“Developing such safe spaces requires intentional community-building activities, strategies and protocols, to facilitate inclusive conversation where everyone is heard and respected, and where educators can also make ourselves vulnerable” (Goodman, 2018)(p.6)
A South African girl came to Colombia for an exchange experience of four months with the program Round Square. Her and her classmates from their boarding school, found so many novelties about the school they came to, the city, the country, the language but particularly the lifestyle of these Colombian students, from an upper class, whose parents were absent most of the time, who went to too many parties, too many days a week, who did what they wanted and had maids all around them to pick up after their mess. She told me that she was on boarding school, because her family went bankrupt and it was simply cheaper for them to pay for a magnificent boarding school than to have her live at home, moving back and forth every day.
She thought that the kids at that Colombian school should try her boarding school, to get a sense of service even if it was only self-service.

I thought about that idea throughout the introduction of the book “It’s Not About Grit” by Steven Goodman, remembering how right she was. Attending boarding school would really do well for these kids who had so much, but so little. The whole country could really benefit from having its future politicians properly educated, instead of perpetuating the painful, faceless ignorance of the Colombian high class. Then I got to think that my parents went to boarding high schools as well, because they lived in towns that had no high schools, so they had to. They confess that though they missed home, much of who they are today, they own to that sense of community, self care and service taught in boarding schools. They continue to be community people but boarding schools are no longer open in Colombia at all.
Connecting this to the introduction, this thought of the school as a place to build a community, to have deep understandings of the troubled world and the space to “create openings for authentic dialogue”, would be incredibly possible if the school could also embrace children, like a boarding school would, to substitute foster homes, or other spaces that would deepen trauma.