On Saturday, June 5, the Summer in Ecuador Program celebrated its ninth anniversary as students left to teach English in a foreign country.
The program is part of exploring diversity in education. Although some English is taught, students also teach some regular content depending on the requests of the schools.
Magdalena Herdoiza-Estévez, director of graduate studies, was in charge of the trip. She said the program involves three major components.
“The one is teaching abroad, the second one is inquiry and the third is service learning,” Herdoiza-Estévez said.
Prior to the trip, there were eight seminar workshops which covered not only the logistics of the trip, such as safety measures and packing lists but also the components. While the first part was planning for teaching, the second included preparation for the inquiry.
“Each student has the possibility of choosing a topic, and I give them the methodological support so that when they land there they have everything they need to go,” Herdoiza-Estévez said.
The students had to also plan for the service learning. Herdoiza-Estévez said the students take the learning and apply it into the indigenous communities. The program can be counted as class credit or as an elective.
“For undergraduate elementary education, they can take it as a cognate for the diversity class,” Herdoiza-Estévez said. “For the graduate students who are in the English as a New Language licensing program, this can be their clinical work.”
The program is also open to other degrees, not just education. Herdoiza-Estévez said, in the past, there have been students from communications, business, Spanish and sociology.
While in Ecuador, students stayed in the capital, Quito, with host families. Erik Naville, communications advertising junior, was one of the students who went to Ecuador.
“We got to experience not only the Spanish culture in Quito, but we went to the highlands, the rainforest and we got to visit with the more indigenous people,” Naville said. “You kind of get a feeling for how it was before the Spanish got there like as far as the culture.”
During the first two weeks, the students taught at different schools every day. In the afternoon and weekends, however, they would tour the country and spend time with the community.
Some of the places they visited included museums, the market and the rainforest.
“We went to the rainforest for the first time because in the past we have been going to the cloud forest,” Herdoiza-Estévez said. “It was absolutely remarkable.”
Students were also required to do research projects during their trip. Bridget Maurer, elementary education senior, said she compared how students are assessed in the United States and Ecuador.
“We typically depend on the standardized tests, and then I kind of looked at how they, as a whole and on a larger scale, assess their students,” Maurer said. “From what I learned they don’t do standardized tests at all which takes a lot of the pressure off.”
Naville said he did his project based on his major, which involved advertising and analyzing the differences there.
“They aren’t allowed to advertise at all for any type of cigarettes,” Naville said. “We can’t have it on TV, but they’re not allowed to have it at all. The president also had a weekly chat with the country through broadcast.”
Herdoiza-Estévez said she enjoyed the group this year because they worked well together.
“It’s what I call what education should be about,” Herdoiza-Estévez said. “Education shouldn’t be a pain, it should be a joyful journey where you take a lot from the input that you gain, you have a professor who helps you process that input and you have fun with it.”
Maurer said she was able to hone her professional skills and gained the experience of knowing how to teach students who don’t speak English.
“Just kind of knowing how those students feel and working with them, being patient, I think that was really the biggest lesson for me,” Maurer said.
Herdoiza-Estévez said although the program can be unsettling, students should take part in the experience.
“It can be uncomfortable for some students for example who have not traveled before or who are not education majors,” Herdoiza-Estévez said. “Take that risk, take that step and you will never regret it.”
By CLAIRE MUNN
Features Editor
clamunn@umail.iu.edu