School Snapshot :: Hogar Nueva Granada

It’s School Snapshot time again!

This Snapshot features a school I visited while in Bogota, Colombia in March. There’s so much to tell you about this school that this  Snapshot will be presented in two parts. So be sure to check back  for Part 2.

photo by schoolofeverything

While at the AASSA conference in Bogota in March, I had the opportunity to visit the Hogar Nueva Granada, a community school supported by the Colegio Nueva Granada (CNG), an international school (where the conference was held).

The Hogar Nueva Granada is a not-for-profit private institution founded by the CNG community in 2000.

The school serves children aged 2-13 years (pre-K through grade 6) and their families. The majority of families are from “estratos (stratas) 1 and 2″, and the income of most does not reach the official legal minimum. Many parents work in construction labor, household labor or vending.

As the school website notes,

The Hogar Nueva Granada was proposed as a solution to the dire conditions of the poor children within the country, such as: the lack of availability of education, the high drop-out rates in public schools, the semi-abandonment of children, the high rates of malnutrition and lack of basic social services such as health and emotional well-being.

My Day at the School

Amparo de Rocha, the liaison to the Hogar Nueva Granada school, was kind enough to show me around the school and introduce me to teachers, staff, parents, and students. It was a joy to spend the morning with Amparo.

At the school, we were immediately greeted by the smiling students. The kids, especially the younger ones, really wanted me to take their picture (and then see it on the camera), so I have a lot of cute photos like this one (these boys were really hamming it up for the camera):

You can see in this photo that students wear uniforms. The younger kids were blue and yellow.  Older kids wear navy and white.

Teachers warmly welcomed me into their classrooms, and even encouraged the students to practice a little English, which the kids didn’t hesitate to do. Hogar Nueva Granada students take the usual academic subjects, including English. Here’s the class schedule for the grade 6 students you see in the above photo:

In the library, kids can read books in Spanish and English and work on the computer.  The day I was there, a CNG parent was checking out books.

As a group of students left the library to walk back to their classroom, most of them showed me the book they’d just checked out.

And, of course, there were always groups of kids outside enjoying the multiple play areas (they were obviously more used to the high elevation than I was!).

The Hogar Nueva Granada offers students and their families much more than education. I’ll talk more about that in Part 2 of this School Snapshot. Stay tuned!

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Tagged as: Reflections, School Snapshot Project