Author Archives: bgilgoff

Time Out Review

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I’m back from a year away with no plans to change back the name of my blog.  I’ve decided that I like the idea of keeping it as a Time Out space, a chance to step away and review what is happening around me as I head back into the classroom. I’ve had a three and a half year hiatus, a chance to learned so much about technology, learning, teaching and myself.  I’ve been traveling extensively, volunteering abroad, learning a new language and just prior to that, working in the teacher education arena for three years.  My goal now is to really put what I’ve been learning and “preaching”  into practice, particularly the reflective practice part here on this Time Out blog.    I’m truly pumped about the chance to gently remodel my own teaching in ways that I’ve watched so many brilliant, fascinating, energetic teachers do over the past few years.

From Kathy Cassidy at http://bit.ly/aaW4qk

From Kathy Cassidy at http://bit.ly/aaW4qk

To start, I’ve accepted a position in a classroom with a mounted Smartboard.  Today I received an email from one of my former adult students about his upcoming research into the pedagogy behind the use of such technology.  He wonders if they all about bells and whistles or is there really a benefit to pedagogic practice?  From my conversation with him I’ve taken on a challenge to myself:  How can I effectively use the Smartboard in a way that is learner-centered, in a manner that isn’t simply about the teacher transmitting information?

Personally I believe that there is a huge value to the use of the interactive white board. Initially the motivation and engagement of the students alone is worthwhile, but clearly the novelty wears off quickly, particularly if students are simply watching the teacher “play” with the “toy.” To be useful over any length of time, the tool needs to be a tool for the students to use.  To this point, working always with adult learners, I’ve almost never touched the Smartboard myself.  When I would visit classrooms where I offered to demonstrate the IWB’s use for the teacher, I always attempted to do the whole lesson without ever touching the board myself. Usually, other than sorting out initial glitches in the connection I could manage.  However, on one-off situations such as that, always a novelty, my hand’s off approach was easy to do. So the question will be, can I really teach with a Smartboard as a tool for the students over the course of the school year?

I’ll keep you posted.

Caught in a great divide

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I have just watched Kevin Honeycut’s beautifully done video.


(I would like to thank my colleague and mentor Dave Truss for bringing it to my attention.)

This is the world I’m from, where our children are rarely seen without their ipods or cell phones. Our world is wired and connected. Our schools need to get with it and our teachers need to be curious, to be keen learners themselves and to keep up. I agree with the message in the video and in fact, the last few years of my career have been about exactly that, helping to educate teachers who are eager to learn.

But now I’m here living temporarily in Akumal, Mexico in a very different world. Yes, the people, though mostly not the children, still have cell phones. There is a layer of a wired world around me, particularly the tourists and the businesses. But the connectedness has not permeated the culture and certainly not the school.

The public schools in the pueblo here are behind gates and, unlike the perhaps beautiful, but certainly ostentatious resort hotels up and down the highway in either direction from Akumal, those that many of us Canadians have come to know intimately, the schools here are not pretty places. I am fairly certain that they don’t have internet at all. Many of the students struggle just with the requirement that they buy their own paper and pencils.  When they can’t afford to attend they simply stop showing up. At the age when our children at home are choosing their grade school courses, many of the teenagers in Akumal are too often beginning to look for work.  Staying in school here is not an easy option.

I’ve been to the Kindergarten or “kinder”. Kindergarten in the state of Quintana Roo is compulsory from age 3 to age 5 but attendance is not enforced. In the local public school here the pueblo of Akumal there are three classrooms, one for three year olds, one for four year olds and one for five year olds. The last time I attended there were 26 children present in the five year old class which is the largest group, about 12 of those students were girls, all with one teacher. There are no aides or special needs workers. There are more children than books. Supplies are very limited. There are certainly not computers, but then this is kinder.

So I struggle with one foot in my world from home that I watch only virtually and the other in this real world here where the children are truly struggling to learn in a more conventional manner, in a world where they are surrounded by so much but yet have so little themselves. And I wonder how does technology fit here? How would it change the learning? How might it help the teachers? Could it help to bridge the gap between the very, very rich and the very, very poor?

Waves of Change

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This morning the ocean is quiet.Waves

Most mornings the waves pound in on the rocks here where my family and I have temporarily relocated in Akumal, Mexico. Most mornings the waves are a steady reminder to me of their power and their continuity.  As each wave rolls in so close that I can almost feel it crashing on to the shore, it brings a cool relief from the heat, from the relentless humidity and from the mosquitoes that fill the jungle only just across the road. Each wave makes this a beautiful place to be. And wave after wave, each one loud and thundering, demands that I pay attention.

I love the waves but at the same time I am frightened and awed by them;  And in the same way,  I marvel at the power and force of the continuous waves of change in our world though they too command my respect.  The change has let me do so much.  Yet,  have I done enough? Do I keep up? Do I know enough? Am I outdated? Is it all moving too fast? Am I being carried by the current in directions I don’t want to go? Can I see where these waves are taking me?

This morning’s calm is providing me a pause in the urgency in the same way that this time-out year, this space away from the rapid waves of change in our society, is giving me time to think.

Our time in Spain before this was a transition and a true break in the waves, but now here in Mexico as our trip away wears on, the waves are starting up again as surely as the waves in the ocean will pick up as this day too wears on. It won’t stay calm.  All around me I’m seeing the impact of change. Being Canadian, coming here to Mexico I am often aware that I am riding high on the waves. I’m in a very privileged spot.  I should have a clear view. But the time spent here is starting to let me see the lows as well as the highs.   Change here has a power and force all its own. It has a current that we can’t control.  Change brings money and tourists but at the same time it brings poverty and an odd twist in the state of happiness. The change that put this beautiful place here for me to stay and enjoy meant others were moved off to make room for me.

Akumal, Mexico is a beautiful tourist “town.”  There are two gorgeous sandy beaches within a short walking distance of our rented ocean side property.  One of the beaches has a strip of condos on the water side, the other, three hotels and a bit of a “town” with two dive shops, a couple of small but expensive grocery stores, a handful of art and souvenir stores,  the obligatory silver store, four or five restaurants, a bakery, a “gringo” gym and yoga studio as well as hotel offices.  I believe there is even a hostel back behind the basketball court and the outdoor stage. Behind that, in the jungle across the highway is a small pueblo.

The “pueblo” of Akumal is easy to spot on Google Earth if you follow the single highway straight south from Cancun to a small carved out grid away from the water side,  just 4 blocks long, by 8 blocks wide. The pueblo was created in the late 1990’s to move the “locals” out of the beach area, not all bad apparently but in that 32 square block area, over 3,000 “locals” live.  The gap in the differences between tourist life and local life here is constantly evident, like the peaks and valleys of the waves on the shore. And as with the waves, there is tension too. There are quieter days when the water is calmer but the waves always come pounding back.

Walking into the pueblo

Walking into the pueblo

As for me, I’m here with a purpose. Naive as it may be, I’m trying to involve myself in the local community.  I’m trying to find real ways to help with education and to learn what I can about the people here. I’m trying to find out how with limited (but improving) spanish and all my technical wizardry, my fancy teaching experience, my cutting-edge knowledge of teaching methodology, how I might possibly have something to offer that is of value to the people here.  I’m trying, with my sixteen year old daughter, and my husband to not just tour the area for the five months that we’re here, but to sort out what in this constantly changing world we’ve catapulted from, is of value in what we know and can do, that might make a difference and be of real use to this community. I’m trying to learn about the waves here, when and how to dive in to swim without being completely carried away.

¡Feliz Navidad y Prospero Años!

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A fellow global educator sent this list of ways to help make our world more peaceful in her Christmas email and I think it deserves more exposure.  Originally I believe it comes from the Peace and Collaborative Development Network blog as posted by Craig Zeller. I think it is a great list and Craig does a great job of explaining why each of the following 10 points is important.  He also provides links to organizations worth learning more about. Enjoy.

8) Examine how to create more peace in your personal life

8) Share your experiences and hopes for peace, as well as frustrations around conflict

8) Support Organizations working to effect change in the world

8) Advocate for Preventing and Ending Conflicts

8) Mainstream a Conflict Sensitive Approach into your district/ organization/company

8) Get Additional Training

8) Engage in Productive Dialogue with Others

8) Foster Sustainable Economic Development

8) Build Community in your Own Life.

May you have a peaceful holiday season.

What I’ve learned so far

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Once a teacher, always a teacher and as such I am always curious about learning. So this adventure is letting me really look closely at my own learning. Overall, I’m getting some huge lessons.

The biggest is of course around learning, or perhaps not learning to speak Spanish.  For almost four years now I’ve been trying hard to learn some basic Spanish:  I’ve attended night school four times through Vancouver School Board-level one successfully two times and half way through level two twice; I’ve done a week of Spanish class in beautiful Yelapa, Mexico, a small village a forty minute water taxi ride away from Puerto Vallarta and I’ve made three other trips to Mexico seeking some kind of immersion experience; I’ve listened to hours of podcasts including Coffee Break Spanish, Showtime Spanish and most recently Michelle Thomas’ excellent series for beginning spanish; and I’ve even worked my way through several exercise books and a couple of very, very beginning novels.  While I’ve come a long way, I am far, far from fluent.  At least now I usually know when someone is speaking spanish to me and in all honesty, I can understand more and more of what I’m hearing around me.

Shopping at the Calvia market today after I managed to park.

Shopping at the Calvia market today after I managed to park.

Today though I’m having a bad spanish day. At the market in Calvia, when I was trying to park the car an older spanish woman cut me off, literally stealing the parking space that I’d waited patiently for by pulling up in the lot to block my entrance to it. While I politely reversed the car  so she could pass me by as I thought we clearly had an understanding that the spot was mine-the driver pulling out had even told her that I was taking the spot-she then had the gaul to pull into the spot while yelling at me, in spanish, that she’d been driving around for twenty minutes waiting for a spot, as if that entitled her to so rudely do what she did. I pulled up to her window dumbfounded, with a stupid idiotic look on my face I’m sure, while she hurtled explanations at me as to how tired of waiting she was and that she was entitled to the spot after viente minutos.  I understood pretty much all of what she was saying but my active spanish vocabulary vanished completely and all I could think to yell back was “puta!” (Oh what a dishonorable person I am!) So how did I learn such language in the first place you might wonder?  Well apparently swearing is quite the past time here.  Robert and Hannah have both been learning to  swear up a storm while I thought I was above it all.  We hear it on the buses around us, from the people at the side of the soccer field, pretty much everywhere, little children, teenagers and adults alike.  Last week when I asked Hannah how she was doing with speaking spanish on the soccer field con las otras jugadoras she told me very proudly that she was doing really well. She’d sworn twice at the mosquitos on the field.

Starting to make friends

Starting to make friends

But honestly, what  I am learning beyond the language itself is about the learning of a language. Learning a language is really, really hard work and immersion doesn’t happen naturally.  It is far too easy for me to sit at home in the comfort of my family, and to rely on the very few english speaking people, including my family here, to speak and translate for me. I have experienced too the huge feeling of helplessness that comes from not being able to speak the language, a helplessness that for me actually makes it even harder to learn.  I watch myself going into “shut down mode” when I don’t understand what to do or how to find what I need.  I see myself withdrawing and choosing not to participate in the community  rather than seeking help and pushing myself harder to try to overcome the language that I don’t understand.  So for example in our trying to deal with “officialdom” here I feel so lost.  It took us a whole week just to find out if there was a soccer team that Hannah could play on.  Then we needed help finding the field where they practice. Now we’re struggling through some kind of registration process that we just don’t understand. We’ve pretty much given up on finding any sort of schooling experience for her outside of the VLN program that she is registered in from home. Our next step is to try to find spanish language classes for all three of us but even that is hard to do. It is hard to sort out what is tourist hype and what might be real. It would be easier to just stay on my beautiful deck, keep swimming daily to the island across the bay until the weather gets too cold, continue to play on my computer and forget spanish all together.  Keeping at it is tough going.

In short, this is giving me a whole new perspective on all of the amazing parents I’ve dealt with over the years who have moved to Vancouver despite not knowing the language, and really truly persisted to get their children into good programs and to learn the language themselves enough to actively participate in the school at any level.  To those of you reading this  who are teaching and working with ESL parents in your schools right now, please reach out and find one parent or one student who is trying to understand but may be feeling frustrated.  Please, even for a day, give them all the help you can.  You will make a world of difference.