LAURA SÁNCHEZ
THE COUNTRY | MANIZALES
What was the Rectory of the rural school La Cabaña is now the VIP area, a space with coffee, aromatics and water for students and teachers to talk or rest. When the rector, Ángela María Patiño, arrived, she vacated that place and her desk placed it next to her secretary.
She is the host of an agricultural school 40 minutes from the urban area of Manizales. The rector has been celebrating for two weeks: on November 18 she received the recognition of Confa Woman 2021 and last Wednesday night, the same day she spoke with LA PATRIA, she was awarded as the Best Rural Rector in the Eladia Mejía Award.
There is not a moment in the dialogue about her and her awards in which she does not talk about ‘us’, referring to the educational community that has allowed La Cabaña and her school to ring in the conversations of the municipality and the department.
The awards he received converge to applaud his efforts to provide quality rural education with relevance, which is observed in plantain crops and ancestral seeds, lakes with mojarras, aromatic plants and any agricultural initiative that can be implemented in the school.
When she arrived at the institution seven years ago, she seduced the teaching team, as she describes it. He collected their voices, their talents to give them well-being and begin to think about a different rurality. Here she establishes her stamp as an educator: “We linked ourselves with the Escuela Nueva model, we brought a university in the field, we made strategic alliances with whatever institution allowed us. We wanted to qualify the profile of our children.”
With this they have managed to be a school with an agricultural technical modality, a labor technician from the Seine and a professional technician from a related university. They also execute $ 10 million from the Entrepreneur Fund, from the Coffee Growers Committee, which were delivered in supplies for the creation of a company for tenth and eleventh grade students.
“We also take the countryside to the city. We have shown that we have targeted entrepreneurship projects. We have gone to the Seine, to the Mayor’s Square and to the Coffee Cultural Fund, where they invite us. We implement internships, which are school visits from other departments “, explains the rector.
Loaded with plans
School is like your home. He passes by waving: “Beautiful, how are you?”, In a kind voice perched on her firm heels. On his good morning he also sets his eyes on biosafety protocols, academic commitments, closing of the school year and some scolding.
It is time to talk to her, if she allows it, because she is always going through “a we, a we did” that escapes from her personal trajectory. She decided to be a teacher in her teens, her rector sister inspired her.
“I lived my childhood in La Cabaña, my father was a plumber in this area. There are even students of mine who live in houses where I spent my childhood. Then I lived in Manizales where I studied Biology and Chemistry,” he says.
She completed a master’s degree in Education and is now a candidate for a doctorate in Education at the Catholic University of Manizales, with a doctoral thesis of great pretensions: proposing public policy for rural education in the region that the rector wants to present to the Administrative Region and of Planning (RAP).
She was a coordinator at the University Institute, a teacher at Bosques del Norte, in León de Greiff and in May 2015 she won the rector’s contest and chose La Cabaña. “The directors and teachers feel that they isolate them when they are sent to rural areas, but we have worked with the teachers all over the place and there are many who want to come to work here.”
She is the coordinator of the Network of Rural Rectors of Manizales, in which 15 institutions are linked.
Prize for all
She has been in her La Cabaña family for seven years, which are recognized with the Confa Woman award and her award for Best Rural Rector. Year after year he has new purposes and in mind he has other pending ones, such as the consolidation of tertiary education and creating a foundation for rural life.
On the day of Confa’s awards, due to a technical error, the video presentation of the winner was paused. An aerial map of the school was left on the screen. Without mentioning her name, the principal Angela María was already crying, her head bowed.
“It is an enormous joy, because it is the possibility of making the school visible. They gave us $ 6 million and other gifts, which were donated to the school to buy 310 overalls for the students to work in the fields. It’s not about me, it’s from the community. We wanted to know where we were going to invest the money. “
And he returns to the efforts achieved: with the Network of Rural Rectors, they were authorized companions for transportation, policies and increased routes. “What will they think of you?”, She is asked and responds: “That I am tired, I knock on many doors and do a lot of lobbying so that people realize the needs we have in rural areas. We want them to improve their living conditions. life”.
In January, the school will receive instruments for the first symphonic band in the rural area of Manizales.
Life projects
Concern for their graduates rested on her and the teachers. Most of them did not enter higher education and did not have defined short- or long-term life goals.
Helping to draw up life projects became an institutional proposal for La Cabaña school and those who were going to experience this were eleventh grade students, sponsored by the institution to improve on the Saber tests and enroll to study in higher education.
Francisco David Pineda, guidance teacher, is the one who is attentive to the two accompaniments to his students: vocational and work. “We applied a test to discover vocationally what is the interest of their students, present universities and careers. Then we made the link with the private company and the university”, explains the professor.
From so much talking, they supported the beginning of work and academic life that jumped out of the paper. They close 2021 with three students who entered the University of Manizales with scholarships, six who will enroll at the University of Caldas, four for the Seine, two for the Uniminuto, three for the ENAE and one for the U. Manuela Beltran.
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