The Experience
of Learning
It is all about
uncovering facts, looking for clues, and asking the right questions until the
whole mystery makes sense. That is how the learning process can be seen.
Learning is a process that involves our whole life, since the moment we were
born. We learn to walk, talk, ride a bicycle, read, write, and many more
things. Our first teachers then are our parents and family; from them, we learn
the essentials of life and then, there are the multiple experiences that we
have in an educational institution. I spent my primary and part of my secondary
education in Garzon. A very small town in Huila department. People from this
town are not from a very upper class. Although a small town, Garzon has
different public school buildings the residents can attend. The most popular
are Bolivar School, Luis Calixto Leiva School, and Jenaro Diaz Jordan School.
During my
primary education, I attended two different schools, Luis Calixto Leiva School
and La Gaitana School. The first one of these tends to be a school where
children were good at academics, or at least, that was the impression I had at
that time. On the other hand, my perception of the second school mentioned was
not as good as the one for the other school. However, as time went by, my
opinion changed. I consider I did well at my primary education process and I
learned a lot from my teachers at both schools. In terms of my classmates, I
preferred the ones from La Gaitana School; they seemed to be less cocky than my
peers from the other school and somehow, I can say I could learn from them as
well. Something I remember from my time in one of those schools is that in
first grade, the teacher would organize students in lines according to their
performance in school. Therefore, if you were one of “the excellent students”,
you would be placed at a line denominated “line number one”; but if your
performance was not so good, you would be in “line number two”; and if you were
doing really bad at school, you would belong to “line number three”. At that
time, I was happy to belong to line number one and I was afraid of having to
move to line number two or even number three. Now that I think about it, I
consider that was not the right way to organize students since I think that is
giving students a label. Labeling students from a very young age just will make
students believe they cannot go beyond their limits.
On the other
hand, I spent my secondary education in two different schools as well, but this
time in two different cities. I carried out the first four years of high school
in the Jenaro Diaz Jordan school in Garzon. Different from what my experience
in elementary school, here I was one of the regular students with not very high
grades. However, when there were only two years left to finish my secondary
education, I decided to move to Bogota. My expectations about attending a
school in a capital city were high; nevertheless, when I got there, I
discovered that things were not so different from the ones at Garzon. Well,
something that was completely new for me at that time was the system carried
out by the school since they follow a system quite similar to the ones
universities follow: semester system. I consider this change of school brought
me many benefits. It was a new school in a new city with no friends; therefore,
I had to make my place and I consider I did it well since my grades improved a
lot and I became one of the top students of my class. Something remarkable of
this new school was how teachers carried out their classes. Their teaching
methodologies were all different from one another. The school also managed a
type of rewarding for good students, which consisted in that these students
will not have to present the final test of the courses at the end of the
semester.
Over the four
years of learning in higher education, I have realized some important aspects
of my learning. I learn best when I have the flexibility to take the learning
in the direction that I feel is important but that flexibility is tempered by
guidance and high expectations. Besides, I have reaffirmed that teaching is not
my way to go; however, in the meanwhile, I am trying to learn from the
experience because I think there is no worthless knowledge.
