The excuse is that I was 1) co-leading a workshop in Argentina, and 2) visiting family in the states…
I was presented with the opportunity to lead a workshop for teachers in Argentina, along with my host here, Nir. The short version of the story is that the curriculum that was developed by Nir’s research group in Hebrew was translated to Spanish recently. UNESCO became involved, and sponsors these workshops in South America to introduce the Blue Planet curriculum to a broader audience of teachers outside of Israel. This was the 3rd workshop of its kind (one was in Chile, and another was in a different region of Argentina). This one was held in the Chaco region (near the border with Paraguay). After a great deal of preparation (including translating the entire 250 something pages to English so I could work with it, and to make it even more accessible to more teachers!), we were off to Argentina. After nearly 24 hours of travel, we finally arrived in Chaco. I’ll spare you the unexciting details of travel drama, including strikes, customs, and assorted delays…
The idea behind the workshop was not only to introduce this great curriculum to teachers who could potentially use it with their own students in their country, but also to share a bit about our method of teaching (student-centered, inquiry-based activities, field trips playing a central role, coherent storylines, developing scientific thinking skills, etc.). We went several days before the start of the workshop in order to plan the field trip that we would be taking the teachers on. This involved a great deal of travel around the region to see what was around, and how we could weave some story that included relevant issues for the people of Chaco (I should note that the curriculum centers around the topic of water, water resources, contamination, etc.). After about 2 full days of meeting with experts, scientists, and just looking around the area (thank you, Linda, for driving us all over the place!!!), we had a fantastic 5 hour field trip planned. It included 7-8 stations (field trip stops) and a great story about how water plays an important role in this area of Argentina in regard to flooding, drought, sanitation, and the human impact on these aspects.
Nir and I then worked for many hours to write this down into a student/teacher friendly worksheet format.
And THEN the workshop began 🙂 . Monday morning, about 50 teachers arrive on the scene (~35 from all over Argentina, and ~15 from Uruguay).Long story short, the workshop was FANTASTIC! It was really an amazing experience for me to meet such wonderful teachers from all over the place, who all have a passion to improve their teaching, learn new methods and practices, and discover how to bring their own students outdoors in an educationally useful way. As Nir likes to point out, this was a “workshop not a talkshop.” So we had the teachers working on their own in small groups (just as we’d like students to do for optimal learning environments), with activities and materials to support their learning. The teachers acted as the students, but we included discussions to reflect on what it was like to learn in this different way. This is a pretty novel practice for teachers in South America, and I think they were really excited about it!
After the first 1.5 days, teachers were prepared for the field trip, which we took Tuesday afternoon. See photos below for some of the action. We were all pretty exhausted by the end, but in a good way.
The rest of the workshop involved more of the same, and by the feedback session and closing on Friday, I think we were all feeling so warm and fuzzy I never wanted it to end. I made some great friends (yay Facebook!) and some wonderful professional contacts (UNESCO!) and overall such a fantastic experience all around.
(Note, when I returned home, I received an email from UNESCO-Uruguay. They want us to come back next year to lead a workshop in Uruguay!!! I call that success! Hopefully all the details will get worked out and it will become a reality!)
There’s so much more to say about this trip, but we’ll leave it at that, and I’ll get some more photos posted on our Flickr site, so stay tuned for that…
While it was sad to leave Chaco, I had major plans for the next stop. The US for the first time in over a year! This coincided nicely with Thanksgiving, so I got to spend 2 amazing weeks with my sister’s family, and our parents in New York City. So after a 12 hour bus ride (it was actually very luxurious, complete with champagne, free meals, internet, and my own TV), and a 13 hour plane ride, I arrived in NYC, exhausted, but so happy!
This is the little face of my niece, Ruby, who I got to wake up to every morning of those two weeks.
Cute overload! I love this little girl like there’s no tomorrow. We really got to bond during my time as the live-in-sister, and it was just the best. We enjoyed visiting many parks, botanical gardens, and children’s museums together, and it was awesome to hang out with my sister and her husband for such an extended period of time. Ruby is quite a reader, and she knows a few important words like “ball” and “star.” She’s brilliant!!! No exaggeration. Here’s the little family:
The parental unit came in for Thanksgiving …
… and we had a lovely holiday with my brother-in-law’s family in New Jersey. Lots of good food and good company!
Okay fine, I will add more photos of the cute babe-aloo…
And then sadly, it was time to leave. We had a lovely last afternoon with a walk through the park, a beautiful sunset, and some pizza 🙂 This is my awesome sister, Jess (aka Frank, etc.).
Then I flew BACK to Argentina (don’t ask), and then to Israel. After a good 36 hours of traveling, including a cab ride, a 13 hour flight, another 13 hour flight, and a train, I was back in Rehovot, and greeted by Thomas!
What have we been up to since I got home? Don’t fret, it’s coming in the next blog post… but as a preview to whet your appetite, it include meat cake, sufganiyot, homemade ice cream, and a surprise Chanukah trip to Jerusalem. I guess it will be a food post… more later!