Please don't lecture me

I'm typing this live from the Fulbright Commission office in Colombia. Today the weather is much better than yesterday, but here we are indoors watcing a PowerPoint presentation about the educational system in Colombia. Oh, well, la vida es así.

The current presentation reminds me of leadership professional development in Dallas ISD. A nice, young woman is showing us lots of charts with arrows that go around in circles connecting standards to assessments to improvement plans and so on.

What I would really like to be doing right now is reading What the Moon Saw by Laura Resau. This is a book for young adults that I started reading in hopes of including it in my reading curriculum next year. Unfortunately, it is at a level of English that is a little too high for my students, and it isn't available in Spanish. The books tells the story of fictional middle-schooler Luna Clara who leaves her home in Maryland to visit her grandparents in an indigenous village near Oaxaca, Mexico. The author does a great job of contrasting the differences between life in the United States and life in rural Mexico. It is a wonderful book that I highly recommend.

Someone from the U.S. Embassy is talking to us now. Taking advantage of this time and high-speed Internet, I just ordered online an educator's packet from the Youth for Human Rights organization. I am hoping to slip some of this curriculum into my classroom next year. If you are a teacher, check it out here. To receive the free curriculum materials, you must agree to provide proof (videos, photos, etc.) that you are actually using it in your classroom.

Another thing I plan to implement in my classroom next year is the Storyline method of teaching. A fellow Fulbright participant, Sarah, uses it in her classroom. She provided us with a short professional development session the other day. Basically, she organizes her curriculum through a fictional story. She introduces the story to the students who then create the characters and concepts through writing and art. It is hard to explain and will probably be hard to implement without much training, but I think it will increase engagement of my students. I can't wait to give it a try.

Now they are telling us about the English Language Fellow program at Georgetown University. Through this program, U.S. citizens can travel to Central and South American to work as paid English teachers. I would love to apply for this program, but it looks like it requires a master's degree. I really have to go back to school.

Despite the aloof tone of this post, I did hear some interesting information during this morning's lectures. I just chose not to bore you with the details. Please thank me by liking this post.

Now we're off to enjoy coffee and snacks!

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