Teaching at UMayor

Manuel Montt Campus

For the past month, I've been teaching at the Facultad de Educación at Universidad Mayor, a private institution that was started about 30 years ago as a technical college. After a period of rapid growth, there are now 6 campuses in Santiago, each with different majors, and even one in Temuco about 700 km. south of the capital. I teach classes in the Manuel Montt Campus in Providencia, a residential area of the city. Education, Engineering, and Law are housed in the same building, and there are both day and evening classes.

Recreation in the patio

The two courses I teach are Lingüistica Aplicada/Second Language Acquisition to third-year students and Profundización en la Especialidad/TOEFL to fifth-year students majoring in English Pedagogy. They will become English teachers in elementary and secondary schools in the Santiago area when they graduate. Polite, friendly, and laid back, they are much like the students from Latin America we have at CELOP. As you can see in the picture, the outdoor patio has a café and ping-pong tables as well as benches for studying or relaxing.

School of Education - 4th floor

Since books are very expensive in Chile, the students can't afford to buy them so professors have to figure out how to supply material in other ways. We can upload some onto the Moodle platform assigned to each course or make limited copies of others, so creativity, time, and effort are required to figure it all out. It's a challenging teaching situation, but enjoyable, nevertheless. Universidad Mayor is very active in public relations, so it has many exchange agreements with universities around the world, including BU.

Youth groups

On weekends I wander around the city to see what's happening. Last week there was a procession on the eve of Palm Sunday, and I went to mass at the baroque cathedral on the Plaza de Armas, where groups of young people were waving flags and singing with gusto at the mass concelebrated by dozens of priests, monsignors, and the Cardinal of Santiago. Thousands of people were there, spilling out onto the plaza after mass. The youth groups were from different parishes around the city, and it was inspiring to see them so enthusiastic about their faith.

Girl selling palms

I bought a braided palm from a little girl with a painted face whose family was rapidly braiding and selling them for a dollar. After mass, I went back into the cathedral to take pictures, and here you can see an altar of ornate silver, probably  from the mines in Chile, and another one with a lovely statue of la Virgin del Carmen con Jesús, beautifully clothed in lavish robes that are changed according to the liturgical year. As I went around to the altars, cautiously taking pictures while people were praying, I was impressed by the faith Catholics have in the saints and angels and their devotion to the church. It's an inspiring example for people of all faiths.

Virgin del Carmen

Ornate silver altar
[Click on photos to enlarge]