Implementing PBE in a Colombian context

In this post I would like to share with you all how I am implementing PBE approach in the school where I carry out my pedagogical practice, a brief description.

This implementation process has been held in the Prado Veraniego School Branch A, a public school in Bogotá situated in the north part of the city (Suba Locality). This Branch is the home of secondary levels of colombian education, hence, I am working with 38 sixth graders during the morning shift. Additionally, the school works based on three emphasis: communication, values and (here comes the interesting part) tourism.

In this way, the observing process and the data collected along the first semester of 2018 showed some situations very common in public schools in Colombia and a special one:
- the English classes were not taught in the target language,
- Language was taught as isolated vocabulary,
- students did not produce language in any form of skill,
- and the school syllabus for English proposed a focus on ecotourism as part of the formation of the emphasis, and this was not present.

Now, my intervention proposal took Place-Based Education approach as solution to the disconnection between the tourism emphasis and the English class because it will allow to link the students to their immediate ecological context searched by the English area. Thus, it will permit me to guide students towards an appreciation and learning of their ecological and natural surroundings; I also considered it as a meaningful tool to initiate an immersion process in the English language learning enhancing the development of communicative and  integrated language skills due to the significative experiences it could offer at the moment of taking action. It is important to mention that the school teachers and coordinator were highly interested in seeing how this research project will be carried out and they announced a strong support with school facilities and resources for field trips.

In the next post I will share with you a couple of activities that I used to start the implementation of PBE with the class I mentioned.