Papallacta is located 67km east of Quito. At an altitude of 3,300m above sea level. It's climate is described as: Humid upper-montane rainforest. Cold-wet climate. It's average temperature is 14°C.
'...the route to Papallacta was the same as taken by the Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana in 1542 as he crossed the Andes mountain range upon discovering the Amazon and Amazon River...'*
*Information taken from www.papallacta.com.ec/informac.htm
Once everybody had arrived, we had to basically play musical chairs in order to meet and greet people! We were then introduced to our 'coach' who would be leading the training at Papallacta. He asked us in-depth questions such as:
Have you ever had a bad day?
Have you ever had a day when everything is great?
What can we learn from these experiences? Hmm...maybe that we are all fairly normal people?!?
Obviously we were all highly impressed by this - there were quite a few raised eyebrows around the room! Next, we had to choose one of 4 shapes: triangle; Z; circle and square. 'Coach' then told us their meaning...
Triangle - natural leader
Z – creative
Circle – sex/alcohol
Square – team player
Oh dear...I picked circle!
Once we arrived at Papallacta (after a journey through beautiful countryside, where I spotted snow at one point!), we went to the conference centre for another session. This was a chance to get to know other people's names...we all had a sticker and had to write not only our name but also a word that would help connect us in people's minds...it had to start with the same letter as our first name. After my first few thoughts, which really weren't suitable for school, I settled on fun. We then had to stick the sticker somewhere creative...I chose my left buttock (obviously clothed!)...it made me and the people around me laugh a lot! I enjoyed meeting members of the secondary and admin staff ( it turned out later on, that quite a lot remembered my name...can't imagine why!). The next activity involved juggling with a partner. This was fun, apart from the constant...what can we learn from this? How can we use this in our lives? To summarise...well...life is one big juggling act...(this isn't actually what he said, but was the basic gist, stuff about facing challenges and overcoming obstacles). I really do wonder how much he was getting paid for these amazing insights.
We had time to chill after lunch and went to check out our cabinas. Really lovely buildings, with a communal room sleeping 4 upstairs and a double room downstairs. These were situated around the thermal baths. I think the location of staff training in Ecuador is a definite improvement on the PDC...there was good lunch, dinner & breakfast, and THERMAL BATHS!!!! Woo-hoo!! The baths were to hot in the daytime for more then a bit of toe-dipping.
After more getting to know each other activities including: Telling people about where we were from Things that are important to us An aspiration for the year Something that has made us proud of ourselves We finally managed to escape from the man with the apt surname of Cocker! Don't get me wrong, y'know it was really good to talk to more people and get to know more about them. But I felt if I'd been put in a room with these people (without Mr Cocker), I probably would have chatted with just as many people and found out the same or similar things. (As we all know, I like a good waffle!)
One of the best things to come out of the day, was talking to Maria (lovely Spanish teacher), she said she'd show me round her home town of Quito...we just have to arrange a date...I'm looking forward to it already!
One of the worst things...a definite moment of wrongness...was when we all had to line up and whisper to the person in front, 'Would you like it hard or soft?' This was so we could massage each other's backs. However, the person behind me was my boss, Daryl. I did tell him that I would never be able to take him seriously again! I have boundaries and my boss saying this to me, definitely crossed those boundaries!!!!
Most of the evening was spent in and out of the thermal baths. Unfortunately having decided to go in before dinner, I had to put on a clammy swimsuit for the second visit! However this just meant a rather quick dash from the cabina to the pool! It was incredible sitting in an amazingly hot bath, looking at the stars. I highly recommend it for feeding your soul!
Friday... I woke early after a bad dream.
I spoke to Mum before breakfast to wish her a happy birthday. It was lovely to speak to her and it would have felt so wrong not to. After breakfast, we had section meetings. All the primary staff were together, and Claire led inset on formative assessment. We have been using this in the UK for sometime now, but it was good to have a refresher on possible techniques and gave me a good chance to get to know my assistant Carolina. It also made me feel more confident, knowing that this is an area of assessment which is new to the school, but one that I already have a great deal of experience with. The second session was led by Justin (Primary coordinator). He asked the different groups of staff to sit together and write down expectations they had for each other. It has become quite clear to us new teachers that there were a lot of issues last year. Luckily we are all a happy, positive bunch, who want to do our best for the kids and the school. The outcome of this was, unsurprisingly, the need for good communication, respect, appreciation, professionalism, etc. Justin is going to put these together so that we have a shared set of values.
During discussion with Carolina, I discovered that Ecuador has a very definite three-tier class system.
After lunch, we headed back to school and towards the weekend!
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