There is a commonly-used English idiom of “one who wears many hats,” meaning a person who successfully plays a lot of different roles or has a lot of different responsibilities in life, someone that can be labeled in many ways. I label myself as a daughter, a sister, a friend, volunteer, blogger, photographer, traveler, teacher, and student of the world (to name a few of the more recent labels).
I named this blog 'Students and Teachers - Estudiantes y Maestras' for a number of reasons. My primary reason to move to Colombia, was of course, to become a teacher, to lead a classroom and instruct students in English (and other life lessons). But I would never label myself as just a teacher. I was of course in many ways just as much or more a student while I was there myself. Besides trying to improve my Spanish, learn about Colombian culture, history, and politics, and continuing my teacher training throughout the year, the actual student-teacher role at my school was occasionally flipped.
My students became my resources to learn about my town and my new country. They helped me realize what parts of English needed to be focused on. They were more than open about what activities and topics they liked doing (“games” and clothing vocab for example) and parts of the class they didn’t like (actual unfortunate answers included “pronunciation” and various things about my co-teacher). And along with some of my co-workers, my students were some of the Colombians I got to know best.
But it is hard to fit the “hats” idiom into those roles. I don’t really know what a “teacher hat” would look like past about 1910 schoolmarms; and even though my students all had uniforms, little caps were not part of the outfit. Unfortunately, western culture has seemed to do away with daily hat wear after about the 1950s (besides maybe when you go skiing or to horse races…) and thus I can’t speak of my church hat, gardening hat, shopping hat, theater hat, etc. (even more tragic for men who rarely wear fedoras with business suits any more).
So to twist the old idiom into the 21st Century, I’d like to rework it to “one who wears many shoes.” So walk the thousand miles or so to Colombia with me as I attempt to summarize a whole year.
I wore a lot of different shoes to school, but my favorites and ones that it would be mostly likely that you’d catch me in if you poked your head into my sweltering classroom were brown Dansko sandals with just a little bit of a heel (kind of like this, but in brown).
As a teacher, I was proud to be a professional, my first real “adult job,” after graduating from college, and time to get away from wearing sneakers all the time. I was committed to taking my role as a teacher seriously – this was not simply the vehicle for getting me to another country, but truly what I wanted to do for a year in this specific area. So, with the combination of a durable heel (to traverse the road to school), comfort (for those long hours on your feet), and a tiny bit of style (to try and remind myself I was going to school as the educator, not the student), my Danskos served me well this year. A nicely functional teacher shoe.
I had ‘real’ heels too, which I think I bought back in 11th grade on sale for wind ensemble concerts (and look something like this). Not super great for walking around, and a little formal for teaching at my school, but great for dancing and going out. So there were three or four nights out in Cartagena where these old guys got a workout to the latest Latin pop or reggeaton hits, salsa favorites and more by Juan Luis Guerra, Danny Yankee, Shakira, Don Omar and Joe Arroyo. While these nights are great highlights, they were also few and far between.
Also rarely worn were some black flats I brought (like these). Besides the fact that they grew some mold on them in my closet halfway through the year, they turned out to be a little impractical for walking in the mud and dust on the way to school (I tried once with disappointing results). I did however, wear them a couple of times in Bogotá, that other culture so far away from Santa Ana. For January visits to the Secretary of Education, National Bank, and other more formal spots than my cow-and-donkey populated walk to school, they were a perfect fit.
Also black but a little less formal, were my pair of Adidas indoor soccer shoes (called Sambas, unfortunately giving homage to the Brazilian soccer team I have to imagine). These were put to good use in a couple soccer games (well, minifutbol games played on the concrete canchas) I participated in. I got props from my students for being a part of the staff team that played (and lost to) Barbacoas and some of our student teams, and had fun organizing the occasional women’s-only pick-up game Monday nights with Barbacoas teachers and being a part of their short-lived kickball team. Whenever I wore them to school, my boys would always comment on the Adidas label (brand names are important to them); more than once a size 10 or 12 eighth grader would also ask me to give them to him to wear, not probably thinking through the fact that my feet are just a little smaller than his.
Most of my exercising (that which there was of it) was not playing soccer or kickball though, but walking and hiking. My pair of The North Face cross-trainer hiking/running boots saw a lot of evening walks along the road to the Decameron resort on Barú. The Gortex outside was good for the mud, so like most all the shoes I owned, these saw a little of the classroom too on those morning after a heavy rain.
But sometimes, those weren’t even good enough for the monsoon rains. So I also had more heavy-duty hiking boots (these, though mine look in much worse shape and well-loved), shoes that have seen a lot, from backpacking along Hadrian’s Wall, to the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, to the Argentine Andes. Though they will always be close to my heart, they continue to teach me life lessons on the importance of flexibility over rigidity when they encountered the slick (and steep) concrete walkways of Puerto Nariño, in Colombia’s Amazon and my backside encountered the Amazon close-up. Great for deep mud though.
I also learned that sometimes you just have to rely on others, a lesson this daughter of the U.S. emphasis on independence is still easing in to. I am packed up ready to head out on a jungle trek in the Amazon, and Luisa, the dueña of my small hotel, looks at my hiking boots and shakes her head. The locals knows best, and despite my early misgivings about walking a couple of miles in rubber boots, this hefty footwear proved pretty much the only way to wade through the ankle-deep mud and deeper puddles of our trail. Yay for rubber boots (these are close to the standard Amazon boots, but not sure the ones I wore will ever look this clean again)! Paddling around in a wooden canoe the next two days would have been near impossible without a rubber boot as well. Plus it made me look more like a local – rubber boots are the footwear of choice for campesinos (country-folk) everywhere.
But in the end, maybe my thin-strapped black Chaco sandals are the one shoe that defines my year. The sandal is durable, built for hiking (or rutted Santa Ana streets). Its straps make it invaluable for riding on motorcycles or trudging through knee-deep puddles where you otherwise have a good chance of losing a shoe. When thick mud attempts to pull your feet ever deeper, your average flip-flops surrenders easily but Chacos always pull through (or rather, are able to be pulled out). Clean them off from an excursion to the beach, and they’re nice enough to wear with slacks to school or with a skirt out in Cartagena. They can still look a little classy but are great when the Colombian weather system creates a lot of puddles in its biggest cities and smallest towns. Never had to worry about wet feet when you’re wearing sandals (and when the water got up to my knees in Santa Ana, they became the only option for rain wear). For the most flexible and adaptable footwear I brought, my Chacos won the prize.
But the point is, it would have been hard to do the year in one pair of shoes. They reflect the different roles I played, the different reasons I was in Colombia in the first place, and the different experiences I had along the way.
My shoes, like me, hiked in the Amazon, walked the wet streets of Bogotá, explored Cartagena’s colonial fortresses, swam in the Caribbean Sea, danced the night away to salsa and reggaeton, and did miles in six small classrooms in Santa Ana, Isla Barú, Colombia.
Every year we learn about ourselves, every month shapes who we are. I found out that I am each of these shoes, each of these roles. I thank my shoes for getting me around.
And I hope this blog was interesting and insightful, at least enough to say that you all might have a little idea of what it was like to walk in my shoes this year. This year I have asked, and attempted with the best of my ability to answer, about my world, both big a small questions. What is today’s Colombia like and how does that differ from many U.S. Americans’ preconceptions? What is the weather and seasons like in Colombia’s Caribbean? What does it mean to be a citizen of the world? What are some highlights of traveling to Colombia? Why do I have so many frogs in my room? Why is my principal never at school? How can we improve education in Santa Ana? Why are so many puppies being born at Barbacoas? What does being a teacher and student in another culture and part of the world look like? Why does the English language use so many auxiliary verbs, especially in asking questions? Etc.
It was a good year, with no regrets in going, with some regrets on work undone there. It was a year where I got introduced to how to be a great teacher, became an okay teacher, and saw what really bad teaching could be. It was a year that was both jam-packed with new experiences and included a ridiculous amount of free time. It was a year where I lived in a small, rural community, but also traveled and lived more internationally than I had ever before. It was a year where I wore many pairs of shoes.
All these pairs of shoes, probably like me, are perhaps a little worse for the wear, showing in a few spots all the miles and the literal ups and down they’ve been through. They, like me, hopefully served a useful function this past year, helping a few students and a small community to realize a few more tools to try and improve their lives. And like me, my shoes have many more miles left in them, many more stories to tell, are ready to grow in number, adding new friends and colleagues as life heads in new directions.
My pair of “teacher shoes” have been passed on to another WorldTeach volunteer, who even right now is just arriving for orientation near Bogotá, to take on the challenge, to pick up where I left off. My Institución Educativa de Santa Ana shoes are a pair of well-loved and hopefully well taken care of hand-me-downs now.
What one pair of shoes I’ll be wearing next is not really the question. The question is in what direction will my many diverse shoes take me next?
That is one question I won’t even try to answer right now, but I know one thing: my year in Colombia, making new friends, meeting new people, seeing new places, walking new streets and trails, becoming a teacher, and remaining a student of the world has shaped me, taught me, and better prepared me for whatever comes next.
Gracias a Usteds por leer y a todos en Colombia, gracias por esto año. Espero que haya hecho una diferencia en las vidas de algunas y haya ayudado mejorar la tierra bontia de Colombia un poquito.
(Thanks to you all for reading, and to everyone in Colombia, thank you for this year. I hope that I have made a difference in the lives of some and have helped just a little to improve the beautiful land of Colombia.)
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One more post to come, listing off some “statistics” about my year. Some of funny, some sad, and some so sad they are funny. That’ll be up soon. It’s been a great year writing this blog, so again, thanks for following it!
Also, I want you know how difficult it was for me to not add in any sole/soul jokes, ‘support’ references, talk about my co-teacher as a heel, or say I was laced up for the race of life. I figured I had worn out the analogies too far already but there are so many puns and metaphors we can use with shoes, it is hard to know where to stop. Obviously.
