Hello Glimpsers and families!

This is Miguel Orellana, and I will be sharing with you what we did today.  The first highlight of the day was our mental warm up post-breakfast.  This was the first of several in depth discussions that carried on over the course of the day, dealing with the delicate, yet strong relationship between education and politics.  Later on through the day, we had our second CAP meeting, and this time we came up with ideas for what we will actually be building/creating.  The conversation did get very intense at some points, with a bit of shouting, but that is just a result of our great, strong, and unique personalities.  I personally did not need to overcome many challenges, as a majority of the day was spent at home at the hostel, as we took a large amount of information in today, speaking about the final exam placement system in Ecuador, as well as discussing Rafael Correa, and his critical role in some positives, and negatives with the Ecuadorian Government.

 

Today’s theme as you might have guessed it… was education and politics.  These two topics were greatly intertwined with our question of the day, “How do politics influence education policies?”  We learned how these two go hand in hand.  For example, we reviewed the idea that in order for one to be able to form their own opinions and ideas, they first need to be well educated, and vice versa.  Today, I was not expecting much from being El lider del dia.  What I mean by that is that, I wasn’t intimidated by the idea of being the leader of a group of 18 students.  The only problem I found was trying to get the huge group of different personalities to settle down at once.  Today we met a scholar from an Organization called Fullbright, which is a non-profit funded by the U.S. government, which gives college graduates the opportunity to go abroad, and either be a teaching assistant, or to do research.  She gave us an in depth look on the final exam that every student has to take at the end of their “high school” year, and how the score of that exam designates what professions/majors you are allowed to go into.

 

I would like to just thank not only the organization, but especially the on-site staff for helping me out with this experience throughout the whole day, as I do not think I would have been able to do it without them.  This was an amazing experience among amazing experiences, and I will remember this for the rest of my life.

 

Sincerely,

Miguel Orellana

 

 

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