Lets Be Ready

First of all, I want to mention that we are very grateful, happy and satisfied for all the work that is taking place in our schools. All teachers are striving more and more to teach everything necessary for the education of children, with the aim of giving them a better future, but not only to them but to the community; and even the environment.

¡The future of the Planet is in our hands! With this phrase we manage to make children and families aware of our planet; due to the celebration of Earth Day, last April 22. A date that should not only be celebrated once a year, but always, because if we all cared for the planet, we would live in a better world.

All the teachers carried out different types of activities for this special day since at the beginning of the year we set ourselves the goal of doing something for the environment, for example, in the community of San Juan del Obispo: Paola spent a week teaching them the importance of taking care of the earth, so they picked up trash in the streets, sowed seeds, made a tree with dry leaves and a heart representing the love we must feel for the most beautiful planet in which we live.

In the community of El Sitán-Patzicía with the help of the mothers, the children and the teacher Roselia, they carried out a cleaning in all the surroundings of that place collecting garbage and keeping the materials that can be reused.

And in El Potrerío-Patzún, with Evelyn they also collected garbage and made their own garden for their little school, the mothers helped to plant the flowers and the children decorated with rocks painted by themselves; certainly a very fun activity to further strengthen the relationship between Mother and child.

We emphasize very much the importance of RECYCLING, so some of us this month held a Recycling Fair, in order to raise awareness in each of the families that make up our community; to take care of what we have and not contaminate our home. They also observed that we do not need expensive or indispensable materials so that our children have a very good education and that learning is meaningful.

That is why all those who support us, we also invite them to do something for the planet if they have not yet done so, and if they are already doing so we congratulate them, continue ahead as we are in time to save it; Remember that "The Earth is our home, let us help protect it and take care of it since the future of our children depends on it"

And once again thank you, thank you very much for all the support you give us.

Hello everyone!
It is a pleasure for me to write you again, to be able to share our ideas and activities to happily start this new 2018 school year ...

It is incredible that we are already starting with one more year, all the teachers of Lets Be Ready are excited and excited to put into practice everything we have learned at the beginning of the year. We are also very GRATEFUL with God for one more year of life and the fact that it allows us to do our work during the year.

It is worth mentioning that we are also very, very satisfied and grateful for the great support, help and donations made by our dear Sponsors, since without their contribution it would not be possible to continue with our work of educating and training good children for the future of the country.

We are proud that we started the year with a recognition from GlobalGiving as one of their top-ranked organizations.

I want to tell you also that last week we had our training at the beginning of the year, which was called "Professional Growth VII" where we met new teachers, lived more and grew in knowledge. It was very interesting and meaningful, because last year in November we were invited to a Mathematics training, by Teachers2Teachers; We learned new dynamics, activities and methodologies to teach this subject to our children. All of us who attend this training, we made a presentation of the topics we saw in our training, so that teachers who could not attend will also benefit from what we learned.

They showed us new ideas to work with small groups, with different areas of learning, we had a talk of values to make us aware of how they have been lost and how they benefit us personally and those around us; in our case as teachers, like giving a good example of ourselves to our children.

We discussed the theme of the nutrition where we have experienced and good results we have obtained with this new program of atole Chispuditos and training for the families which has brought many benefits in children: they are more awake, willing to learn more and more their physical appearance has improved favorably due to the vitamins it contains. 

Forthe integration of new teachers, recreational activities were carried out with the Physical Education class, where we designated several teachers to show us how they teach this class in their school and in what ways we can make it more fun, because it is a class that It motivates children a lot.

It was a very productive and beneficial week for all the teachers, "As a member of the program I feel that we have improved over the years and we have become more united as a family, where we all help each other and always try to improve ourselves, and I am very happy and satisfied with our achievements, what we are doing and the goals we want to achieve, because without the help of Fred, of you, our donors and of the parents, our children have a better future "
-Margarita Bejarano-

Thank you so much! For all the support, we will keep you updated on our goals wewe achieve in this 2018 school year ...

Let's celebrate! As of 2018, Let's Be  Ready has completed its 10th year. Inspired by a dream of Nora, an indigenous teacher, the preschool - kindergarten program got its start as a summer school pilot in her hometown of Santo Domingo Xenacoj. Because of that success, we were we were able to find sponsors for four other unemployed teacher friends of Nora's to be able to expand into their communities the following year. Over the years individuals and other organizations with an interest in education, nutrition and/or job creation, primarily for women of Guatemala, joined in the support of our program.

Thanks to the support of these loyal individual donors and early and continued support from organizations like the Herrod Foundation, Miracles in Action, Feed the Children, Westlake Methodist Church, and the Punaro Foundation, we have grown to 25 classrooms and spawned another successful nonprofit that reaches even more rural areas, the Magical Classrooms, with 25 additional teachers. Conservatively speaking, Let's Be Ready alone has prepared 3000 students for first grade.

One of our first teachers, Lucy, led the effort to develop a strong and dynamic curriculum as well as  a training program for the teachers. Common Hope, another of our earliest classroom supporters, also continues to provide a large meeting room, dormitories, and a kitchen for two weeks of training every year for each of the programs. Without their support and that of volunteer teachers like Nancy and Anne, we could not have continued to develop our teachers throughout the years.

The nutritional component of the program that began as healthy snacks and school gardens, has now grown into a full-fledged nutritional program implemented through our mothers groups supported largely by the Mathile Foundation, who provides consulting services and a fortified nutritional drink containing protein and 21 essential vitamins and minerals. Together with them we are conducting three-year study  providing data on student weight, height, general health and academic success. Our goal is prove that intervening through mothers groups in preschools to address the causes of malnutrition, along with our academic preparation will prepare the children to be successful and healthy in primary school - and that such a program can be easily replicated throughout Guatemala and possibly even other countries with similar nutrition and education challenges.

Under the leadership of our current director Sara, a former teacher in the program, the academic success rate of LBR  kindergarten students passing first grade is over 90%, with over 70% successfully completing primary school. This is an astounding completion rate for rural Guatemalan children. With an emphasis on positive self image, the ability to problem solve, and a strong foundation in basic skills, our dedicated Guatemalan teaching and administration staff prepares students for success in primary school and continuing education.

We invite do to help us build on this success to continue to provide opportunities for the teachers and children of Guatemala.

We’re very content and satisfied to be wrapping up yet another successful month and have seen some great results from our little ones. Our children have made many advancements and seeing as how we’re at the end of the school year, we’ll now see the final results of all of our teaching thus far.

In the month of July our teachers participated in the second half of our bi-annual training which lasted a week. We were able to learn a lot of different techniques, strategies and new ideas to utilize in the classroom. We were shown different activities pertaining to fine motor skills, something that is very important to the development of age group of kids that we work with. We also learned about how to better manage children with behavioral issues and how to deal with truly difficult cases more effectively.

The highlight of the training however, was how to work with recycled materials. Our teachers experimented with many different ideas on how to use recycled materials in the classroom to teach different subjects. The objective was to raise awareness regarding classroom materials and how we can oftentimes use many items more than once before throwing them way.

Looking at the different pictures, you can see how in the school of Los Izotes in Santo Domingo Xenacoj, our teacher, Lidia Bacajol, is putting the different ideas that we learned in the training into action. If you pay close attention to the pictures, you might notice the different materials that Lidia is using and what their different uses are.

As you can see we’ve been busy with many new activities to help ensure that both teaching and learning can be as fun and effective as possible.

Links:

• http://letsbeready.org/

......without developing a strong mothers group and a sustainable nutrition component that impacts the diet in the homes and provides access to a supplement that assures the children are getting sufficient micronutrients, vitamins and protein, even if the families are not yet able buy or cultivate the nutritious food they need. We will be able to measure the impact on reducing stunting, the most obvious sighn of malnutrition.

We will demonstrate for all of Guatemala that the combination early stimulation, academic preparation and elimination of malnutrition in the early years of life will ensure the success of children in primary school as well as thriving in their lives……and is sustainable and replicable in all rural areas of the country, even those without graduated teachers. And we will have the data to prove it.

Our mothers groups are the key to success. We are providing training to them about hygiene, signs of chronic malnutrition, a rainbow of colors in their diets, starting home and school gardens, and showing them the improvements that are occurring in their children through pictures, weight and height gains, and reduction in bouts of sickness over time. We are also teaching early childhood stimulation techniques and giving materials to use at home including books and recycled items to aid in learning numbers, letters and words.

The mothers are providing a nutritious snack each day to the children in the classroom and are being encouraged to do the same for the younger children at home. They also contribute one third of the cost of providing the nutritional supplement to children in the family. Each year they will contribute a greater share of the cost.

A new collaborator this year, Mathile Institute, is providing consulting service and the supplement, branded Chispuditios, to all of our school children. It is intended only for children 6 months to 6 years old. We are looking for other collaborators to subsidize the supplement for the younger children at home.

Can you help?