Thanksgiving

My Thanksgiving this year was hardly traditional. I spent the morning and afternoon visiting a local private school with my mentor from IPA. This was the first time I stepped foot inside a private institution since arriving in Uruguay to work in the public education system. The difference was quite noticeable, even though many of the same teachers work in the both the public and private sector. I'm not sure whether to attribute this to management, funding, student background, or support. Clearly, Crandon, the school I visited, is getting it right.


I took advantage of my visit on Thursday to teach the students about Thanksgiving in the United States. I talked about the history, the idea of giving thanks, the time spent with family, the American football, and of course the turkey. But turkey is next to impossible to find in Uruguay! Nobody likes it! I was worried about celebrating Thanksgiving without a big fat juicy turkey, but then my problem was solved.


A friend of a friend us over to his house for big Thanksgiving feast that he spent two days preparing. And it showed. His food was delcious. And not to mention the view from his apartment was spectacular. People are very generous and caring here.

I am very thankful for my time spent in Uruguay and for the many great friends I have made.

English Symposium

I'm so proud of everyone who made our English Symposium: Students' Voices a great success!


One project I developed as an ETA was to create a space for my students at IPA to share their academic research with a larger audience. I was concerned that students did not have an outlet for their voices to be heard outside of the classroom, so therefore I got the English Department on board, and started organizing a culminating event. After months of planning and organizing, the symposium commenced in the last Friday in October. There were individual and group presentations by students and special guest speakers, a round table discussion, lunch social, book fair, and poster session. The day was exciting and thought provoking.


I am so proud of the hard work of everyone involved. A special thank you goes out to IPA students, IPA professors, guest speakers, the Uruguayan Fulbright office, my mentors, and the Department of Foreign Languages. Thank you to all of those who presented, attended, and contributed in any way to the event. YOU are the reason the first English Symposium was such a success!


And follow-up good news. There will be a journal publication coming out from the symposium that has been sent to the press and is in print.

Camp for High School Students

Earlier this week I helped at a camp in Carmelo for students who attend Liceo Jubilar. Liceo Jubilar is the high school that I visited last week in a neighborhood where the poverty was almost unimaginable. The school is doing admirable developmental work in the community.


The students at the camp were amazing. They know they have many challenges to face in order to meet their life-goals, but they were very open and willing to talk about their situations. Their realities are very different than any group I've worked with before (at camps or in the classroom).


My heart goes out to them. I want to see them overcome their circumstances. While everything might seem against them, they still have the potential to be profoundly successful. When I look at these students I see great potential. They can do anything they set their mind to. They just need the love, encouragement, and education that all children should be afforded.


At the camp, another Fulbrighter and I taught the students about the human values in the US Constitution and about American music. In the photo you can see the students learning how to swing dance.


I also taught them how to dance some hip hop (because I'm clearly an expert on the subject from the semester of Street Jam classes I took at my university's rec center last year, cough, cough). Awkward dancing aside, camp turned out to be quite a bit of fun!

Poverty Revisited

In my last post I left you with a question. What can we do to eradicate poverty in the third world? I think about this a lot. To be honest, I don't know. And I'm not sure anyone knows.

However, my thinking almost always circles back to the same solution. Education. Erasing poverty begins with quality education. Education gives people the tools they need to succeed in every area of life. If we want children to live better lives, we need to teach them how to do so. Some situations seem impossible to change, but education is bigger than circumstances. Education is bigger than crushing poverty.

Humanitarian aid, government programs, economic policy, international relief funds, and other oft cited "ways to reduce poverty" are all chipping away at the problem, but only education can internalize the results. Education empowers.

Do you agree? How do we solve the problem of poverty in third world nations? Is education the answer?

And however you answer, what does it imply for those of us who want to be part of the solution?

School Blog

I'm blogging at yet another location.


Check out the blog I've been working on for my school by clicking here or going to http://escuela1salto.blogspot.com

Be forewarned however; you shall see a bunch of photos of some really adorable children.


The blog is intended to be a repository for the students to review many of lessons we have done throughout the year, and of course, to see all those photos I've been snapping of them every week. I wanted to have it finished by the time I left Salto, but unfortunately I don't see that happening at this point.


I don't even want to think about leaving my school. I will miss both the teachers and the students very much.

One Laptop Per Child

In searching for materials (to help expand the English teacher's vocabulary in adjectives), I was surprized to find this Amazon ad in Time magazine. I took one look at the ad and said, hey! those laptops look awfully familiar. They're the same ones that the students at my school use--the XO.


Apparently in 2007, Uruguay was the first country to place an official order for child-friendly laptops from the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative:

[OLPC] has a simple mission: to create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each and every one with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.

Sounds like a walk in the park. But not all may be as rosy as it seems. This article has much to say on the topic. Among other serious problems, one powerful corporation is putting their weight against the internet provider contracted by the OLPC, Ceibal.

A major challenge for Ceibal, among several: the national telco monopoly, ANTEL, is not overly enthusiastic about free wireless internet. That is an understatement. Who will ANTEL get to pay their rates (4 times higher than in the US at 1/4 the GDP, thus 16 times more expensive than here!) when by using your kid's XO you get access for free?

Hurdle after hurdle the laptop program must face, but Uruguay is well on the way to achieving its goal of a laptop for every schoolchild in the nation. They only have Montevideo left to furnish with XOs.


Personally, I think the goal of laptop for every child is great. Even though the computers run extremely slow and teachers complain that the kids only want to use them to play games and download videos, I still think they have a lot of potential. Children have to learn to use the internet to be successful in today's world. Those without computer access are at a severe disadvantage compared to their peers in other countries. There is no way to escape the fact that technology has become a cornerstone of modern civilization, and children who do not have the opportunity to become versed in technology are missing a vital part of the education they need to be successful.

Salto Grande

I went on a field trip yesterday with the sixth graders at my school. We went to Salto Grande, the dam shared by Argentina and Uruguay on the Rio Uruguay.

Next week I am going to give a presentation on the Hoover Dam in the United States so the students can work on using English comparatives and superlatives to describe the differences between the two dams. Hopefully they will be able to say things like: The Hoover Dam is bigger. The Salto Grande is prettier. The Hoover Dam is the largest. Salto Grande is the newest (or whatever adjective + er or + est).


I was probably just about as excited as the 6th graders to go on a field trip. Dams are impressive displays of human engineering to be able to harness the power of nature.

José Pedro Varela

The other national hero of Uruguay is José Pedro Varela. He is famous for his contribution to the education system.

In my school there are two very large paintings in the cafeteria; one of Artigas and the other of Varela. These two men are the most praised in all the country.

Discourse Analysis

Today was my first day teaching a Thursday morning class which just happens to be, get this, discourse analysis. Yay! Discourse analysis you ask? Isn't that just rhetoric by a different name? Why yes, yes it is. Imagine that; I get to teach the students at the Centro Regional de Profesores (CERP) what I love. It's so exciting. Officially the course is entitled linguistics, but there is a large component that involves the analysis of texts. Today we talked about what makes a text a text and I passed around several examples and had them defend whether or not they though the materials were pieces of discourse.

Whoo. I just thought I share some of joy with all of you. Hoorah for studying discourse. I can only wait until next Thursday...

My First Day of Elementary School

One of our assignments while here is to work 3 days a week with teachers in a primary school on English instruction. My school, Escuela Numero Uno, is wonderful. The students had a special welcoming ceremony for me where they sang songs and read poetry in English. It was so special.


I can't walk down the hallway without 17 students yelling my name and running up to give me hugs and kisses. The kids are so adorable. I want to take them home with me. Watch out: I may end up coming home with 250+ kids.