On Tuesday, November 9th, Mr. Alex Garcia, a businessman from Caracus, Venezuela visited the Alburnett Introduction to Business classroom via Skype. Mr. Kuhlers had the students write out questions the week before and gave those to Mr. Garcia to research his response. Mr. Garcia is an IT manager for an American company in Caracus, but he is a native Venezuelean. Most of his English communication is written so this was an opportunity for him to improve to work on his English speaking skills.
This opportunity gave the Alburnett students a chance to experience the global environment first hand. Besides hearing about Venezuela from Mr. Garcia, at the end he asked some questions in Spanish to the students. MacKenzie Mann and Jordan Neighbor stepped up to the challenge and had a short conversation with him in Spanish. This was an outstanding experience for my students and I hope to do more guest speakers via Skype as the opportunities arise.
Senior Kylee Pyle commented, this was something different and gave us a different view of how communication works. Aly Warner noted, it was neat to hear his comparisons of the U.S. and Venzuela. Danica Windfield realized that communicating isn't always as easy we want it to be. In the students reflection notes, many would like to do again, possibly using students from other countries.
