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This project responds to the community input from the parents, teachers and principals of the 112 schools equipped with RACHEL WiFi libraries in the Barillas and Petén areas of Guatemala. These schools were equipped, and their teachers trained, under three previous Global Grants - GG1869459, GG2123116 and GG2352795. They are increasingly relying on the use of digital material available on the RACHEL systems to aid the instruction of the primary school children, but feel that these systems will be even more valuable if there was continuing teacher training, and minor equipment additions.
The feedback that we are getting is that the initial RACHEL teacher training, while valuable, is not sufficient to take full advantage of the technology. The two day mentor training provided to one teacher per school has helped a great deal, but given the ever increasing quantity of educational modules on RACHEL (currently 90 modules, increasing by 6 or so each year), teachers are requesting ongoing training to take the most advantage of the existing and new modules.
Recently we have hired 2 coordinators - one in Barillas and one in Petén - to provide continuing education to the teachers. This has been extremely well received.
This project will engage Mundo Posible, the Guatemalan NGO associated with World Possible which is responsible for RACHEL, to take over the hiring and management of these coordinators, hiring them full time for three years.. Through regular visits to the 112 schools they will:
- Be employed directly by Mundo Posible rather than local club and therefore have access to their training materials, and have ability to add new local modules to RACHEL.
- Take over responsibility for all local teacher-training courses (intro, refresher, mentor) rather than have existing Mundo Posible employees make the 12 hour drive to Barillas or Petén.
- Teach new teachers soon after their arrival in school
- Upload DataPost, monitor results, and work with teachers to suggest how to use under-used modules
- Hold info sessions for community so that they can use RACHEL as local library, and so that they can understand what/how the children are learning
In the Petén area, the municipally-hired facilitators will continue to teach the gender-equality/girl empowerment content from SERniña developed under the previous Global Grant. This will be done at no additional cost to Rotary.
In some schools, a WiFi extender will be installed. Larger schools will receive the extenders so that two classrooms of laptops can simultaneously use a single RACHEL unit - doubling the use of the RACHEL at minimal cost. In some schools, the WiFi extender will make RACHEL available in an area accessible to the community so that older children (including those introduced to RACHEL while in primary school) and others in the community, can download any of the thousands of books on RACHEL to smartphones or tablets for reading at home. This was suggested by the Rotary Cadre who visited the Petén project in 2023.
And we plan to add a 45" TV screen to each RACHEL classroom - so that teachers can present the lesson to the students more easily. We have done a trial of this - and have found that it adds greatly to the teachers' ability to teach using RACHEL.
The educational levels of the schools in northern Guatemala are still considered well below the level acceptable by the Guatemalan Ministry of Education, due to the effects of the pandemic in areas where the schools were closed for longer periods than in the rest of the country, and where on-line learning was not possible. The local branches of the Ministry are very supportive of our RACHEL efforts as they see the difference that it can make.
Now that they have the support and backing of the Ministry of Education, teachers see a better opportunity to have authorization so that they can dedicate specific time to learn the Rachel content and then replicate it with students. They are very interested in continuing the program because they have seen the difference in learning with the use of technology in the classroom.
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