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Dear friends and family,

Ok, you were all right - a blog is a better way to keep in touch. To those who kept up with my previous blog during my first tour in Ecuador, the link still works, but I haven´t updated it. Come here for news.

For a first entry, I´m posting the initial email I sent to all of you in early November as a reminder of what I´m doing (it´s a little unorthodox - I forgive you if you forgot). I´ll follow this with another post to give updates. From November:

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In the last few weeks, I´ve gotten enough emails saying, ´´Hey, I´ll be in Chicago soon - can we get together?´´ to make me think I haven´t properly informed most of you about my current job and recent move. So, time for a catch-up.

I lost my job in July due to State budget cuts that eliminated my position (and half of the funding for social services in Illinois, which thankfully is now almost completely restored). Less than a week later I found out that the bilingual school where I taught while in Ecuador had lost the head of their English Dept. After a few international phone calls, I packed my bags and headed to Guayaquil.

On September 28 I flew down to Ecuador with Jake, my boyfriend of a year, and have spent the last month absorbing and producing as much as possible with LOTS left to do (exciting!). Our school year ends in February, but I will likely stay in Ecuador through the winter vacation and continue at Mundo until July 2010.

And, dear friends and family, please continue to share your lives with me while I´m away. Homesickness is an ugly foe and getting updates from you softens its force, helping me to be more present both here and there. You may deem your life ´´boring´´ next to my ´´adventures´´ in Ecuador – I label your world familiar, inviting, and, most importantly, yours. I want to participate in it as much as possible. Write! About yourself! Please!

Lastly, thanks to all of you for your endless support that energizes me enough to do things (like move to Ecuador with little notice) that push me to think and grow. Every one of you had a hand in forming who I am, and I´m grateful to you.

Below I´m including a little more depth on what I´m doing here. More to come soon, including the requisite, ´´You won´t believe this crazy thing that happened to me in South America´´ stories. Peace be with you!

Un abrazo,
Chris

P.S: If I forgot anyone you know who would like to receive messages from me, please let me know.



My job. I supervise 16 teachers in Language, Business, Psychology, History, and Computer science in grades 7-12. The school, Unidad Educativa Bilingue Nuevo Mundo (or ´´Mundo´´ in all subsequent emails because the name is painfully long), just applied for and received International Baccalaureate certification, but they need some help getting curriculum and instruction up to snuff. Thus, a major part of my job is to train teachers to move beyond Remembering and Explaining questions into ones that ask students to Apply, Evaluate, and Create (any teachers out there have a background in Bloom´s Taxonomy? I´ll need ideas!). Day to day, this means I spend my time advising teachers, editing English classroom materials, observing and evaluating faculty, and somehow designing a curriculum workshop for teachers in whatever free time is left.

But Chris, you may be saying, didn´t you study Spanish and Peace Studies? Don´t you have absolutely no training in Education and only a few months of practical experience? What the hell were they thinking when they hired you?!

I agree! What nonsense! I equally doubted their good judgment (and thus my own, for accepting a job I wasn´t sure I could handle). Now that I´m here, I see (a bit) more clearly why they asked me to come. Education in Ecuador and many countries, including some schools in the US, is typically based on rote memorization and regurgitation. At best, this lets students skate by without thinking. At worst, it´s just plain boring. Sadly, ´´regurgitation tests´´ are oh-so-easy to grade that many teachers gravitate towards them. They´re also the kinds of lessons that most of our Ecuadorian-educated teachers grew up with, and asking them to teach the students to think critically is simply a non-concept. It´s not that they don´t want to try (well, some of them don´t) - it´s that they were never taught what ´´Compare and contrast...´´ and ´´Evaluate the validity of...´´ mean.

But, educated by parents and teachers who just loved Socratic questioning, I understand this by experience in a way that most teachers here don´t. My job, then, is to reflect on, read about, and analyze the pedagogy I´ve benefitted from and train others to use it as well. So yes, I´m in a little over my head, and certainly over my training. And I love it. What a challenge!

Thanks for your interest in my world. Please share yours, too.

(Note for educators: As your reading this, if you think of any books that would help me do my job better, please send recommendations. Thank you!)