Colombia

During April 2009, Mrs. Shan Davies, Mr. Peter Ward and Mrs. Melinda Kennedy travelled to Colombia as part of the British Council's Connecting Classrooms project. During the visit, Mrs. Davies accompanied 4 other headteachers from Wales to participate in a 3 day series of conferences and workshops for the SLANT project organised by Melba Ebril from the British Council. The SLANT project (School Leadership and New Technologies for Learning) facilitates the opportunity for an exchange of expertise and ideas to benefit the education system.

We visited our partner school Institucion Educativa Benedikta Zur Nieden in Medellin and were delighted to meet Francisco the headteacher again following his visit to us some months before. We were able to spend time with some of the teachers and pupils and made arrangements for some joint projects that we can build on in the future. These include a pen-friend scheme where pupils from both schools will hopefully teach each other some of their own language. An after school Spanish club is now planned. Teacher Luz runs many eco projects in the Colombian school and it has been agreed that we will also make a wormery and try to build benches from re-cycled plastic soft drinks bottles filled with rubbish. Photos and more details of how we are getting on with these projects can be seen in our Eco school and sustainability section.

It is hoped that we will be able to host a visit from some Colombian staff and pupils and also make a return visit with some of our pupils in the near future.

The following photos hopefully capture the essence of our visit.

Rooftops of Bogota & view of Bogota from outside the Cathedrale at Monserrate

The colourful streets of Bogota

The Botero Museum in Bogota

The Jardin Botanico at night

The pupils of Institucion Educativa Benedikta Zur Nieden