Will Brehm 0:11
Daniela Hernández Silva, welcome to FreshEd.

Daniela Hernández Silva 1:53
Oh, thank you, Will. Thank you for inviting me.

Will Brehm 1:55
And congratulations on your Flux episode. It was absolutely amazing.

Daniela Hernández Silva 2:01
Well, thanks. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to explore my ideas and for the amazing team. Honestly, it has been a great journey.

Will Brehm 2:11
And I feel like I know you so well already. And so, this is a bit strange to sit down with you for an interview. So, for audience members, please bear with us a little bit as we go through our conversation because it feels like I’m talking to an old friend since Danny has been working on Flux for nearly eight months now -I think it is.

Daniela Hernández Silva 2:31
Yeah, since October -maybe November.

Will Brehm 2:34
So, can I ask, Danny, why did you even apply for FreshEd Flux? What was your motivation?

Daniela Hernández Silva 2:41
I think I was moved by the fact that I knew I had so many results of my previous field work that I really wanted to disclose and I didn’t know how. And I saw a window, there like, yeah, maybe there is a space where I can expose it. And I really liked that, in the application it said, I don’t remember exactly but something like that you were looking for people to expose results in a different way, or to be creative or something like that. That I was like, “Yeah, I want to do that”. I was also being sort of very tired of the academy of writing papers -very, very structured papers. Because I felt that I cannot express all the things that I found, or that I could analyze in those written structures. So, I thought that that would be nice. And then I remembered that when doing the actual recording for applying, I realized that I could also mix music and songs and recording and post-production with it. And I was like “Yeah, I never thought that it could be possible to combine my passion for music, for sounds, and my academic research”. So, I think it was just a great, great decision.

Will Brehm 4:11
Did you have any experience mixing audio before you applied?

Daniela Hernández Silva 4:16
Not the way I did. I mean, I tried to play the bass. I kind of sing. So, I’m very familiar with music. I think I’m a very good listener. I am super into sound and sometimes some things that I played I recorded. I was familiar for example with GarageBand but never with ProTools and never in a very formal way of cutting the voice and making a whole post-production. No, not at all.

Will Brehm 4:49
I still remember your submission when you applied to Flux because you did add music into the audio submission. And it was like you were telling this story to us. And you only had two minutes if I recall. And we were just absolutely amazed when we heard that, and we just said, “We have to work with her”.

Daniela Hernández Silva 5:14
Yeah, I remember that I thought, “Okay, they are asking me to talk about myself. And I really wanted to include the bass. I love the bass and I feel that it’s an instrument that -I don’t know, I think it represents me in a way. And it talks about my way of being I would say.

Will Brehm 5:35
So, now that in a sense, you’ve completed the fellowship, because you’ve now aired your episode. What was the experience like?

Daniela Hernández Silva 5:47
I think it was a great experience, and a very, very new one for me. So, I think it was great to receive feedback. I will definitely say that about this experience, because I think it’s the first time in my life that I feel -that I actually know- what it is to work with great feedback, and how much you can grow super-fast. So, I think, in six months, it was not just that I produced something, but that I grew professionally, just by listening and receiving excellent feedback given by the team. So, I think that was a great takeaway from this experience.

Will Brehm 6:29
In what ways do you think you’ve grown? What parts of you have grown?

Daniela Hernández Silva 6:34
So, I think, because the podcast includes so many different layers, I see it that way. So, every layer has a whole history and whole process behind. So, for example, to learn how to properly use ProTools or to make post-production, or to edit voices, or to record voices, or to improve a recording studio in my closet, you know? That’s something that I didn’t know how to do. And also, I would talk about the content. All the support that Jo gave to me was amazing. All her comments, all her inputs, her feedbacks, and the fact that I was able to include another literary genre, as magical realism is -I never wrote something like that. I had just ideas in my mind, but never wrote something like that. And writing that is an extremely different process than just writing an academic paper. So, I felt that I learned a lot. And yeah, so just also, when seeing the result, and seeing how many things are possible to obtain when just letting your heart flow in your ideas. It’s amazing.

Will Brehm 7:50
It is quite interesting how you combined -what you said- about five years of ethnographic fieldwork in rural Colombia visiting countless schools and talking with countless people. But you’ve combined it with that literary form of magical realism. And you were able to do that in the script really beautifully. What about the audio? Did the podcast give you an opportunity to express your ideas in ways that the written word wouldn’t allow you to?

Daniela Hernández Silva 8:26
Yeah. Definitely, yes. So, I think that my feeling before doing the podcast was that every time that I wanted to expose a result, it was with my mind, right? I write with my mind. Of course, I can put my heart in a way, but it was mainly a way of finding a voice that is legitimate. That’s why you need to have this structure and to use this data and to use a lot of percentages and to quote and to -you know. This is how you try to legitimate your work. And I feel that by doing that, I was just working with my mind. But that was something else. Something beyond that, that I that I experienced in my field works. And it was a lot of heart, not just mind. It was a lot of tears, a lot of emotions, a lot of things that were happening and that I knew that even if I wrote them, were not going to be taken into account the way and in the dimension that it has. So, I think [this focus on?] exploring the sound as a way of exposing the results was amazing in the way that it was not just trying to explain but sharing what I felt when I was there. And I feel that feelings are something completely underestimated. And not just the feelings that I can feel when listening to them but also the feelings that they can express through their stories and through the subtext of their stories, the hidden characters, right? The trauma, the memories that they have. Those things have a huge weight on their perceptions, on their decisions. And I thought and I always thought that that should be given the importance that it has in order to make, for example, I don’t know, policy decisions. And that’s something that is very hidden in that kind of work.

Will Brehm 10:31
A lot of those stories and the memories come through the character of Jose in your podcast. How did you even come up with having a composite character? Having a character comprised of all of the different voices you heard during your ethnographic fieldwork? How did you even come to that idea, in conclusion, that that’s what you wanted to do in a podcast?

Daniela Hernández Silva 10:58
So, I have to say that before doing this, I didn’t even know that this was called doing a composite character. It was very naturally decided because I think it was my way of doing ethnography, I think it was the way I always saw how ethnography works, and how my writing worked. So, I always thought that when writing, I was trying to combine all the stories, and try to find trends, and try to give a voice through my voice to the many voices that I have heard. So, when thinking about this, and when doing a lot of interviews, but honestly, a lot,

Will Brehm 11:46
Like how many?

Daniela Hernández Silva 11:47
I don’t know. It took me like five years. Maybe more than 500 for sure.

Will Brehm 11:54
Wow!

Daniela Hernández Silva 11:54
So, there is a point where you can have this voice in your head, right? And for me, it was so clear to have one voice of their voices, that it was almost as if this composite character already existed. And then it was incredible, the process of writing, because I remember talking to Jo and saying, “I feel crazy, because I know, Jose wouldn’t say this. I know he wouldn’t find an easy way to talk to me about this”. And it’s like the process for me to me of doing ethnography.

Will Brehm 12:33
Hmm. I love it. It’s a really fascinating methodological insight that you’ve combined between sort of ethnography and audio podcasting. It’s just, I think there’s a lot more to explore going forward. But I want to ask a little bit about Jose himself as a person. Because his voice is just so incredible on the podcast. How did you find him and how did you work with him to record that voice?

Daniela Hernández Silva 13:05
So, Jose is the character right. And then Pablo is the one that recorded his voice. So, Pablo used to be one of my students when I was a teacher.

Will Brehm 13:19
Ahh!

Daniela Hernández Silva 13:19
I was a first graders teacher. And when he was six years old, he was my student. And he was amazing. He was amazing. He has like, you can tell this great gift of doing things with his voice. He’s super smart. So, when doing this, I couldn’t imagine this with another voice that wasn’t him because I felt that he could very, very well represent the personality. I mean, Jose is still a character and he has his own personality, and I think Pablo did a great voice, just getting into Jose. He asked me questions, and he explored a bit about the character, and he found an accent to be similar to those areas, and we worked on it together. And he had very clear in mind that it was going to be a character. And he helped me also to feel as a kid. So, I remember that when we were recording, he was like no teacher, I wouldn’t say this, I would say it better like that. And I think that was amazing also to come with his inputs and his talent.

Will Brehm 14:37
That brings up a really interesting point about writing for children. It’s hard as an adult to give voice to children. So, it’s having Pablo give you his insights into how Jose should speak or would speak just made it so authentic.

Daniela Hernández Silva 14:55
Yeah, yeah. Definitely. And I think it’s also my feeling of deeply respecting other’s voices. I feel that so, I really tried to be as close as possible to their reality and to their perceptions. So, yeah. I think that was an amazing process.

Will Brehm 15:19
And the outcome. It’s just incredible to hear Pablo’s voice on the podcast. What about in the beginning of the episode? There’s sort of old Pablo talking. Where did that narrative come from?

Daniela Hernández Silva 15:38
So, that is the only part of the entire podcast that is not a composite character. It’s an actual interview that I had. It’s an extract of an actual interview in the voice of Pablo’s dad. So, this was one of the people that I interview. He’s from a very, very remote rural area and he was telling me these things, and then he was not the only one. And when I realized that I really wanted to share this very small extract of a real-life experience in his own words. Although I put it in English to make it more understandable and to make it more into the flow of the podcast, but it’s important that all the audience know that no one there is speaking English. And that guy didn’t speak in English and everything happened in Spanish.

Will Brehm 16:41
That opening story is just so incredible when you stop and really listen to what Jose, the character, is saying. You bring up this issue of Spanish and putting things into English. Obviously FreshEd is an English language podcast, so thank you for doing it in English for our listeners. But you actually do more than that. It’s not just that you put things into English, because there’s so much Spanish, that you hear Jose saying. So, how did you come up with this idea of your approach to translation?

Daniela Hernández Silva 17:20
I am super passionate about methodologies. I love methodologies. I love the content. I love studying rural education. But as I’m passionate about rural education, I’m passionate about methodologies. And I spent a lot of time thinking about ways of improving my methods, my research methods, of ways of being less bias, let’s say. And so, I think that I got to the conclusion that, for me, applying some qualitative methods of research and then writing and analyzing the text, it was pretty much an exercise of translation. You have a fact and then you translate it into your interpretation. And then that interpretation goes to another way of translation towards an analysis or a conclusion. So, I think we have a lot of processes of translation during the act of doing research. And I think it was so clear in my mind that when doing this, and also with the desire to clearly differentiate what I was saying, from what he was saying, and the fact that all that I was saying was just an interpretation, and not necessarily what is there. It just came together, and it was just a result of all those things. Another thing that I think is very important is that methods are not just one chapter talking about the structures of the paper, right? To me, methods are something that should be embedded, should be transversal to all the research, all the analysis, all the results. And to me, it was very important to make it clear during the entire process and to remind during the entire process, that all that they were listening and concluding was being part of a method that I decided to use in order to interpret what he was saying. So, I think that’s good to know because you can be more aware of -you know, what I’m saying? It’s not necessarily what he was feeling, but it was what I understood of what he was saying. And I think it’s important to remember that in the entire process of understanding a research of someone else.

Will Brehm 19:52
It’s so fascinating because what you ended up doing was creating, in a sense, three different characters. You are playing in a way two characters. One character is the sort of internal monologue that you’re having while listening to Jose. And then the second character is sort of the narrator, the voice who’s speaking out or even writing on paper, as you sort of played with in the podcast. And then of course, the third character is Jose who actually is an embodiment of 500 characters. And so, it’s a really fascinating, sort of set up that you’ve created. And I guess one of the things I wonder with the translation, since I don’t speak Spanish, but are there moments where your reflections on what’s being said in English, different from what Jose is saying in Spanish? Or are there bits in Spanish that just don’t actually get picked up in that reflection in English?

Daniela Hernández Silva 21:05
I think all that I say in English is what I interpret from what he says. That’s for sure. But also, I think that there are some other hidden interpretations that maybe a Spanish speaker could get better. For example, in things like the accent, or in things that you can, you can sort of feel his habitus, Jose’s social personality, Jose’s positionality too in his tone in his -for example, there is this part when he talks in the same sentence. And he mixes them. I don’t know how to explain this in English. But it’s like saying tu and then saying usted. Which, tuis like very personal, familiar. And then usted is a very formal way. And people in the rural areas usually tend to mix them both. And it’s quite particular of their accent and in their way of speaking. So, if you can understand what he’s saying beyond the text, it’s like you can tell that he is speaking in a different way, right? And even more if people from Colombia can listen to this, well, they will get even more troves here.

Will Brehm 22:24
Oh, really? So, there are certain ideas and sort of themes that come through that are potentially only going to be picked up by people that really know Colombia well.

Daniela Hernández Silva 22:35
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, in the accent, in the expressions. When my family listened to it, they laughed in some parts, because they know that there are some expressions that are like very cute in a kid like that are from the rural areas.

Will Brehm 22:50
I’d love to hear from some listeners, I think, who are bilingual or who have spent time in Colombia and get their feedback because this is what makes your podcast so exciting is it’s not only layered in terms of so much sound that you’re playing with. And you put together really masterfully, but there’s so many layers in terms of what we’ll understand. And so, for English speakers, who don’t speak Spanish, who don’t know much about Colombia, we will understand it in one way. But someone who does speak Spanish probably will understand it in another way. And then someone that really knows Colombia and rural Colombia, they’ll probably understand it in yet another way. And so, I mean, it’s a really interesting piece that that I hope listeners will listen to again and again, and sort of unpack everything that you’ve put into it.

Daniela Hernández Silva 23:42
Yeah.

Will Brehm 23:44
So, I want to turn to a little bit about the content of your story because you’re doing some interesting things when it comes to Escuela Nueva, the rural education model that was implemented in Colombia. Could you maybe just give us a brief overview of what Escuela Nueva is? And then what is the critique you were trying to make through the podcast?

Daniela Hernández Silva 24:19
Sure. So, very briefly, Escuela Nueva is a model of education. So, it started at the end of the 19th century in Europe. And it started for wealthy people. And it was a very exclusive model of education. So, it started as, let’s say, an alternative way of teaching that questions traditional learning spaces. So, that’s why its main component is to be a multi-grade system of education. Because as the word says, there are different levels, different grades in the same classroom. So, we have one classroom with first graders, second graders, third graders, and so on, depending on the school. So, that’s like the core. And it had like, a few pedagogical strategies that were part of this model, this core, which was, for example, implementing learning by doing activities. Or they were against, let’s say, a shared goal of the curriculum. They tried to offer a personalized education based on the interests and the speed of every student, which differs, of course from traditional schooling. Well, I mean, all of these implies, of course, a new role for teachers in this model because being a traditional teacher, you cannot have all elementary school in one classroom. So, they created tools for teachers and they gave this role of more like being facilitators than teachers that gave an instruction, right? They were like more supported on booklets, on activities, and they have something very important, that is transversal content. So, this transversal content means that you have one topic, and you develop the same topic in different levels, depending on the grade of the student. So, that was the model that was created in Europe. And that is not necessarily the model that is been implemented in Colombia. In Colombia, it was implemented since the 70s. And of course, in every country, I mean, every country has tried to appropriate and tried to implement that in their context and suffer changes, I guess, depending on the structural conditions of it. So, my critique, I would say, is not necessarily against the model. To me, Escuela Nueva is a model. it’s just that. It is a set of strategies. I think, it’s not good or bad. I think it works under certain circumstances as it is. But in Colombia -and this is my critique- I think we don’t have most of the structural conditions to make the model work as it should be working. And so, I think, even though we can perceive that this model has been successful because it has helped to increase the coverage rates incredibly in Colombia. When we talk about quality, and when we talk about what is happening nowadays in our schools, and even more so if we include the COVID situation, we can realize that here it’s just not working the way it is supposed to be working. So, I think we have conditions such as infrastructural conditions, there is structural conditions from our country. We don’t have roads to remote areas. We don’t have connection, we don’t have internet. We have also social structures that doesn’t help. For example, insecurity, right? You cannot have computers or televisions inside the classroom because they are going to be stolen. Or the fact that we are a very centralized country, that doesn’t help either to promote things in rural areas. And I think the main thing is that we, in Colombia, still have a general traditional system. And the only alternative system is this implementation of Escuela Nueva models in rural schools. So, we are trying to insert an alternative model in a very, very traditional system. And we try to evaluate, and to coordinate, and to give resources to these alternative things from a traditional way of functioning. And so, it’s not working. It’s definitely not working especially in the remote areas.

Will Brehm 29:34
In your episode, Jose struggles with being recruited by -I think it was- guerrilla groups in some remote areas. And so, is that another structural condition that is –

Daniela Hernández Silva 29:48
Oh, yeah-

Will Brehm 29:49
Sort of preventing the development of schools and as you said, the quality of education perhaps.

Daniela Hernández Silva 29:58
Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of structural conditions, cultural conditions, historical conditions. And if we talk about the history of Colombia, and history that comes until today, we talk about war. And we talk about a lot of different forces that operates in the rural areas. Unfortunately, we don’t have just regular rural problems. We have a lot of things happening in the rural areas because we are a very centralized country. So, we can say that there are a lot of remote areas that have not a clear presence from the state. And so, we have, as I say, in the podcast, the military forces, we have guerrilla groups, we have drug traffickers, cartels, all operating in the same area. And it’s usually in the remote areas. And the schools are there because the schools are a hub of kids, of new generations of teenagers that are also deciding what to do with their lives. And so, it’s like a fight of forces sometimes. And you can tell just by listening to the teacher’s histories. All the things that they have to struggle to do. Most of the teachers in those areas end up living inside the school. So, there is a lot of things happening that are structural, that are not necessarily about the model. But then the thing is that this is what we have. This is a resource that we have to reach those new generations, to reach changes, to reach peace. And if it’s not working, I think we either change the social conditions, or we think of something that could fit better in the structural conditions that we have, in either of both ways. But just pretending that something is working, just because the schools remain open, it’s a danger for the future of the country.

Will Brehm 32:05
It’s a really interesting analysis of what’s happening. And I just keep thinking back to your podcast, because you show all of that. Listeners are moved into those spaces in rural Colombia. And I feel like I know Jose as a person listening to your podcast. And I feel for him being a young male, being recruited by the drug cartels, or the guerrilla groups, whatever it is, and also knowing that he didn’t have -his family moved to the city. And so, he was living with his grandmother. And so, he just sort of embodied all of these structural conditions and these constraints, and what it meant for education to give him a better life chance and realizing that he might not actually get it. And it was just sort of deeply sad, in a way

Yeah, definitely. And I like to be optimistic, honestly, I try to, but it is very, very hard and that’s when I’m talking about feelings. Because it’s very hard to be there and to realize that it is very likely that there is not a happy ending for him and for thousands. We’re not talking about 10 kids and even 10 is important. But we are talking about thousands that are in the same position as Jose is. And to know that -I mean, of course, everything could happen. And we can talk about the 1%. This 1% school that is working. That’s good. I mean, there is one school, that’s good to see. 0.01% of students made it to higher education. Like yeah, you made it. But that’s not the common reality of what their lives end up being.

Dani, you brought to life a story and a context that -it’s just was amazing how you did it. I mean, it was a real sonic journey and you should feel really proud of what you’ve created, because it is just absolutely amazing.

Daniela Hernández Silva 34:24
Thank you.

Will Brehm 34:25
What is next in store for you, Danny? Where to after this episode?

Daniela Hernández Silva 34:32
Well, I think this topic has been not just my master’s thesis topic, but I would say my professional and personal goal of life topic. And so, I’ve been doing this independent research for five years and I don’t want to stop now. So, I definitely want to continue working on this but I want to start using this for the people and maybe to think about the changes that could be proposed. I am not completely sure with certainty what is going to be next. I’m just going to graduate from my master’s this year and then I’ll see if I can continue with this project within the academia or within an organization. That’s not clear to me yet. But I think my goal is to continue in this topic.

Will Brehm 35:28
Well, Daniela Hernández Silva, thank you so much for joining FreshEd. Thank you for being the first Flux fellow to finish her episode. And just keep us updated with where you end up.

Daniela Hernández Silva 35:41
Thanks, Will. And thanks for giving me the opportunity to explore these things because it would have been literally impossible without you and the team, of course. So, thank you.

Will Brehm 35:52
Thank you.

Want to help translate this show? Please contact info@freshedpodcast.com

Related Guest Publications/Projects:

Education for the rural development. A critical analysis of the implementation process of the Escuela Nueva program in Colombia

Educación para el desarrollo rural. Análisis crítico del proceso de implementación del programa Escuela Nueva en Colombia

Related Resources: Spanish

¿Qué es el modelo Escuela Nueva Activa?- Fundación Escuela Nueva

Evaluación de resultados en la Escuela Nueva de Colombia ¿es el multigrado la respuesta?- George Psacharopoulos

Manual de Implementación Escuela Nueva. Subdirección de Referentes y Evaluación de la Calidad Educativa Ministerio de Educación Nacional

La enseñanza primaria en las escuelas de maestro único. De la sección de estudios y documentación de SGT y MEN- Concepción Borreguero

La educación rural en Colombia: experiencias y perspectivas- Martha Carrero & María González

Escuela nueva: una estrategia pedagógica en la institución educativa agropecuaria santa Bárbara- Jaime Cuadros

Una mirada a la escuela nueva- Eleazar Narváez

Historia y evolución de la Escuela Nueva como modelo educativo en Colombia- Alexis Pedrozo & Nora Gutiérrez

La efectividad de la Escuela Nueva en Colombia- Patrick J. McEwan

En busca de la escuela del siglo XXI. ¿Puede darnos la pista la Escuela Nueva de Colombia?- Ernesto Schiefelbein

Related Resources: English

INTED2017- Interview with Vicky Colbert

2013 WISE Prize Vicky Colbert

The Colombian Escuela Nueva School Model: Linking program implementation and learning outcomes- Katharina Hammier

Education in rural Colombia: an investment in human resources- Eugene Havens

The politics of rural school reform: Escuela Nueva in Colombia- Patrick J. McEwan

Achievement Evaluation of Colombia’s Escuela Nueva: Is Multigrade the Answer?- George Psacharopoulos

Assessing gang risks in postwar environments: The case of Colombia

From rural Colombia to urban alienation

Multimedia

Colombia: FARC recruitment of child soldiers boosted by pandemic

Colombia: How the youngest suffer from ‘those people’

Most dangerous way to school

Women built this city: Colombia’s city of women: a safe haven from civil war and sexual violence

Have any useful resources related to this show? Please send them to info@freshedpodcast.com