[This is an advance copy of an article to be published in the Revue magazine]
The Magical Classroom
By Linda Conard
Every morning, teens walk mountain roads in rural Guatemala carrying magic in their backpacks. When they reach their destinations—community centers, churches, homes—they’re greeted by excited preschoolers who scramble into a circle, eager for the fun to begin. The teens pull from their backpacks small tablet computers loaded with music, lessons and laughter. When they tap “play,” the room fills with the voices of a teacher and his students magically transforming these makeshift classrooms into centers for success.
Children in isolated Guatemalan villages have no preschool teachers and experience little socialization. Up to 40 percent fail the first grade, and either repeat or simply drop out. The nonprofit group Let’s Be Ready developed "Aula Mágica” (Magical Classroom) to bring vital preschool education to these remote regions through audio lessons downloaded onto tablet computers. The program applies Montessori and Creative Curriculum principles to prepare 5 and 6 year olds with the basic knowledge they need to succeed in the first grade, turning that 40 percent failure rate into a 95 percent rate of success.
Aula Mágica also tackles another critical problem in remote regions: smart teens without jobs. With no direct access to secondary school and few job prospects, local teens can’t serve as certified teachers, but they can lead Aula Mágica classes as education promoters, and even earn enough money to complete secondary school and become teachers.
“If we tried to get more certified preschool teachers to rural areas, it would take decades,” says program director Michael Estill. “But with Aula Mágica, in just a few years for every community in Guatemala could have access to a program for preschool preparation.”
Promoters ages 16 and up are selected for their enthusiasm, creativity, literacy and interest in improving their community. They take full responsibility for everything in the classroom, from working with students and parents, arranging for learning spaces, and providing ongoing feedback about the program materials. They also play a dynamic role in the classroom, pausing the audio program every few minutes to engage the children in activities reinforcing each lesson.
“The kids run around flying like airplanes; they go out to find different fruits or colors. They participate,” says Fred Zambroski, Aula Mágica creator and founder of Let’s Be Ready. By the end of the year, the children have the basic knowledge and classroom experience they need to succeed in first grade.
Three Guatemalan volunteers create the magic behind Aula Mágica. Quirio Ixtamer Perez, a special needs teacher, radio personality, actor and clown, records all of the lessons, and he, his wife, and their three children play all the parts. Actress, artist and musician Rosa Maria Ruiz Porras writes all lesson scripts. And schoolteacher Lucy Diaz trains the promoters, develops materials, and ensures that all both the lessons and activity guide address core competencies and link with Guatemala’s national curriculum.
In 2015, Aula Mágica will compete in the $15 million Global Learning XPRIZE competition, which promotes using tablet technology to “empower children to take control of their own learning,” according to the XPRIZE website. Zambroski and Estill hope to recruit Guatemalan technology experts to lead their tech team.
“Basically, we’re looking at making this an open-source program that can be easily replicated,” says Estill. “Something that could expand to as many people as want to use it,” Zambroski adds. “It’s an organic, constantly changing curriculum. The promoters in the field tell us what works and what doesn’t, and create new ideas for it. It’s quite a mental shift.”
Begun as a small 2014 pilot in San Pedro la Laguna, the Aula Mágica has rapidly expanded to 18 rural Guatemalan communities and is now available only in Spanish but is being translated into Mayan languages. Several libraries and groups in Guatemala and Mexico have expressed interest in adopting it, and Zambroski couldn’t be happier. “I’m 70 years old,” he says, “and I hope to see this become international and grow in hundreds of places in my lifetime.”
To learn more about Aula Mágica, go tohttp://www.globalgiving.org/projects/interactive-audio-preschool-for-rural-guatemala-youth/ or do a search at GlobalGiving.com. For more information, contact Michael Estill (michaeljestill@gmail.com).
This past week Aula Mágica wrapped up its annual teacher training program held high up in the mountains of Huehuetenango in anticipation for the upcoming school year. Lola (our program coordinator), Lucy (our teacher trainer), and myself (carrier of heavy things) were joined on Sunday, February 15th by a total of seven participants hailing from very different and distant locations eager to take in a week of fun and activity.
We were joined by our standout participant from last year’s session, Astrid from San Juan La Laguna located along the shores of Lake Atitlán, Melisa, whom while new to the program, comes from the tropical self-sufficient agricultural community of La Florida participating in its second straight year, in addition to five new participants–Raúl, Alicia, Mari, Nancy and Carolina- coming from different communities spread throughout the vast expanses of the municipality of Chiantla. While our training was intentionally held in as central of a location as possible, almost everybody had to partake in a long and tiring day of travel –walking, hiking and changing many buses- to join us for the training. With travel times ranging from 2-13 hours, there was absolutely no doubt about the group’s earnestness and commitment to the program.
Six of the seven invitees were entirely new to the program and largely without any experience as educators, making this training an entirely new beast from past iterations where the bulk of our facilitators were graduated teachers. The gradual shift from working with unemployed teachers to youth leaders from remote areas called for almost an entirely new and flexible training approach, a difficult challenge to which our staff responded to impeccably.
As to be expected, the group of 16-23 year olds' demeanor could initially be described as incredibly shy and hesitant to engage in certain activities or ask questions. However, thanks to our staff’s creativity and a necessity for team work, the ice was slowly but surely broken, allowing for a truly dynamic learning atmosphere to take place. With practical classroom techniques and routines discussed during the mornings on the first few days and engaging activities sprinkled in throughout the afternoons, the group found itself gelling in no time and grasping all of the new information faster than we ever anticipated.
Once classes adjourned, facilitators where asked to study their materials and work on crafts that would be needed for the following day –getting them accustomed to a routine of planning that is so important to any teacher’s success. Much to our pleasant surprise, a glance into one of the dorm rooms following classes would typically reveal a quiet group pouring over their activity manuals and reviewing their notes from that day. In the evenings teams and roles were assigned to everybody in the group to help cook or prepare a certain meal, making meal time an exercise in both laughter and comradery, bringing smiles and a sense of satisfaction to everybody. It goes without saying that nearly every waking minute was taken advantage of and utilized to have fun, learn and work together in some way or fashion.
Once familiar with basic classroom expectations and a solid pedagogical base, the group would spend their morning putting all of their new theories into practice working with a large group of wide-eyed preschoolers at a local school. Just a few minutes into the first class, the children had already fallen in love with all of the different components of the program, asking us each day if we would be coming back for classes tomorrow. While again timid at first around the kids, the demonstrated success of our activities and growing familiarity with program materials helped buoyed the confidence of our youth leaders leading to immense progress and a growing sense of comfort with each passing day.
For our final night together as a group we headed into town to celebrate the successful culmination of the training, where we shared laughs and pizza before each participant was honored with a diploma cementing their status as the next generation of rural educational facilitators. Before heading our separate ways the final morning, each member of our graduating class expressed feeling prepared and most importantly, proud, to represent Aula Mágica and impart a new era of learning in their communities. We ourselves couldn’t be more proud to call them part of our organization’s family and feel certain that each and every one will thrive as they embark on their journey as leaders of positive and lasting change.
New Curriculum And New Technology For Classroom Teachers, Rural Libraries, And Promoters
We are taking preschool into rural areas and into the 21st century with leading edge technology, not only to deliver the programs, but also to eliminate cumbersome printed user manuals, and allow the teachers using the programs to suggest improvements to the content through the internet. This will result in constant improvement and provide the most current programs in the hands of the teachers though out the school year.
When not using their tablets for teaching the kids or making recommendations for improvements, they can study English on free internet apps, or take pictures with a flash camera and write emails to their sponsors. They could even call them on Video Skype!
Playing the programs, planning from the suggested activities, filling an evaluation form, and writing suggestions for improvements can all be done without a connection to the internet. To update the programs, send their ideas for improvements or to Skype and send the pictures and emails they have written, they will have to at some time go to a wifi enabled area. These areas are accessible to most rural Guatemalans while on trips the nearest medium sized pueblo to go to the market, visit family and do other errands common in their lives. The items remain stored on their tablets until connected to the internet, no matter how long that takes.
The tablets and speakers do require charging. In areas where there is not electricity we are providing special mp3 players with solar chargers. Too, we are installing at least one 10 station solar charger and LED light bulbs in a centrally located school for use by the teachers and community members who will pay a fee that will go towards buying replacement storage batteries.
It is quite a jump from the CD players, printed manuals and notebooks that we have been using, but cost effective and will result in much faster development of the programs, using the ideas of the people using the programs in the classrooms. Printed color manuals (good for one year) cost $45. The CD/MP3 player cost $30.
A tablet and speaker can be purchased for around a $100.
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.
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