Distance learning: Teachers from Ecuador visit Northaven Elementary

Clark County

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Alicia Davila, a teacher from Ecuador, sits in with an English as a Second Language Teacher from Northaven Elementary School, Kelli Dehr, on Monday. Three teachers from Ecuador observed classes at the school after Dehr spent a year with them. Staff photo by Jerod Clapp

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August 28, 2012

Distance learning: Teachers from Ecuador visit Northaven Elementary

By JEROD CLAPP jerod.clapp@newsandtribune.com The News and Tribune Tue Aug 28, 2012, 04:56 AM EDT

JEFFERSONVILLE — Though nearly 3,000 miles separates them, four educators closed the distance to see what they had to learn from each other.

Three teachers from different schools in Ecuador spent the day at Northaven Elementary School with a teacher who spent a year with them.

Kelli Dehr, one of the school’s English as a Second Language teachers, showed Alicia Davila, Margarita Bustillos and Johanna Ramirez how she approaches teaching language to children after watching them. Dehr said last year, she took a leave of absence from teaching at W.E. Wilson Elementary to work on her ESL license abroad. She said going overseas seemed like a critical piece of understanding where her future students might come from.

“It’s such a large and open place and the teaching environment is different,” Dehr said. “It was important for me to go and understand maybe a little bit what our students are going through, to understand that displacement.”

Dehr had gone to Ecuador in 2007 as part of Indiana University Southeast’s Summer in Ecuador program. She said getting the culture immersion along with more familiarity with Spanish was a big advantage for her.

“In a different culture, I think it’s impossible to understand that students come from different backgrounds,” Dehr said. “I like to stay in my own kind of bubble as a teacher, so it really forces me to think outside of that box.”

Magdalena Herdoiza Estevez, professor of international studies at IU Southeast, said an important piece of teaching or learning any language is understanding what is behind it.

“It goes beyond the language barrier,” Herdoiza Estevez said. “It’s about culture. If you don’t see a lot of difference in the students, you can see a difference in the way the schools are run.”

Bustillos, a teacher at Quitumbe — a public school in Ecuador — said the structure at the schools she’s visited in the United States differs from those in Ecuador in some ways, but there are also similarities. For example, she said rather than students changing classes, the teachers are the ones who pack up and move from room to room. She said the way students do it amazed her.

“The discipline is so perfect,” Bustillos said. “When class is finished, they know where to go. It’s perfect order.”

But she also said the economic differences are apparent. While many classrooms she saw on her visit are filled with colorful posters and other materials, she said teachers in Ecuador often have to come up with their own. However, she said that’s not such a bad thing, given the price of those materials. But she also said students get something out of the creativity.

“Sometimes, the students are shocked when you ask them to bring in a sock,” Bustillos said. “But when you make a puppet with it, they get their own eyes and mouths. The students enjoy making their own materials.”

Davila, a teacher at America Latina in Ecuador, said something she saw at New Albany High School that caught her attention was students using daily planners. She said the amount of information available in them and the ability to keep track of assignments was something she never really thought of before.

“It has everything you could imagine in it,” Davila said. “It was amazing.”

She also said she wants more technology in her classroom after seeing so much of it in her visit to the United States.

Dehr said in her travels back and forth to Ecuador, she’s been able to watch the changes the schools have made with the addition of technology.

“This is a school that, five years ago, didn’t have lights in their classroom,” Dehr said. “Now, they have a computer lab because IUS donated it.”

But one big similarity all the teachers talked about was how children act in schools.

“I was expecting something different, but children are the same all over,” Davila said. “There’s no difference in them from here to Ecuador.”