Have you ever heard of the Kronosaurus? No? Perfect, because this entire post is going to be about that huge, 18 meter long pliosaur (what sciency people call water dinosaurs) that was named after the Greek titan Kronos. Just kidding. Unfortunately, this post is actually about a trip we took to the home of the second most complete Kronosaurus fossil in the entire world, Villa de Leyva.
This is another research update because I spent the last week in Tunja, co-teaching with the English teacher! During my first visit, I noticed right away that “somos un equipo” – we are a team – and that meant that I would not be allowed to simply be an outside observer. Students and teachers alike drew me into conversations and activities in nearly every classroom. Inspired by this ethos, I asked the English teacher if she would be open to collaborating on a project together…
At the time of the revolution, 2 or 3 percent of the population could read. In a changing world that stat was not acceptable. Education was increasingly seen as a fundamental human right and, perhaps more importantly, it was more and more clear that thriving economies needed more educated workers, engineers, doctors, scientists, bureaucrats, and even generals.
Have you ever heard of the Kronosaurus? No? Perfect, because this entire post is going to be about that huge, 18 meter long pliosaur (what sciency people call water dinosaurs) that was named after the Greek titan Kronos. Just kidding. Unfortunately, this post is actually about a trip we took to the home of the second most complete Kronosaurus fossil in the entire world, Villa de Leyva.
This is another research update because I spent the last week in Tunja, co-teaching with the English teacher! During my first visit, I noticed right away that “somos un equipo” – we are a team – and that meant that I would not be allowed to simply be an outside observer. Students and teachers alike drew me into conversations and activities in nearly every classroom. Inspired by this ethos, I asked the English teacher if she would be open to collaborating on a project together…
At the time of the revolution, 2 or 3 percent of the population could read. In a changing world that stat was not acceptable. Education was increasingly seen as a fundamental human right and, perhaps more importantly, it was more and more clear that thriving economies needed more educated workers, engineers, doctors, scientists, bureaucrats, and even generals.
And, more importantly, I think that Núñez managed to capture an essential piece of the Colombian spirit. Though written more than a century ago, el Himno Nacional de la República de Colombia is a mixture of historical despair and tempered optimism that still defines the thoughts and feelings of many Colombian that I have met. The notion of themselves as a people full of life and happiness coexists, and perhaps sustains, scathing critiques of government abuses and clear-eyed assessments of narcotraficante power.
Last week I left Abbey in Bogotá, traveled a few hours away to the city of Tunja, and did my first observations at a school that uses the Escuela Nueva model. After a month of reading and preparing, I was excited to finally be entering a school. That’s what I came here to do! Of course, I was also feeling really nervous. I’ve visited around two dozen schools in the US, mostly out of pure curiosity and usually on my own. But this time everything would be in Spanish! And we are still in the middle of a pandemic.
I am not a man, I am a people! Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the man who embodied the hopes of so many Colombians, was shot dead on his way to lunch on April 9, 1948. The community that Gaitán represented died with him, unraveling, fragmenting, and descending into La Violencia. Riots started immediately in Bogotá and lasted into the night, resulting in as many as 3000 deaths and widespread property destruction that forever altered the development of the city.
Have you ever lived in a place and never done any of the super touristy things? For us, it’s easy to settle into a rhythm, thinking that there is plenty of time to see what a place has to offer, and then realize too late that you missed out on some cool things. Of the top 10 things to do in Sacramento, our previous home, we only did 3 of them. The numbers are similar for San Jose, where we lived for three years!
Independence from the Spanish Empire did not, unfortunately, wipe away centuries of oppression. Colonial hierarchies remained firmly entrenched in people’s minds and material conditions. As one French diplomat observed, 1840s Colombia was a “republic where every man calls ‘master’ any individual whiter or better dressed than himself”
Everywhere we look we are met with beautiful vistas of sky, mountains, and city. It’s hard not to be charmed by that after a while. The people are also extremely helpful, from the person that yelled out of a car when I didn’t see that I had dropped my wallet to the women who have helped Abbey navigate the bus system to the market vendors who offered us free samples of interesting fruits. In Bogotá, being “reserved” or “distant” doesn’t imply being unfriendly or unkind, which is something I think (hope) is true of me as well!
By the time of his death in 1830, Simón Bolívar had traveled over 75,000 miles on his feet or on the back of a horse. He had crisscrossed South America many times over in a dizzying number of campaigns, persevering though defeat, exile, and the loss of his vast inheritance in order to help liberate a continent…
… home to a bold statue of an indigenous woman running with one hand holding an axe low and close to her waist as the other defiantly shoots into the sky to display the severed head of a Spanish nobleman. The artist has managed to capture the woman’s fluid bodily motion that surges up to her face crying out for liberation.
Three mountain ranges stretch across Colombia’s geography, history, and culture. “In the beginning there were mountains,” writes David Bushnell, marking the cordilleras as prime movers through which rivers, life, and imaginations flow. They are the backdrop and the fountain, giving rise to stunning biodiversity adapted to Andean peaks and to all of the gradients that fade into
So what exactly am I going to Bogotá to do? Well, the tentative plan is to learn from Colombian educators, refine my Spanish skills, and eat a bunch of arepas. The inquiry project that I outlined in my application involved working with an innovative non-profit called Fundación Escuela Nueva (FEN) in order to learn from their decades of experience cultivating flexible, student-centered learning spaces.
I won a Fulbright fellowship! Sometime in late 2019, Abbey encouraged me to apply to the Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching Research Program, which allows US teachers to spend 3-6 months conducting educational research in another country. I didn’t think that I had much of a chance but Abbey has that special teacher skill of making others think they can accomplish difficult things.