Guadalupe (Colombia). From 19 to 21 September 2024, about 300 participants from nine Salesian Institutes of Teacher Formation of the Colombia Node, constituted by the nine Salesian Institutes of Teacher Formation (ISS-FMA), met in Guadalupe, in O. L. of the Rosary of Chiquinquirá Province (CBC), to live the experience of the 5th Ongoing Seminar of the Preventive System of Don Bosco and Mother Mazzarello.
The Colombia Node has been consolidated since 2020 through the experience of collective, participatory, and synergistic construction of the Seminar: an academic space that activates dialogue between the Salesian educative system and the social and cultural trends that challenge the formation of the new generations of teachers.
Now in its fifth version, this Seminar took place for the first time in Guadalupe Santander, a corner of interior Colombia with extraordinary geographical beauty and a land that has been home to the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians for 113 years.
Reaching this location was challenging for the participants and took many hours of travel, rewarded by the kindness and generosity of the Educating Community and the Municipal Administration, starting from the mayor, Mr. Gustavo Gómez Franco, who involved the entire population in welcoming the 285 teachers in formation and practitioners of the nine Salesian Institutions. The CBC Province was very supportive, through the presence and accompaniment of the Provincial, Sister Edith Franco and the Councilor, Sister Elizabeth Contreras.
The Seminar also saw the participation of a significant number of FMA, including Directors, students, and teachers. Sister Runita Borja, World Councilor for Youth Ministry, and Sister Ivone Goulart, collaborator of the Sector and contact person for ISS-FMA, reached out to the participants via video message.
The theme of the event – From dream to practice: “Here is your field” – inspired by the dream at 9 years of age, aimed to encourage the approach of institutions, faithful to their vocation to form teachers to pedagogical practice in the light of the charismatic intuition of the origins.
Through participatory and research methodologies, it developed through three thematic clusters that question in a vital way, the identity and mission of the new teachers:
– Concepts and experiences of Pedagogical Practice in the horizon of the Preventive System. A round table in which five teachers-practitioners of the Salesian schools for teacher formation participated, opening the participants to a theoretical field to be contextualized: Salesian pedagogical practice.
– From Dream to Practice: “This is your field”. The conference of Fr. José Santís, SDB, who redesigned the fundamental pillars of the Preventive System in light of the significance of work, religion as a fundamental option for the human being, the classroom as a ‘laboratory’, and salvation as a horizon that today must be proclaimed.
– A preliminary look at the fields of practice: Affectivity and coexistence, bilingualism, peace education, rural education, pastoral formation, interculturality, research, new technologies, and early childhood. Through the methodology of propositive dialogic circles, significant experiences were shared and research dialogues were introduced, with institutional and network proposals around these nine fields.
Theater, music, sport, prayer, dances typical of the cultural identity of each region, the walk to celebrate the Time of Creation, as well as spontaneous fraternal encounters are Salesian educative resources par excellence. They strengthened the links which the virtual experience of previous seminars had made possible, to start weaving and have confirmed in all certainty that nothing replaces the face-to-face encounter.
At the end of the seminar, it became clear how the objectives set in the programming had been achieved:
– Recognize in the conceptions and experiences of the pedagogical practice of research the life-generating force contained in the charismatic dream, “Here is your field”.
– To celebrate the joy of being a Salesian ‘Normalist’ family at the service of teacher formation in Colombia, so that children and young people may have life in abundance.
– To dream of new possibilities for learning and collaboration in networking, so that the Charism may continue to make visible in Colombia the preventive educative power of its origins.
In the hearts of all, besides the many life lessons learned, there remained gratitude for the strong experience and desire for a new encounter, to continue to feed the desire to cultivate the dream of education in the field of daily life.
