Bienvenidos!!

Welcome to our blog as we share about our special journey, sponsored by the wonderful folks at Fulbright. We will be visiting Mexico from June 9th to July 7th, 2012. Our group includes 7 practicing teachers, 7 undergraduates (soon-to-be teachers), and two teacher education faculty. Along with my brave bilingual scholar, Maria Zamudio, we will lead the group as we spend 4 weeks in south-central Mexico. We will be learning about the Mexican educational system along with important social, political, and historical issues in Mexico.

The majority of our time will be spent in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. All of the participants will be living with host families and taking Spanish language classes at CETLALIC, a spectacular language school in Cuernavaca. We will also be taking trips to the following cities: Taxco, Tepoztlan, Puebla, and Mexico City.

Visit our blog to stay up-to-date on our adventures and lessons learned! Enjoy!

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Feliz Cumpleanos!


Today we had classes as usual from 9-12 and then had cake for Katie and Roberto’s birthdays. ¡Feliz Cumpleaños!

 In the afternoon, we had the opportunity to go to another public elementary school called “Cuitláhuac”. We split up and observed for about 2 ½ hours. Rachel had the opportunity to observe second graders in both their regular classroom and in the computer lab. The students were absolutely enamored by the fact that we were from America and kept giving us gifts. Something to note about this class was that they hardly paid attention while the teacher was talking, and when she left the room they were running around the classroom and fighting and screaming. On the other hand, when we went to the computer lab, the students were very well behaved and worked pretty diligently. The computer lab had about 20 computers that were all IBM’s, older models, but still in very good condition.

Stephanie observed a second, fourth and fifth grade class. To my surprise, students in the fourth grade class were cleaning and organizing the room. Everyone seemed to have a job as the teacher spoke with various parents that entered the room. In the second grade classroom, all of the students were excited to have us in their classroom and gathered around us as we helped them with their class assignment.

  Later on, while observing a gym class the fifth graders were learning how to march because they will be carrying the flag during the sixth graders graduation ceremony next Thursday. The ceremony is a large celebration that will start at 2 pm and involve dancing and even students carrying real machetes. As our Fulbright group was gathering to leave, all the kids came to talk with us and asked us where we were from. They were so excited to take pictures with us and everyone wanted us to sign their notebooks as we were leaving out the gate. The last image we had of the students was waving goodbye to us and smiling as our bus pulled away.

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