Blog 9
June 5th:
Started the day with walking to UARM for seminar. After seminar, we headed to the small café near UARM and of course, I ordered a chocolate smoothie. YUMM! We had the wonderful opportunity to be given a presentation by the former minister of education of Peru, Martin Vegas. He discussed the educational system in Peru and some of the challenges it faces. He showed us a video on gender inequality in the schools and this was something interesting and powerful. To me, from the video, it seems like girls are known to not complete their education and are kind of set up for failure. It seems like their families don’t support their education but instead prefer that they stay home and do house work. After lunch, we went to visit Colegio de La Inmaculada. This school is approximately 1800 students and is in the district La Molina which is right next to the mountains. This school is different than others I have visited, why? Well, this school has a zoo. Yup, that’s right… A ZOO! This was interesting to see but I still am unsure as to their purpose of the zoo. The student that was touring us told us that the purpose was to save animals that are in danger, but that’s not so convincing for me. They took us up to see the water treatment plant that was built by students and the view from it was beautiful. After the tour of the school, we met the principal of the school and he gave us context about the school. Throughout his description, he made comments along the lines of “We’re not Roosevelt” and I thought it was interesting because although they are different schools, they are very similar. There seems to be a bit tension between the schools. What I liked about the school was the fact that they like to help the community, he described to us a day that a few children from a less wealthy neighborhood gets paired up with a student and they spend the day together. However, I ask myself, why only one day of the year? Why not make it once a month? Overall, this seemed like a school that has good interest for their students.
June 6th:
Today we started the day off by visiting a public school in la Victoria. Walking into this school, in comparison to other schools I have observed, was very different. We went into a 5-year-old classroom and it was absolutely amazing. These students first started greeting us with a song and that led into all of us splitting up into the tables and the children were given a piece of paper to draw. They weren’t instructed to draw anything specific, but most of the students chose to draw one of us older girls. After they completed their drawings, we headed out for a short recess and because the children were super energized, they decided to split them up. Half of us went with the boys and half with the girls. My half, with the boys, decided to play a game with them, can you guess what game? Nope, not tag. Guess again! We played Duck, Duck, Goose! Except because none of us knew how to say either of those animals in Spanish, we changed it to Dog, Dog, Cat or Perro, Perro, Gato. It was nice to interact with them, even if they never picked us older girls. After recess, they had lunch and we had a small tour. Gathering all the information that was given to us, I noticed that the school really emphasizes on being a community. After the school, we had seminar, and after seminar we went to a Pre-Columbian art museum, Larco Museum. It was interesting to see all the pieces of art from almost 3000 years back. After the museum, we called it a night and headed home.
I personally feel like “high quality education” is education that challenges students. I can’t help but connect education to challenge. To me, it’s important that teachers challenge their students. Sure, it’s obvious that there will be some students that need more challenging than others but as a teacher, you adjust the challenges so that each student is challenged on their own level. Also, critical thinking should be emphasized. It’s important, as I have mentioned in earlier blogs, that students think outside the box and ask questions that deepen their thinking. Students shouldn’t just have to answer, “Yes or No” questions but more so “Why do you think…” or “How would this have been different if you did…” Because students come from different cultures and background, it’s hard to say that high-quality education should be the same. It’s not going to be, but it’s important, as teachers, that we respond to the context of their identity and help that guide us into adjusting their learning. Although, it’s not the same for every student, it’s important to give each student the same opportunity to expand their growth. Personally, I don’t think socioeconomic status should play a role in high quality education. I believe it’s possible to be able to expand every child’s horizons no matter what socioeconomic class they come from.
Smiles,
Liz
