Upcoming Changes in Elementary’s Learning Center

The end of the school year will be saying goodbye to multiple members of the learning center, within them Gloria Cecilia Tobon, more commonly known as Chila by various generations of students and staff members.

The multiple important departures have as a synonym challenge. The promising successors will be having some big shoes to fill, but the intensive preparation received for their upcoming job will very likely make them cut the mustard.

“The biggest challenge is the new people who are several, and how to take advantage of that moment of transition to make changes, to innovate, that moment where we have to study what things are staying the same, what things should change, what things we can improve and reflect on this,” said Annia Duran, Elementary School Principal.

Chila, who has been working for 37 years at The Columbus School, 16 of them in the learning center, has the credit and responsibility for a huge part of the center’s development and growth. Her area focuses on students from K4 to K5 as well as the application exams. Like many other people on directive charges at TCS, she began as a teacher but later applied her actual career, difficulties in learning and didactics, to her new job.

“I just did a replacement for Olguita [person in charge of 2nd grade in the learning center] who was absent for three months…. I have been preparing to assume the position,” said Yepes.

The person who will be receiving Chila’s current position will be Luisa Fernanda Yepes, a licensed in english with a specialization in neurodevelopment and learning who, for the past five years, has been part of the learning center. Yepes currently works mostly with students on grades 1st to 5th but will be soon taking the reins of the young ones.

“She is a girl with a really great enthusiasm for knowing, for learning, for doing things… She is a lovely girl who is very young but arrived as young as me,” commented Tobon.

Even if Chila is leaving when the school year concludes, the TCS community will still be seeing her around, as she will be providing her support for the newcomer and the learning center for a while.

“The learning center is something to be proud of at the Columbus School, as it has been progressively growing to the point where not only the little ones but the whole school has it. It is easy to find the figure of learning center in one of the brother schools, unlike a normal school.”