News & Events
Faculty Group Takes 'Learning Communities Concept' to Chile During Educational Tour
Giant ancestral volcanic rock statues on Easter Island.
Four members of City Tech faculty -- Lydia Brent, James Lap, Regina Lebowitz and Estela Rojas -- departed New York on December 28, 2002, on a 21-day South American sojourn funded in part by the College's Professional Development Advisory Council. The trip took the four throughout Chile and on a side trip to Argentina.
The group had arranged in advance to visit several Chilean universities, including the University of Santiago. At each school, they met with faculty, shared information on different teaching methodologies, discussed the possibility of future student and teacher exchanges and toured classroom, labs and other educational facilities.
While in Santiago, Brent, Lap and Lebowitz also assisted Rojas in staging a demonstration for high school teachers on the collaborative and other methods used in the "learning communities" approach to instruction now in practice at City Tech. They acted out a typical learning communities classroom session for the audience, while Rojas translated.
Beforehand, Lebowitz had given a presentation
to these same teachers entirely in Spanish -- the first time on
the trip she had been comfortable in doing so. Later, she was interviewed
in Spanish on Chilean TV. "There's nothing like having to do
something," she recalled, "to enable you to do it."
Before long she was holding extended conversations entirely in Spanish
with nearly everyone she met.
From Santiago the group traveled south to Puerto Montt, Puerto Varas
and Pucon,
In Pucon, they decided to visit Argentina, a short distance away.
In San Martin de los Andes, they enjoyed an afternoon of lunching
on the best beef they had ever tasted.
Back in Santiago, Lap returned to New York and Rojas continued to
introduce "learning communities" to local high school
teachers, while Brent and Lebowitz flew to Easter Island (Rapa Nui),
some 3,000 miles and five and a half hours west of the Chilean coast.
There they were awed by the spectacular 60-foot high statues made
from volcanic island rock and somehow dragged by the inhabitants
of long ago to where many of them still stand today.
Returning to Santiago and reunited with Rojas, the three visited one of Pablo Neruda's several Chilean homes. As can be expected, they returned to New York with armloads of posters and other materials depicting the many works of this acclaimed South American poet.
Brent, Lap, Lebowitz and Rojas are currently collecting
their thoughts and readying slides and photographs for a presentation
they'll give later this spring on campus. They've also brought back
many Chilean artifacts that will be part of their presentation,
including masks from the Mapuche Indians, the original Chileans.
Photo courtesy of Lydia Brent and Regina Lebowitz
