Reflection Upon a World

You are continually shaping the world around you as a result of conscious and unconscious thoughts. Reality is but a mirror reflecting on your.
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My host family has been wonderful. The very first week they took me out to Six Flags, most popular theme park featuring dozens of thrill rides, shows, and activities. Host family from day one knew the importance of making friends before school, so they had me join church activities and volunteering activities. They had introduced me to the community, they had been taking me around places and events. Gratefully, I would like to say that before school started many people had known me and I had made many friends. Host family gave me significant support at all times, and I realize it now more than ever when I look back.

Thanks to them I acclimated easily and my stay in the US turned to be super nice. We used to have popcorn nights every Sunday, nice Christmas family timing, along with many presents. I had my own room. I have experienced deer hunting with host family. They allowed me to go to different cities for shopping with girls from high school.

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We would go to baseball games and cinema. Mom and Dad would allow me to go on dates, to school dances, etc. Honestly, everything was much, much more than expected and only positive outcome. Many tears went down our cheeks on my day of departure. Even though I was so looking forward to go back home and share all these memories with everyone, separation with my family in the US was hard.

And certainly it did!

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Back in April this year, I have posted on Facebook my upcoming trip to Chicago in May with dates and host dad saw it. He made it happen. They drove 4 hours from Iowa to Illinois to spend little time with me and catch up.

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Seeing them again after 10 years was unbelievable! It provided a space for a living connection to their reality. Freire and Shor, The population who participated in the reading club sessions have been forced to flee their homes due to the armed conflicts that take place in rural areas between paramilitaries and guerrillas mainly. During the reading club sessions the adult participants engaged in dialogic interactions and felt free to narrate and share their own life experiences.

Their statements showed that they were forced to abandon their customs, working practices, lands, friends and families. Populations in situation of displacement are forced to cope with a number of problematic situations. Searching for a safe place to live, they migrate to big cities. Cities which are unfamiliar to them and do not often offer them effective ways to overcome adversities and satisfy basic needs such as food, accommodation, health and education.

Critical education, as Ira Shor explains, has to integrate the participants students and teacher into a mutual creation and re-creation of knowledge framed in a dialogic pedagogy. I, as ayudante de clubes de lectores, which is the title given by Asolectura to the role we play in the reading club sessions, established an atmosphere where participants agreed to say what was authentic to them.

I never forced them to share. I helped them to say more by restraining my own voice to give their voices room. Participants were as active as I was during the dialogic interactions. I do agree with Freire when he points out that teachers learn with and from students, "Liberatory education is fundamentally a situation where the teacher and the students both have to be learners, both have to be cognitive subjects, in spite of being different. Freire suggests that liberatory education and the context for transformation is not only the classroom but it extends outside of it.

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The participants in these reading club sessions found this space appropriate enough to engage in critical dialogue, reflecting upon critical issues of their social, cultural and political realities, and their places in society. These participants in situation of displacement were able to name, to reflect critically, to act. They were able to "illuminate their realities" Freire As Shor remarks "If students do engage each other in critical dialogue, I see that as an act of empowerment because they chose to become human beings investigating their reality together I read this as a starting point of transformation which may develop in the long run into their choices for social change" p.

As stated before, populations in situation of displacement are forced to cope with a wide range of problematic situations such as food, accommodation, health etc. Those are their basic needs and most immediate concerns. Literacy practices might seem irrelevant to the processes of overcoming those immediate concerns and needs.

However, the creation of a reading club has shown the importance of having a space where those concerns are named, expressed, shared with others who have experienced similar situations and as a community, search for solutions to overcome adversity.


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That is why this space has provided a resilient environment where participants have reflected upon their realities and have found a space where their voices are heard and responses to their queries have been provided at a dialogic bases by the participants of the reading club. This reading club was created as a space for freedom, for dialogue, a space where the existing sociocultural, historical and political realities shape education as participants are empowered to illuminate the conditions they are in, to help as a community, overcome those conditions, a space that invites participants to become resilient agents of transformation and hope.

Sonia Nieto asserts that sociocultural and sociopolitical perspectives are first and foremost based on the assumption that social relationships and political realities are at the heart of teaching and learning. That is, "learning emerges from the social, cultural, and political spaces in which it takes place, and through the interactions and relationships that occur between learners and teachers". This experience as participant observer during the reading club sessions, provided me with the opportunity to understand one basic task of the liberatory classroom which consists of investigating the very voices of the students, in this case, adults in situation of displacement.

I experienced what Shor states: Their speeches are privileged access to their consciousnesses p. I examined the words and themes most important to the participants so I valued their voices, narratives and life experiences as the topic of interest and discussion during every single session of the reading club.

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It was a rewarding experience that made me grow as teacher in the sense that I could realize the importance of being acute observer and listener of the social realities lived by students and understand how those realities affect their academic performance and personal development. Being aware and reflective on the happenings within and beyond the classroom have served to inform and reorient my teaching practice in search of meeting the demands of a changing society. To conclude this personal-experience. I consider important to reflect upon the following questions: Do we create spaces for dialogue, freedom and reflection in our teaching - learning contexts?

Are we reflective practitioners who engage in self-criticism exercises?

Are we aware of the existing conditions each student brings to our classrooms? Do we value and respect students' voices and life experiences and make them relevant for the school setting? Do we as teachers, exercise and promote collaborative relations of power which enable or empower students to participate confidently, as a result of having their identities affirmed and extended in the social interactions? Are we aware of the demographic changes produced by forced internal displacement in Colombia and how are those affecting, shaping our teaching - learning contexts?

Investigating Literacy in Social Contexts. London and New York: Dialogues on Transforming Education.