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When we began the partnership between SUNY Buffalo State and Universidad Mayor in 2011, we never imagined the many directions our collaboration would take. Today in 2019, the IPDS Chile program has organized five exchanges with delegations from UMayor traveling to Buffalo (in the heart of lake effect winters!) and cohorts from Buffalo State traveling to Santiago to explore language learning, participate in field placements, learn about the realities of becoming a teacher in North and South America, and build friendships across national borders. These experiences have influenced all of us by helping us to more closely examine and expand our teaching practices as university faculty and teacher candidates.
The IPDS Chile process begins by connecting electronically with a pen pal from the partner university so that when the group arrives each person feels that he/she already has a colleague and a friend. The hosts then help the guests during the visit as they travel to schools, participate in pedagogy/methods courses, experience campus life, and learn about the host city. We learn from each other through informal conversations over coffee and onces as well as through formal presentations about the current state of education in our respective countries. As we prepare to travel again this year, we are so excited to see our UMayor colleagues and friends with whom we have been actively working together to address the challenges we both face. In both settings, the Global Book Hour has developed into the Global Literacy Engagement Project to meet the needs of all learners in Buffalo and Santiago. This project now includes the Global Literacy Channel which offers families and teachers short videos with suggestions for how to build children’s literacy skills. Many thanks to Patty George for her tremendous efforts with the Channel! Please visit https://globalliteracy.buffalostate.edu/global-literacy-channel to watch. We are also excited about a new collaborative research project that will examine how the use of Applied Learning and structured reflection influences the cultural competency of participating teacher candidates. UMayor and Buffalo State faculty and teacher candidates hope to present the findings at the PDS Conference in September and the NAPDS Conference in February. (For more information about the SUNY Applied Learning Initiative at Buffalo State, please visit: https://collegesenate.buffalostate.edu/applied-learning) Additionally, we are thrilled to announce that, thanks to our wonderful international partners around the globe, the IPDS programs were honored to receive the 2018 National Association for PDS (NAPDS) Exemplary Achievement Award and the 2019 NAFSA Senator Paul Simon Spotlight Award. The Director of English Pedagogy at UMayor, Tamara Irupé Álvarrez Sepúlveda, helped to make these awards possible by writing, “The benefits of this partnership in our teacher education program goes beyond the exchange of multicultural experiences, educational field experiences and boosting the foreign language. It has allowed us to improve our own academic practice by observing different realities and strategies; identify strengths and weaknesses of our Study Plan in order to prepare successful XXI Century teachers; develop and carry out the Global Book Project following the experience observed by our teachers at Buffalo with immigrant communities in Chile which have not been able to learn Spanish nor English and require help developing linguistic and cultural strategies for immersion…The impact of our partnership on the children and teachers from Chilean Schools who have interacted with the Buffalo State teacher candidates is priceless.” In turn, Buffalo State has been enormously influenced by our UMayor partners. In the spirit of PDS, which values mutually beneficial partnership, we believe and hope that the children in our U.S. and Chilean classrooms will benefit from these teachers who have taken a giant step to learn more about the world. On a more personal note, I want to express my thanks to IPDS Chile Co-director, Angela Patti, who is not able to travel to Santiago this time around. I am very appreciative of her tremendous support and contributions to the program. We will miss you! To readers of this blog, thank you for your interest in our travels – we welcome your comments!
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