty ritzy, and had a neat-lookin' pool, so we decided to go for a swim before we headed into dreamland.
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| Colored lights give it that cool edgy party look. |
The actual pool proper was pretty chilly, so we hung out in the hot tub (in Spanish, alternately called a Jacuzzi or a Turkish Bath [baño turko], depending on who you ask). We relaxed and chatted about teaching in Colombia versus teaching in the states, and if there were many immigrants teaching in the US. We also compared teaching salaries in our countries to salaries of other professions. It seemed like Colombia has teachers on approximately the same rung as the United States does, and it's not a very high one (unlike Finland, for example).
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| Rafael, Yenny, and I in the baño turko. Luza went up to bed rather than join us. |
10 de marzo 2017
Cali, Valle de Cauca, Colombia
The next morning we got up bright and early - the bus to the school was leaving at 6:30 am and we had to get the most out of our complimentary hotel breakfast before that time. We headed down around 5:45 am or so, only to find the restaurant not yet open. We tried to keep our eyes open as we sat in the lobby, getting hungrier by the minute.
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| It was well worth the wait. |
Hotel NH Royal served the best free hotel breakfast buffet I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. There was an egg bar, where you could order your huevos revueltos (scrambled eggs) or omelette cooked with various toppings. There was a plethora of fresh fruit, cheeses, and meats. There were several choices of freshly-squeezed juice. There were many tiny pastries and tiny fried goodies (including tiny bagels, tiny almojabanas, tiny arepas, tiny empanadas, tiny buñuelos, tiny creme puffs, tiny pancakes, and tiny croissants). There were also slices of tortilla española (Spanish omelette), waffles, and more. Not to mention coffee (can you have breakfast, especially in Colombia, without coffee?). Oh man. So much food.
We rolled ourselves out the door and through the rain to the bus that would take us to Colegio Bolivar, where the 12th Annual Forum on Teaching and Learning would commence shortly. Bolivar has a HUGE campus. According to their website, they have 1200 students, whereas Panamericano has only 650 (both begin at pre-school and go until 12th grade). So it's almost twice the size in student body, but in acreage I think it has to be at least 4 times the size. There's so much green space. It felt like a college campus. It took 10-15 minutes to walk between some of the sessions. I think I could walk from one end of Panamericano to the other in just over 5 (but somehow so many of my students are late for class because they can't walk 30 feet in 5 minutes).
The keynote speaker for the forum was Bambi Betts, who presented "Facts About Learning and What We Can Do." Through her keynote, we redefined the learning process and discussed myths and truths about learning and how we can adjust our teaching practices to align with the truths about learning and its cyclical processes. It was pretty interesting.
After the keynote, we got some empanadas, juice, coffee, and time to socialize a bit before heading to our first breakout sessions. I had gone through the schedule and chosen 2-3 sessions per time slot, so I spent this empanada-time rereading the descriptions and trying to decide which one I would end up in. I decided my first session with be "Personalized Instruction in Action," where I learned about the Habits of Mind.
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| Of course everything in education has an acronym. |
This session started with a great quote from Sir Ken Robinson, "We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it's an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will flourish." As a class, we explored the sixteen Habits of Mind and how they work in the classroom. We made goals to engage and empower students by integrating digital content, targeting instruction, allowing for student reflection and ownership, and to make data-driven decisions.
A really good question that was posed during this talk was, "What kind of teacher are you? Are you a ferry or a bridge?" Both a ferry and a bridge achieve the objective of bringing people across a body of water. However, a ferry goes back and forth bringing small amounts of people from point A to point B, with the travelers (students) not having to do much of their own work/thinking. A bridge provides the structure to allow for the travelers (students) to bring themselves across at their own pace through their own work. It can be difficult to make the shift from a ferry to a bridge, and it involves a lot of building and scaffolding, but once the bridge is up, it's ready to use.
The next session I went to was "Experiential and Problem-Based Learning with a Focus on Science and Math." This was all about creating shared experiences with the students for them to base their future learning on. It's a great idea, but I wish math had more of a presence in this talk (it is in the title after all). We did an example activity to learn about over-fishing and the necessity of regulations to keep the ecosystem running. This activity was fun, but took up quite a lot of the time provided, so the presenter sped through the rest of his slide deck, which included the math parts at the very end.
After session 2 we all went to have lunch in the school's cafeteria. It was pretty tasty, though I was jealous of Ryan; the vegetarian meal looked (and tasted) so much better than the meat meal (not to say the meat meal wasn't good!). We all ate and talked about the sessions we had seen and the ones we were going to see.
My last session of the day was one of my favorites: "Establishing Relationships for Life-Long Learning." It was all about classroom management and how to have students take control of it to have more effective management. If you have students come up with their common distractions and devise solutions and rules for them, there's more buy-in and a higher chance that students will stick to these rules. It's all about building loyalty, trust, honesty, and humor in your classroom. He showed us some cool word clouds he built with his students on Poll Everywhere and presented on a Blendspace, which is a sort of online board to collect a bunch of resources.
After the last session, we all climbed on the bus to take us back to the hotel. We rested a bit before heading out on the town. After all, what's the point in traveling for a conference if all you go to is the school and your bed?
Unfortunately, by the time we left, it was the beginnings of rush hour. That, coupled with the fact that our hotel was pretty far from the main downtown area (or really anything interesting), made for a long hour in stop-and-go traffic in our cab. Rafael was working on things for his Masters, so Luza, Yenny, Ryan, and I went out to explore the city.
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| Parque el Peñon |
We had the cab drop us off in the neighborhood El Peñon, where we wandered around, exploring and chatting and seeing what there was to see. Mostly that neighborhood was occupied by a bunch of different restaurants, but we saw some cool statues and parks too.
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| La Negra del Chontaduro. Chontaduros are a fruit native to the region. |
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| The cat lovers with El Gato del Rio |
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| Yara, Goddess of the River. From the depths of the Amazon rainforest comes the conqueror: the River Cat. She is convinced that the water of the two rivers, the Amazon and Cali, converge in an endless romance with the rhythmic sound of water. |
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| Gachuza. She wants to defend herself against the aggression of the environment, the stray cats that see her as irresistible because of her red color and flirty personality, but like the porcupine, she stays alert. She has eyes only for one cat: The River Cat. |
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| About Cats. The cat possesses beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, all the virtues of man without his vices. |
After we had our fill of cats, we decided to find somewhere to eat dinner. Rafael was still hard at work, so we walked around a bit and after a bit of discussion, decided on a burger place. I had a Jack Daniels burger, which used Jack in the BBQ sauce. It was pretty tasty. It was a very American-type place - they even had baseball on TV! Colombia was playing. I didn't even know Colombia had a baseball team.
After dinner, Rafa met us at a salsa club that was recommended to us by the organizers of the conference - Tin Tin Deo. Ryan's not much into salsa, so he left us.
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| Friends & Micheladas |
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| After all, if you go to Cali and don't dance salsa, have you really gone to Cali? |
11 de marzo 2017
Cali, Valle de Cauca, Colombia
We got to sleep in a little on Saturday - our bus didn't leave until 7:30 am this time. After another amazing breakfast, we headed back to the school for our last two sessions of the conference.
My first session of the day may have been the best one all weekend. It was called "An Introduction to the SIOP Model Designed for ELLs" The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) Model was developed to help teachers address the needs of English Language Learners. The model consists of eight parts, (1) Lesson Preparation, (2) Building Background, (3) Comprehensible Input, (4) Strategies, (5) Interaction, (6) Practice/Application, (7) Lesson Delivery, and (8) Review and Assessment. The presenter went through each component, stressing the importance of including both content objectives and language objectives in your lesson plan. Since an overwhelming majority of my students are ELLs, it was great to have some professional development focused on this. Many of my students have a pretty good handle on their Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) but not their Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). (Like I said earlier, everything in education needs an acronym.)
This presenter started out with having us log on to her online post-it bulletin board to share some of our own thoughts and experiences, and then taught us all about the SIOP model and how we can use it in our classrooms. One suggestion I thought was really cool was integrating a private online chat room like Todays Meet or Chatzy to build written skills as well as verbal - while you're having a class discussion or Socratic seminar, you can have the rest of your students that are not speaking typing their thoughts and interacting with each other. She had us practice writing language objectives for different content objectives, and gave us instant feedback. The last few minutes we had time to explore her SIOP Blendspace and share what we learned on Padlet. She had some content-specific materials on there (including math!), which I loved, since (because of some bad experiences in the past) I was afraid the presentation would be only applicable to humanities courses (i.e. English and Social Studies).
We then had a break between the sessions, complete with patacones, juice, and coffee. I talked with a few people who knew the director of my school from way back, which was fun. Everyone in the international school community seems to know everyone else (especially in Colombia).
My final session of the conference was "Bansho Math: An Ontario Instructional Strategy." The Bansho Three-Part Lesson was developed in Canada as an official teaching technique, but is based on how students in Japan learn math. It's all about learning content through problem-solving. It's student-centric, allowing students to be more active in creating their learning. A Bansho lesson would be the first lesson of the unit, before any "formal" teaching about the topic has been done. It draws only on students' prior knowledge. The first step is Activation, where the teacher provides students with a little warm-up activity related to the lesson. Then, the second step is the Problem. The teacher gives students a word problem, without telling them how to solve it. In groups, students work out different ways they can structure a solution, based only on their prior knowledge. They write out their process on a poster while the teacher walks around asking the students questions about their method (but not giving them any direct help) and records the strategies being used by each group. Part three is Consolidation/Highlights/Practice. The teacher chooses one student at random from each group to bring the poster up to the board and describe their strategy. The teacher helps the students reflect on the strategy, and as a class, they write down key words and come up with a name for the strategy. Mistakes are praised as learning experiences, and together the class figures out where and why the error was made and how to repair it. Students then work on similar problems and are encouraged to use some of the different strategies presented by their peers. Those posters then become anchor charts for the rest of the unit.
I thought this was a cool way to structure student-based learning, as oftentimes when its presented it seems so unstructured and free-form. I actually used this a week or two later when I had my seniors begin their sequences and series unit - they needed to figure out how to add the numbers 1 - 100 easily (like the old tale of Gauss as a child).
After the final session we headed back to the auditorium for the Closing Ceremony, which was mostly just the school band playing a series of songs for us.
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| Colegio Panamericano at Colegio Bolivar! |
All in all, I thought the conference was a good learning experience. I was surprised to find that a vast majority (~80%) of the teachers at the conference were from Colegio Bolivar - I definitely felt like one of the few outsiders. Despite that, I think I learned some good strategies to bring back to my classroom.
Our bus ride back to our hotel that day took almost an hour, as opposed to the usual 15-20 minutes. There was terrible traffic, and I fell in and out of a nap. When we returned, all my companions had to head to the airport, as I was the only one staying an extra night to explore the city.
Having begun a series of naps on the bus, I took a proper nap after everyone left, to recharge my batteries to explore the city on my own. Afterwards, I decided to head to Parque Artesanal Loma de la Cruz, an artisan market in an artsy neighborhood. There were lots of cool things there, and seemed like the cool place to hang out. There were lots of groups of young people chillin', playing guitar, and generally hanging out.
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| Plus there was a great view of the city! |
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| The #littledinosbigworld enjoyed the view too. |
I looked around all the shops, exploring what they all had to offer, and then found myself a little spot to chill and enjoy the environment. There were a few performers there too; there was a guy doing a ninja weapon act, and later a stand-up comic.
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| It's a gorgeous area |
This was my favorite spot in Cali - the area, the people, everything - it was all so cool. Unfortunately, I broke one of my sandals, but fortunately I was able to buy a new hand-made pair!
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| Luckily I got it fixed when I returned to Bucaramanga. |
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| New green macrame sandals! In my size! (Very hard to find my size; women in S America are generally not as tall as me.) |
I returned to the market, bought my cat sculptures (because of course), and had some maiz desgranados for dinner before taxiing back to the hotel for my last night in that comfy bed.
12 de marzo 2017
Cali, Valle de Cauca, Colombia
Bogotá, DC, Colombia
My last day in Cali was a rainy one. I had originally thought about going up to see Cristo Rey or Las Tres Cruces, which are both parks on top of mountains that would afford a great panoramic view of the city. After some more research, I found that (1) they were both pretty far away and would take a long time to get to, and (2) were a pain in the ass to get up to. Essentially you've gotta walk up the mountain, or in the case of Cristo Rey, you can take a taxi up, but you have to have it wait for you if you want to go back down. There's nothing up at the top of the mountains except for the statue and the view. On such a rainy day, it just didn't seem worth it.
I had a few hours to kill because I had to leave for the airport around 3:30 pm, and I didn't want to waste my extra day in my hotel room. I hadn't heard great things about the museums in Cali, but I'd heard the zoo was pretty cool and figured it would be a great way to kill a few hours by myself.
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| I'm great company. |
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| Zoo snacks in Colombia > zoo snacks in the United States (Granadillas are great!) |
It was a pretty great zoo - lots of animals in large habitats, including some neat animals I hadn't seen before (giant anteaters are HUGE - I know it's part of their name, but still!). Plus, free-range peacocks (pavo real = literally "royal turkey") are always cool.
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| Wanna fight? |
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| The pavo real in all its glory |
The Cali zoo has a white tiger, which I was excited to see, but unfortunately she wasn't seeing visitors that day. She was inside hiding from the rain. I did see a bunch of tities though (reread that, it's not what you think). The zoo is structured in a big circle and has helpful arrows that guide you around the most efficient path. By the time I made it back around to the entrance, it was time for me to head back to the hotel to get my bags. I couldn't have timed it better.
I returned to the hotel, did an idiot check (didn't find any idiots), and settled in for the long taxi ride back to the airport. I still needed to print my boarding passes, so I headed to the do-it-yourself kiosk. For some puzzling reason, it wasn't working. It would not recognize my reservation number or passport number. I start walking toward the ticketing desk and decide to stop at the departures board on the way.
My flight is canceled.
It's one hour before takeoff, and when I had checked in the taxi, my flight was on time.
It's just now been canceled.
Annoyed, I jump into one of the customer service lines. After about 20 minutes in line, I near the front and find that this line is only servicing passengers flying to Cartagena. I'm confused and irritated and ask where I am supposed to go. I get directed to a much much longer line. It seems a few flights were just canceled. About an hour later, a fist fight breaks out between two men in line. It's quickly broken up, but they continue glaring daggers at each other as they're pulled away. Soon after that, I make it to the desk. They put me on a flight to Bogotá for a few hours later, but unfortunately that flight lands after the last flight to Bucaramanga leaves. So I'm scheduled to fly to Bucaramanga early the following morning. This means I have to stay the night in Bogotá and write another day of sub plans for my classes.
I am then directed to another desk where (within 10 minutes of my approaching the desk) an Avianca representative sets me up with a hotel voucher for Bogotá and begins a complaint ticket for travel compensation (compare this efficiency with my other travel nightmare experience with United back in January).
On my way to the security gate, I saw a cart of chontaduros. I had meant to try one earlier in the trip, since they are typical to this region, but somehow missed all my chances. The fates were aligning in my favor!
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| So many colors |
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| The traditional way to eat it is with salt |
I'm glad I tried it, because now I can say that I did, but man was that just not great. It was kind of like an under-cooked starchy potato with a weird aftertaste. I was thankful for the salt, as without it I don't think I would have finished it. I was also thankful for the Subway right after the security gate, where I bought some dinner to wash down the weird flavors in my mouth.
I headed down to my gate, much happier and calmer than I was during my last travel mishap. I look in a few shops, and then try to find somewhere with an outlet to settle down and write my sub plans. Outlets are scarce. I finally find one that doesn't even look safe or like it's supposed to be there; there's a wire coming out of the wall, which is attached to the outlet plate, which isn't screwed into any wall anywhere. It's better than nothing, so I plop down on the floor and open my computer.
There's a child playing with a monkey toy nearby, which wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that he keeps pushing the button that makes the monkey scream its monkey cry. No matter. I'll be boarding soon.
Except I won't.
I keep looking at the departures board, anxious that my flight hasn't begun boarding yet. Then it updates and I find that my flight is delayed two hours (because of course it is).
I sigh, resigned to my fate, and walk another lap around the circle of gates and find something new - a kiosk of outlets for charging things! My phone's been dead for a bit (the janky outlet from before couldn't handle both my computer and my phone at the same time) and my portable battery died after I used it at the zoo. The stools are all taken, but I plug in my devices and pop a squat, reading my Kindle as I squat awkwardly underneath this charging table.
At long last, my flight begins boarding and we fly to Bogotá. Once in Bogotá, I go to the Avianca customer service desk, where I redeem my hotel voucher and am directed to a hotel shuttle (so much more painless than United). The other stranded travelers and I arrive at the hotel and are quickly checked in. In addition to my hotel room, the concierge also provides me with a dinner voucher. It's nearly 1 in the morning and I'm not that hungry since my chontaduro and Subway earlier, so I save it for a to-go lunch when I leave in the morning (shuttle's at 6 am). This time I am more prepared (I packed everything into my carry-on, no checked luggage), so I change into my PJs and get a few hours of shut-eye.
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| My hotel room's toilet had a phone. Why? |
13 de marzo 2017
Bogotá, DC, Colombia
Floridablanca, Santander, Colombia
I wake up in the morning and grab my suitcase and head down to breakfast. It's decent, but nothing compares to the Hotel NH Royal. I head to the front desk to ask about ordering a to-go lunch with my dinner voucher and discover it is only valid for dinner, not lunch. So, it's useless. Oh well. I check out and head onto the shuttle bus to the airport.
My flight to Bucaramanga boards and departs on time with no issues, and except for the fact that I have a middle seat between two people that know each other, I have no problems on the flight. I finally get home and once again collapse.
One good thing about this is that I received $200.000 COP travel credit from Avianca, which I just used to book my flight to Medellin for my upcoming trip with my dad in June. Economy was $90.000 and business was a little over $200.000, so I paid the $40.000 (~$17 USD) extra to spring for business class. Travelin' in style. Thanks Avianca!
Travel Nightmare - March 12-13, 2017
