Day #10, August 4,

We started the day early as Marcela had to open the school. We left the house at 7:15 in order to drop her kids off at school on our way to school. It is interesting to note that Marcela's children go to a private school.

We arrived at Marcela's school at 7:30. There were already children on the patio. Her office looked similar to Volta's office in the morning with a steady stream of teachers and parents coming in with questions and concerns. Students began the day at 8:00 by lining up on the patio. The national flag was raised and the National Anthem was sung. Announcements were made. Students were allowed to throw in there own neighborhood news tidbits. They were off to their rooms by 8:10.

I sat in a second grade classroom the first period. This was Seno Marcela's first year in second grade. She had been many years in first grade and wanted a change. There were 25 students in the room and they would be working on Lengua or Language Arts. The first activity they did, which seemed to be part of the daily routine was to write in their notebooks their personal goal for the day: Me propongo ....... They then moved into an activity which required some higher order thinking. They worked on understanding and writing riddles. ?Cual es el colmo de....? The students were extremely engaged in the activity and it really got them to think.

At the 9:00 recess I went back to the office to meet with Marce before we left for the office of the Inspectora de Zona. In the hierarchical structure, the Inspectora is at the level of the Area Instructional Officer. We got to the Inspectora's office at 10:00. Her name is Rosa Cutaia. I was offered coffee and we visited for a while and made comparisons about the structures of each of our educational systems. I also met another Inspectora named Maria Angelica. She had with her the principal of a school impacted by a large Bolivian Quechua-speaking student population. The principal shared that while the law of the nation requires bilingual education for these students, she had no resources - material or personnel - to provide it. She explained how she was connecting with community agencies for translating help in order to draw parents in to a fuller involvement in the school. Hopefully, I will be able to visit the school before I leave.

Marce dropped me off at her house and I spent the afternoon working on a dual language proposal that I have to submit to the Office of Language and Culture Education before August 10th. As we expand our Spanish bilingual program I thought that the one-way dual language model would be the best way to proceed with it. I finished the 8-page proposal and sent it off. All fingers and toes are crossed!

In the evening, Marce and I went to a small bar to listen to Francisco Castillo's (the district music education coordinator) jazz band rehearse. They played great ragtime music.