2007.12.29: December 29, 2007: Headlines: COS - Colombia: Awards: Education: Macon Telegraph: Colombia RPCV Sandy Gamboa named Houston County's Gifted Teacher of the Year

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Colombia: Peace Corps Colombia : Peace Corps Colombia: Newest Stories: 2007.12.29: December 29, 2007: Headlines: COS - Colombia: Awards: Education: Macon Telegraph: Colombia RPCV Sandy Gamboa named Houston County's Gifted Teacher of the Year

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Colombia RPCV Sandy Gamboa named Houston County's Gifted Teacher of the Year

Colombia RPCV Sandy Gamboa named Houston County's Gifted Teacher of the Year

While in Colombia, in addition to teaching in the barrios, Gamboa also worked at prestigious private schools attended by children of the wealthy class. But she said the students weren't immune from facing problems. "The children attending were facing many of the same problems our Title 1 kids face today: Parents weren't there all the time because they were either working or traveling," she said. "The kids were being raised by relatives or nannies. It's amazing that kids are the same all over the world." But while kids may be the same, situations facing teachers are a lot different, she said. A big difference she noted between Colombia and the United States was the position teachers had in the culture. "There was a lot more respect shown to teachers," she said of the Latin culture. "Parents respected you, respected what you said about their children. You were called 'maestro,' or master. It was nice to know that you were respected." Our perception of Colombia is skewed by the media, she said. "It is a beautiful country, with wonderful people," she said. "We just hear about all the bad stuff on the news. It's just a minority who gets all the attention."

Colombia RPCV Sandy Gamboa named Houston County's Gifted Teacher of the Year

Brushes with history

Houston teacher brings travels to the classroom

By Jake Jacobs - jjacobs@macon.com

WARNER ROBINS --
It's hard to pull a fast one on somebody who has lived through conflicts, executions, kidnappings and such, but Houston County did just that to Sandy Gamboa.

The veteran educator of gifted students was selected as the system's Gervaise Wynn Perdue Gifted Teacher of the Year at the Board of Education's meeting Dec. 11.

The award is named for former educator Gervaise Wynn Perdue, who originated Houston County's gifted program in the 1970s.

"The award was a total surprise," Gamboa said later in an interview in her Russell Elementary classroom. "I didn't suspect anything until Jan (Jacobsen, school system director of gifted programs) started talking about cheetahs. I grew up in Africa, and we had two of them in the house."

Between the cheetahs and the award is a lifetime of travel and learning, sometimes tinged with a hint of danger. Not to mention a famous actor.

AFRICA

Gamboa was born in Maryland on Jan. 31, 1942. Her father was in aviation and was employed with the Glenn L. Martin Co., now better known as Martin Marietta Corp. In the late 1940s he was working with TWA and was shipped to Egypt.

"I was 4 years old, my brother 3 and my sister less than a year old," Gamboa said. "We spent two years there, and by that time my father was the lead mechanic with TWA."

More travel was in the offing as Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie decided he wanted to build an airline for his country. So the family pulled up stakes and moved to the capital, Addis Ababa.

There, she said, she discovered she had a knack for teaching.

"I recall teaching a young boy how to read and speak English, and I remember his jaw dropping as I read something to him," she said. "Teaching is something that came naturally to me."

Unrest in Ethiopia came and went, she said, with some grisly reminders of how serious things could be.

"There were weekly hangings. You would be in the car crossing a bridge and you'd see a body hanging by the neck," she said. "It was just part of the landscape after a while."

After four years in Ethiopia, her father was transferred back to Egypt, to Cairo. Her mother was pregnant, went to Kansas City, Mo., TWA's headquarters, and had another daughter. Six weeks later, she rejoined the family in Egypt. Then the Suez Crisis of 1956 took place.

"It was dangerous," Gamboa said. "I still have a jeweler's bag with a piece of shrapnel in it from that time. It's heavy and ugly, with sharp jagged edges, and I use it to show the kids how nasty wars are, to take the romantic notions away."

Gamboa said her education was at times interrupted by conflicts and violence.

"We lived in some hot spots while overseas where we couldn't go to school," she said. "We didn't have television and so I'd read books. Lots of books."

In the late 1950s the family moved again, this time to Massachusetts.

UNITED STATES

Gamboa's father was working at Boston's Logan Airport, and the teenager attended public schools for the first time. She had adjustments to make.

"It was a shock for a teenage girl. I had either been in all-girl schools or co-institutional schools (boys and girls attend but don't take classes together), but things here were different," she said. "I spelled words differently, using English instead of American spelling, and one other thing: At the schools I attended, whenever another teacher or adult came into the room, you stood up as a show of respect. I did it automatically at first here in the U.S., but found out I was the only one standing. I remember catching myself after that, gripping the sides of my desktop to keep seated."

Gamboa was 17 when she graduated from high school and then attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The campaign of 1960 brought Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy to town, and she became inspired with his message. So much so that she volunteered the following year for the newly created Peace Corps.

"Back then you didn't need a college degree to become part of it," she said. "I was 19 when I got a letter of acceptance signed by (Peace Corps Director) Sargent Shriver himself."

The typed letter, with the blue-ink signature, is part of her "treasure book," where she keeps mementos from her travels.

The youthful student was on her way to Colombia in 1961. She wouldn't return to the land of her birth to stay until the next century.

SOUTH AMERICA

Colombia turned out at first to be a learning experience, she said.

"The schools I had gone to overseas were in French, so that's how I learned that. I knew a few words in Spanish, but not enough to carry on a conversation," she said. "So it was really immersion," or learning a language while living in the country.

"At first I was teaching the poor how to read and write in Spanish or English, and I didn't have my degree," she said. "I was learning Spanish myself, so me and the illiterates were learning together, with an easy vocabulary."

She also met Andres Gamboa, got married and immediately began raising a family of four children: Juan Pablo, Felipe, Santiago and Juliana.

While in Cali, Colombia, Gamboa began attending San Buenaventura University to finish her college degree requirements.

"My husband supported me as I worked during the day and went to class from 6 to 10 at nights," she said. "Women weren't normally in colleges or universities at that time. I was working toward a degree in early childhood education." After five years, she earned her bachelor's degree in elementary education in 1981.

She said she taught in private schools for a total of 20 years, interrupted by further studies in Alabama and Connecticut, geared toward gifted children.

Before completing her bachelor's degree, she was teaching poor people in Cali's barrios, the poorer neighborhoods in town.

"My husband would ask, 'Why go there? It's dangerous.' I was fortunate," she said. "The people who lived there were mainly factory workers, at places such as Union Carbide, and they would stay with me at the bus stop at nights until my bus came. As a blond-haired, blue-eyed person, I stood out. They have a social caste system there - the darker you are the poorer you are."

Our perception of Colombia is skewed by the media, she said.

"It is a beautiful country, with wonderful people," she said. "We just hear about all the bad stuff on the news. It's just a minority who gets all the attention."

But she admits it was a question of safety that spurred her and husband Andres to finally pull up stakes and move to Warner Robins in 2000.

"We left Colombia because of the insecurity there," she said. "One of my nephews was almost kidnapped. It's an industry down there."

Also, Gamboa said, she almost got mugged in Cali.

"We asked ourselves, 'Do we need this?' Andres said, 'Let's go,' and we moved in 2000," she said. Daughter Juliana stayed behind with her job in banking.

THE BANKER AND ACTOR

Of Gamboa's children, daughter Juliana carries on her mother's penchant for sometimes being in risky situations.

Juliana stayed in Colombia while her mother and father moved to the United States.

"But she asked for a transfer and moved to the U.S. in July 2001," Gamboa said. She was transferred to a banking office in New York City.

One day Juliana was five minutes late for work. Gamboa was in Atlanta on a field trip with her class when her cell phone went off.

"It was my husband, and he told me, 'Juliana's OK.' I wondered, why would he tell me that?" she said. "We were at the High Museum, and then I saw on the TV it was the 9/11 attacks. Felipe, at Robins Air Force Base, had called my husband, who in turn called me. Juliana said she couldn't get a cab that morning, and she was four or five blocks away from Battery Park when the planes hit the towers."

Mother and father had visited Juliana in July when she first moved in. Her office was at the World Trade Center, and the three of them had enjoyed the view of New York from atop the towers just six weeks before the attacks, Gamboa said.

"The whole thing is ironic because we moved here to be safe and then that happened," she said. "Juliana married a Colombian in 2005 and moved back to South America the next year."

Son Juan Pablo is an actor on TV and has been in many telenovelas (Spanish-language soap operas). His fame in South America preceded him a few times while visiting his parents in Middle Georgia.

"A couple of times that he's been here visiting we would be out in public shopping and I could tell that people would recognize him but still had that look of disbelief on their faces as if asking themselves, 'What is Juan Pablo doing here at a Wal-Mart in Warner Robins?' Then he would acknowledge that he was the one, and they would scream and ask for autographs or have their picture taken with him," she said.

"I told him in the future he would stay at home with us when he visits," she laughed.

Another son, Felipe, is in the Air Force and Santiago works for Yahoo! in Miami, she said. Husband Andres is a retired design architect who nowadays does posters for her class at Russell Elementary.

THE EDUCATOR

While in Colombia, in addition to teaching in the barrios, Gamboa also worked at prestigious private schools attended by children of the wealthy class. But she said the students weren't immune from facing problems.

"The children attending were facing many of the same problems our Title 1 kids face today: Parents weren't there all the time because they were either working or traveling," she said. "The kids were being raised by relatives or nannies. It's amazing that kids are the same all over the world."

But while kids may be the same, situations facing teachers are a lot different, she said. A big difference she noted between Colombia and the United States was the position teachers had in the culture.

"There was a lot more respect shown to teachers," she said of the Latin culture. "Parents respected you, respected what you said about their children. You were called 'maestro,' or master. It was nice to know that you were respected."

Gamboa met influential educator and author Carol Schlicter in Tuscaloosa at the University of Alabama where she earned her master's degree in 1988.

She later attended the University of Connecticut during summers from 1990 through 1994, earning an education specialist's degree in 1995.

"All the gurus of gifted education are at the university," she said. "There aren't that many teachers in what we call 'gifted land,' and I was fortunate to be there."

Schlicter's book, "Characteristics of Gifted Children," has had a strong impact on her career. "Her method was to teach going by what the kids needed. If they knew the lesson they went on to other material," Gamboa said. "Students could be gifted in different areas, such as leadership, math, artistic or creative thinking. You don't have to be gifted in everything."

Gifted students have to deal with a misconception that sometimes can dog them all the while they're in school, she said, and it can lead some to ruin.

"We need to dispel this myth of 'You're in FOCUS, you should know the answer,' " she said. "Some gifted students feel that pressure throughout their school career and burn out sometimes the first year of college. So much is expected of them that they can't take the pressure. I know of some B or C students who've done better in life. It's all about what you do with your smarts."

She encourages students to use their smarts, to think through problems and explore as many solutions as possible.

"For instance, one of my students told me he wanted a snake for Christmas. I asked him what kind of snake, so he wrote Jeff Corwin (noted animal expert on TV) on the Internet to find out what he thought. He's still waiting for an answer," she said. "We teach these kids the how-to's. It's one of the joys of teaching these kids. They catch on so fast."

FOCUS is an acronym for Fostering Originality, Creativity, Unique ideas and Self-direction, she said. Students have to pass a series of tests to be admitted to the elementary school program. In middle and high school, it's called the honors program.

Gamboa has been a FOCUS teacher at Miller, Shirley Hills and Russell elementary schools in Warner Robins the past seven years, she said. She's been at Russell the past three years.

One program students are taught is called "MiniSociety," where they have to design a society, paying attention to economics. They have to earn money by making products.

"They learn about scarcity, opportunity cost - stuff we didn't learn about until college," Gamboa said.

She also has fifth grade students join the stock market game online. They're given $100,000 and see what they end up with at the end of 10 weeks.

"We've won the game statewide with students at Miller and Shirley Hills, and three times here at Russell," she said. "We beat high schools and middle schools. I thought, 'this is nice.'"

Whether the child is in FOCUS or not, Gamboa said, a key aspect to their continued success in school is contact with the parents. At times it's not as smooth as she would like it.

"Each child is different. Some parents are difficult to handle but the vast majority here are wonderful," she said. "The key is communication; you have to let them know who you are."

She said at the onset of every school year she asks parents for their e-mail address, and uses the Internet to stay in touch.

"If a child is missing a homework assignment, I get in touch with their parents immediately. Nip it in the bud," she said.

She stays in touch with her students' regular teachers via e-mail, she said.

At times gifted teachers sense some resentment from other teachers "because we have their kids," she said, "but I can understand that."

The process students go through to find their way to her class could use some work, she said.

"We need to change how we evaluate the kids, how we know what they know," she said. "We shouldn't be teaching them what they've already learned."

More programs geared toward gifted students would be welcome, she said. It would be a wise investment.

"Out of every $100 that's spent under No Child Left Behind, only one cent goes to the gifted child," she said, "but they're our leaders of tomorrow."

There is a myth that gifted students learn by themselves, she said, but they're still kids and in need of guidance and understanding.

"We need to cater to the child's interests," she said. "Students ought to come to school happy."

COMMENT ON THIS STORY AT MACON.COM.

To contact writer Jake Jacobs, call 923-6199, extension 305.




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