Michael Hidalgo '08
Asociación Alianza Educativa
Bogotá, Colombia
Sometimes it’s difficult to believe that less than a year ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about skipping my 9:00 am biology lecture. Now my day starts at the break of dawn--5:30 give or take ten minutes--with the sound of my cell phone alarm. Within twenty minutes I leave my apartment built on the slope of a steep mountain that overlooks the enormous city below. After an hour long commute on a metro bus I enter work around 7:00 am ready to start class at the charter school where I have been teaching since September.
At Alianza Educativa, an organization founded by the city’s most elite university and private schools that run five charter schools in the poor southern sections of Bogota, I am one of two people who administer the English program. One of my primary responsibilities was to design the majority of the curriculum for grades 5-12th by reinforcing the teaching of grammar (which for years was inconsistently taught in the schools), writing, and test taking with the teachers. During the past few months I have been working on creating workbooks that include grammar lessons, exercises, and readings specific for each grade level which, when printed later this month, will let teachers know what material they should be teaching at each level.
It’s a good deal of responsibility. I chose what grammar the student’s will learn at each grade level and pick a large portion of their readings for English class. In addition, I meet with the 26 English teachers from the five schools once a week to improve their English and teaching skills, although I spend the majority of my time at one school in particular where I teach English to 7th and 12th graders and one ethics course in Spanish.
At the same time, as a teacher I am learning far more than I ever could have imagined. Since I started working with Alianza, I have been constantly perfecting my administrative capabilities, my preparation and planning skills, and my public speaking ability. This placement has not only been tremendously gratifying, but it has also helped me develop an invaluable set of skills that will serve me in my future endeavors.
This unique job has also given me the opportunity to see a side of this city rarely visited by outsiders. El Tiempo, the national newspaper, recently brought attention to the fact that the expanse of cinder block homes, pool halls, and furniture shops 100 yards down street from the school is the neighborhood with the most homicides in the capital.
Nevertheless, in this same neighborhood one can find a well maintained tourist information center--the only one of its kind in the capital. I pass by the module twice a day and in eight months have not once seen a tourist use it. Apparently that’s not why it’s there. The information center, like the equally pristine school down the street where I work, are symbolic of the pride Bogotanos take in their city and, more importantly, their eternal optimism that the future will be far better than the past.
These two values--pride and optimism--are what best describe the attitude in the schools administered by Alianza Educativa. They are what make them extraordinary among schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods and my placement particularly rewarding. Their consistent optimism is no easy accomplishment in a country that is often reminded of its violent past. The school where I teach, Jaime Garzon, was named after a popular comedian and satirist who was murdered by paramilitary forces less than a decade ago, and just last week, the father of one of my 12th grade students was killed while eating bread in a bakery.
Yet despite the numerous hardships these students face, everyone, from the custodian who comes in on Saturdays to make sure the grounds are spotless, to the principal who seems to know the name of every one of the 1250 students at the school, is committed to making Alianza’s motto a reality: academic excellence for a better quality of life.