Reducing the gap in 130 Mexican public schools

In Lazos, we're convinced that through teamwork and cooperation we can achieve a better society for our country. Two of our principal beneficiaries are parents and teachers of the school communities we work on, they are the base in which all of our work with students reside.

To continue with the work and learnings of 2020, in 2021 we conducted the "Encuentros Academicos" for all the school teachers and principals of our 130 school communities. The "Encuentros Academicos" are a one-day extracurricular congress that promotes the development of high-quality educational spaces, the professionalization of teachers and school directors, and the teaching dynamics inside the classrooms, thus favoring the educational achievement of the students through the continuous academic and pedagogical training of teachers and directors. This year we brought together professional speakers in the area of Neuroleadership that gave essential tools for teachers to apply in their distance and presence classrooms.

Trying to give the best tools and professional advice to parents we had a series of conferences dedicated to the socioemotional development of children promoting the context and family environment. We gathered 12 of the very best speakers to talk about human value education, family communication, family environment, resilience, and adaptability to changes in a one-hour Facebook Live transmission that has almost 900 viewers.

We are almost done with the 2020-2021 school period and are hoping the next one brings better opportunities to our students as well as a safe return to the classrooms for everyone involved. We thank you for all the support and cheers and invite you to keep spreading our cause. Until next time!!

2020 was a challenge for Mexican education. Our educational system already had deficiencies that had taken years to address and the pandemic made them more notorious, it is said by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development that "three months of distance learning classes represent at least 3 years of lag for the developing countries...". The health contingency by COVID-19 disrupted the activities of our intervention model, however not being able to work in the schools didn't mean we couldn’t be able to continue our committed work for our school communities.

In this period, we’ve put special emphasis on our educational team’s training to continue to offer high-quality attention to all of our beneficiaries. We continue to innovate in the design and development of materials and content to strengthen our programs and expand our academic offer. As an example, the development of our teachers’ guide of our math and Spanish accompaniment methodology for 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. We undertook “Lazos from home” plan composed of a selection of free access digital resources, extracted and adapted activities of our human values program, and the invitation to use our education material in their homes, supporting the work of teachers, parents, and the learning continuity of our students

To offer a viable, reachable, and quality alternative to our parents, we adapted the content of our 6 different workshops planned to be implemented in our different school communities. These workshops were recorded by our specialized facilitators, edited, and uploaded to Youtube in the official channel of Lazos. The invitation to the parents of each school community is being supported by principals and teachers who circulate the link of our audiovisual content through Whatsapp group chats.

We also knew teachers, directors, and parents were in need of strategies to adapt to these unprecedented times. Lazos created a 3-day  Distance Education Seminar, aiming to give each of the actors of children's education tools to implement in their teaching and daily living and overcome all the different socioemotional and academic situations created by the pandemic. 

Even though this pandemic has shown us all of the deficiencies we have as a country, it also has made us realize we’re all striving for a better future for our families, and our loved ones. Thank you for being an ally and believing in our work, thank you for striving with us for a better future for our school communities and, most important, for our students.