Magical Classroom

This past January, the leadership team from Aula Mágica traveled to the municipality of Chiantla located in the northwestern Guatemalan department of Huehuetenango to explore the potential for collaboration between our program and local communities. While we were plenty optimistic for the trip, even our greatest expectations were surpassed by the end of things.

While the town center is just a short drive away from the bustling city of Huehuetenango and offers many urban comforts, Chiantla’s municipal boundaries (similar to the county system back in the U.S.) are incredibly vast and sparsely populated. Our program had received an invitation on behalf of our close partner, Miracles in Action, to examine the possibility of working with different communities in the area known to be well-organized and without pre-school education. With a population over 100,000 people sparsely spread through 76 different rural communities –many of them without electricity and government pre-school programs- we knew that Chiantla could end up being an ideal landing spot for Aula Mágica. And so we traveled more than 6 hours away from our starting point in Antigua up the windy and bumpy mountain roads of Huehuetenango, bumbling from community to community in search of partners to grow our humble yet ambitious program.

The majority of Chiantla’s rural communities are located in a rocky plateau high above the town center in the foothills of the majestic Cuchumatanes mountain range. The terrain in this former glacial plateau is not unlike that found on the moon: desolate, dry and no signs of life in many places. A constant lack of water combined with the area’s frigid temperatures makes growing crops incredibly difficult in most area, forcing most families to economically depend on potato and lamb production. Life here is not easy, meaning that families have had to stick together across generations to survive tough times. This community organization is exactly what will help make Aula Mágica so successful in this area.

During our time bouncing from community to community in our rented pick-up truck, we were captivated by the resilience of the communities and the individuals that call them home. Carolina, a soon to be promotora in Aula Mágica, has been participating in a government study program for the last few years to approach her high school degree despite being from a community with only primary school education available. How Carolina was able to fund her studies is even more impressive: Initially given one sheep by her parents to raise and someday sell for profit, Carolina quickly used the earnings from her first sale to turn one sheep into two. Two sheep soon became three and so on until finally making enough money to pay for her schooling. Unfortunately, the next necessary jump in her schooling ended up exceeding Carolina’s budget, forcing her to reconsider her ambitions to someday graduate from college.

However, with the help of Aula Mágica, Carolina will now earn enough money to follow her dream and continue her studies while simultaneously bringing quality education to the upcoming generation. Carolina is just one of five future Aula Mágica instructors from the Chiantla area invited to participate in next week’s teacher training, and each one of her peer’s stories offering a similar tale of perseverance and commitment towards the betterment of their communities. Like Carolina and her peers, we at Aula Mágica are willing to go the distance to help people like her realize their full educational potential - even if it requires raising a sheep or two to do so.

We just completed the training session for teachers that we hold for a week every year in January. There were over 30 people there from all of the communities that we touch during the year. We gather the teachers togetherat Familias de Esperanza two times each year. It is where I began volunteering seven years ago. They provide us with a meeting room more than adequate for our group, dormitory rooms for all the people, and a kitchen for us to cook in. We literally could not run the organization with as many teachers as we have without their cooperation.

We take this opportunity in January to thank all the teachers, do organizational tasks such as get all of their current emails and get them the addresses of their sponsors so they can keep them informed throughout the year. We also use the opportunity to get to know them better and have them get to know each other better so that they feel they have a support group, even though they operate totally independently throughout the year. We give them new supplies too, especially books, and teach them how to use them. They have 2 hour sessions where they teach each other what they've been doing and learning in their classrooms. It is altogether a great event with a lot of young people energy.

Links:

• Home Website for Lets Be Ready

The following is a report from Zeneida Ixmata on recent activities: 

The Magical Classroom Program been running fine here on the lake. We were working with 10 teachers here in San Pedro but had to close two classrooms because the teachers did not complete their group of children so we now have 8 teachers. In Santiago Atitlán we have 4 teachers. In San Juan La Laguna one teacher works in the library of that community. In Chajabal, Totonicapán there are six teachers working, and 2 teachers more in Quetzaltenango.

As regional coordinator of Magic Classroom program, I have handled all the funds funds and direction of the lake region, but I know teachers working there and other communities like Chajabal, San Andrés Xecul Totonicapan and the Florida community for Quetzaltenango Colomba ... they are not at my expense.

We have discussed how to save money for the purchase of materials for teachers, these materials are not enough to do all the activities we do with you children, so parents have helped us to meet these needs. There are at the Lake shops selling materials at a good price and of course it does not have the same quality, and are a bit more simple but we know we do not have enough funds to buy in a bookstore.

Some communities have helped us with chairs for kids, crayons, bond sheets, scissors, thread and this has been of benefit to teachers who do not get a lot of money.

We are also recycling many materials, magazines, newspapers clippings, cardboard to paint, cut, and to do crafts ... we are using the guide you provided for all our activities.

Aula Mágica Guatemala Update, April, 2014

New faces, new possibilities

2014 marks a new chapter for Aula Mágica. There are new faces, more children, new community partnerships and we now have a Facebook page (Aula Magica Guatemala). Most importantly, we are proud that our unique educational model promotes creativity, innovation, language, cognitive development and social skills for children of low income and rural communities in Guatemala.

In the month of February, Aula Mágica welcomed Jhonathan F. Gómez to the team as general coordinator. Jhonathan has many years of experience working with community and non-profit organizations in Guatemala and the United States. He has worked in various projects that promote youth arts education, immigrant and human rights. With the support of the Aula Mágica team, he will help structure the program, design and implement a documentation and evaluation strategy, and move forward a formal six month program that will begin this May. He looks forward to seeing the program grow and is particularly looking forward to the program being translated into Mayan Indigenous languages.

At the end of February, we held a week-long training for new teachers and we are happy to report that eleven people participated. Lucy Días, an experienced and accomplished teacher and longtime collaborator of Let’s Be Ready designed and facilitated the training. It was a wonderful gathering, full of unique experiences where teachers learned new skills, shared their knowledge and their experiences about preschool education. Many more teachers are interested in participating in the program and we are in the process of planning another training at the beginning of May.

San Pedro La Laguna, Sololá

Following our February training, we began a five-week pilot program with the participants. The goal of the trial period was to document and evaluate new educational materials and activities, which complement the Aula Mágica audio recordings that are used to teach preschool children. In addition, we created and implemented a new process of evaluation and documentation through written evaluations and regular meetings with the teachers.

San Pedro La Laguna in Sololá, on the beautiful Lake Atitlán has become our base, due to the fact that the majority of the teachers live there. Five teachers successfully finished the five-week program with an average of seven students per classroom. There has been so much interest in the program, that a teacher from San Antonio Chacayá, a village an hour away from Santiago Atitlán, who was not able to attend the training, joined the program. Zeneida Dolores Ixmatá, one of our star teachers, as well as the other teachers in the program, trained the new teacher so she could become a part of the pilot program.

The month of May is looking to be our most promising and productive month yet, as we prepare for a three-day new teacher training in San Pedro. We are expecting over twenty participants that will come from the areas of Quetzaltenango, Totonicapán, San Juan La Laguna, Santiago Atitlán, as well as San Pedro. Following the training, the participants will start a formal six month program beginning in May and ending in October. Also in May, Zeneida Dolores Ixmatá, or Lola as she likes to be called, will join the Aula Mágica staff as regional coordinator and will work closely with Jhonathan to grow and implement the program in Lake Atitlán and other areas. We are grateful that Lola has accepted the invitation to join the staff and are looking forward to working with her. She will continue to work as a teacher in order to guide the program with first-hand experience, as well as coordinate the teachers in the Lake Atitlán region.

Language translation into Indigenous languages is in its early stages but with the support of the San Pedro teachers, we have begun to evaluate and edit the scripts of the audio recordings. The community library Rijatzuul Naooj in San Juan La Laguna is one of our strongest supporters and collaborators with the translation. We are confident that in the upcoming months and with their support, we will successfully translate our programs and materials into Maya T’zutujil. We believe that once we have a few audio programs recorded, their scripts and the corresponding educational materials translated into an indigenous language, it will help us understand the process and make the translation into other languages easier.

We have many more things planned for 2014 and are delighted to be meeting the goals we have set for ourselves. Our interactive and dynamic program encourages teachers and children to move beyond the four walls of the traditional classroom. Aula Mágica is proud to be an alternative educational program created by people from Guatemala for the people of Guatemala. As we grow, we continue to seek opportunities for collaboration with communities, organizations and individuals who are committed to improving preschool education.

There are many ways you can support the work of Aula Mágica in Guatemala. One very important way is by making a monetary donation through Global Giving. To find out more about the program or to learn about other ways you can support, please contact us at magica.guatemala@gmail.com. Thank you for your support.


Sincerely,

Aula Mágica