El Potrillo, a Wichí community of just under 3.000 inhabitants, located in the west of the province of Formosa, is the place where Osvaldo Segovia has been teaching for 20 years.For just a few days now, and after a long period of distance learning during the pandemic, Osvaldo has been proudly holding his degree. brand new degree in Educational Organization and Management (LOGE) from the Universidad Austral, a degree program offered by the School of EducationAnd he is the first graduate from his community.
Osvaldo lives with his family, which consists of his wife and three children. “But we Wichí, like many other indigenous peoples, are one big family,” he explains.
In his community, he began his teaching career after finishing high school, where he earned a teaching degree in Indigenous culture and language. He taught his first classes at the primary level and, years later, continued as a teacher of Wichí language and literature at the secondary level. Today, Osvaldo is part of the coordination team for the bilingual intercultural education program in Formosa, which teaches Spanish and the Wichí language.
The LOGE is a curriculum supplementation cycle aimed primarily at teachers. A teacher who is trained and motivated to be a manager is a differentiating asset in an educational center because they possess a comprehensive view of the dimensions of the organization.And that's how Osvaldo sees it, who affirms that, while he felt he contributed to education from his worldview as an Indigenous person, this title helps him to elevate the status of his work. “Today I have the tools to manage intercultural bilingual education and I aspire to be responsible for some important area in my community, because I can be the necessary intermediary to explain the educational project and public policies to the students' parents in our language,” he says.
In every answer Osvaldo gives, the community is always present, because, as he said from the beginning, it's his family. That's why empowering the Wichí people of El Potrillo is so important to him. How? “I feel I can be the bridge between two worlds to drive community growth"And so that we can also achieve true interculturality in schools: taking what is unique to indigenous culture and also taking what is from non-indigenous culture that also helps me grow as a person and as a subject with the right to a good education," he adds.
She always considered her education and teaching important. That's why she decided to begin distance study in the Universidad Australto stay connected to your work.
The road was not easy, in addition to the well-known difficulties of finish a bachelor's degree during a pandemicIn Osvaldo's case, the poor internet signal forced him to use his personal data to take the different subjects and to participate in virtual meetings with his teachers and students.
Although the challenge for Osvaldo was primarily in the language: “Spanish is my second language, and the thought of producing academic work was the most difficult limitation. While I consider my Spanish to be very limited, all the subjects were geared towards what I already did in my work, so I was familiar with much of the content thanks to my experience and was able to apply all my knowledge.”
“The university itself prioritizes and values people and human relationships, regardless of their background, and in my case, being Indigenous, I felt that the standards were the same as those applied to other students. At Austral University, they prioritized the quality, depth, and content that I conveyed in each of the assignments I submitted to the professors,” he adds.
He maintains that faculty support was a fundamental pillar throughout his career. Osvaldo recalls the support he received from the very beginning, starting with his first admissions interview. Juan Assirio, a professor at the School of Education, was the first to speak with Osvaldo, and remembers: “His profile seemed very valuable to me throughout the program, as is the case with other LOGE students from very diverse educational backgrounds; he has been a true asset with his prior training and his educational perspective.”
The virtual format allowed Osvaldo to study with classmates whose educational backgrounds were very different from his own, and who also came from completely different socioeconomic contexts. “My classmates also understood me, read me, and valued me from my own perspective, in this intercultural exchange that was generated with them,” he adds.
Victoria Tonelli, a professor at the School of Education, considers it a “learning experience” to have worked alongside Osvaldo. She assisted him with his final research project. “I suggested,” she recalls, “that one possibility for future research could be to delve deeper into the challenges of communication in a multicultural, bilingual school. At that moment, Osvaldo spoke in a way he hadn't before and said, 'I belong to the Wichi community.' And he explained what it means to speak and be spoken to in a language that, in our country, doesn't enjoy the same social prestige as Spanish.”
Osvaldo's time at Austral University undoubtedly left its mark on the institution. "As a language teacher, I've always been convinced that the way we speak and the way we see the world are closely linked: we conceive of reality through the words we use to describe and transform it. After his testimony and his example, we too were transformed," Tonelli reflects.
And just as Professor Tonelli expresses the impact Osvaldo has had during his time at the university, Professor Assirio reflects on the impact he will have in his community. “The degree Osvaldo earned is a great achievement for him. But it also belongs to his family and community, since the coursework required a great deal of effort and commitment to complete each stage. Now comes the stage of applying everything Osvaldo has learned to his community, to improve the processes and management tasks of the institutions where he currently works. There, he can also become a great agent of social change, thanks to the impact he can have on a large number of people: students, professors, families, and other institutions,” Assirio says about the new graduate's future.
Education, in this case for school leaders, generates transformative action. Today, LOGE graduates are deployed in many corners of Argentina, and in countries of the region, to train new generations who will be agents of change in the realities where they work.Osvaldo, with his degree in hand, will make his mark on the Wichi community of El Potrillo and throughout the province of Formosa. “Today I feel that many doors will open for me in the field of education,” he says.
This achievement will also leave a mark on the young people he lives with. “The message for all of them is that, as an Indigenous person, one can achieve, despite the many difficulties we may encounter, that we are capable of studying and completing a bachelor's degree. And to show them that we can also be part of the educational management of our area. We are all capable of moving forward. While our grandparents and parents couldn't reach where we are today, they had already dreamed of their children becoming professionals; and I am proud to have fulfilled their dream: to be an Indigenous person with a bachelor's degree and aspirations to change the lives of many Wichí students.”
