In-Service Technical Training

May 17 – May 23

     I went to school on Monday only to find out there was no school because Monday was a festivo, which was fine with me, since I knew I’d be spending the rest of the week at training, anyway. Training was informative and a nice way to take a break from Colombian culture and being “on” all the time, while introducing our school counterparts to our “American with a dash of Colombian” culture. We talked about Peace Corps’ objectives and how to fix problems at our schools through communities of practice, as well as 21^st century skills (considered important for all students to be successful in work and life in the modern day), and how to teach using centers. We had some time to plan our own projects, too, which was productive – even if the project my counterpart and I planned doesn’t actually happen, at least she’ll have some new ideas for teaching “school” words in English for the future. The last day, we went over project-based learning and classroom management. The counterparts were done then and the volunteers stayed to discuss changes to our travel policy, which recently got a bit stricter and more confusing. And of course, the best part was just visiting and hanging out together – I’m so glad I got to see everyone and they’re all doing well.

- My Colombian church’s patron saint is María Auxiliadora, who is apparently a very common patron of churches around here. We celebrated her feast day on Saturday starting at 0500 with a procession, a Rosary, and Mass.

- Watching our counterparts’ reactions to the appearances and, especially, skin tones and ethnicities of some of our volunteers was fascinating and wonderful, knowing that we were expanding their idea of what an American looks like. Many of the counterparts seemed to come with the idea that Americans were White with different colors of hair and eyes. But our volunteers are of many backgrounds and some are even native Spanish speakers. My counterpart even whispered to me asking if one of our volunteers (who is bilingual and of Mexican heritage) was the principal of her school because she was so well spoken in Spanish. Peace Corps’ Goal 2 is to bring American culture to the people we serve, so it made me feel good to know that, just by existing, we’re expanding our counterparts’ ideas about who we are as a country and culture