3rd year students – Higher Training School “Clara Parada de Pinto” – Digital Tools Workshop -Trinidad 2023 I am a systems engineer and since 2020 I have been developing workshops and training courses in Alma on the use of technology in the classroom for teachers, directors and education technicians from Beni. One of my complaints […]
Bolivian Sign Language translator teachers – Superior Teacher Training School “Clara Parada de Pinto” – Trinidad 2023 the last days of July and the beginning of August we started with training workshops aimed at students of the ESFM Teacher Training School “Clara Parada de Pinto” in Trinidad and its Multi-Ethnic Academic Unit “Lorenza […]
The Specialization course in Pedagogical Innovation is a means by which teachers are accompanied to strengthen their capacities. Currently, the educational authorities have assumed this challenge, with the participation of 19 Specialists from the Cusco Regional Education Management(GEREDUC) and 28 Specialists from the various UGELs of the Cusco region who fulfill the role of tutors […]
The “Good Teaching Practices Involving the entire Educational Community” Course was born at the request of the teachers who received support from our team of specialists through the Pedagogical Innovation refresher course during the 2022 period, to continue strengthening their pedagogical work. For this course, 50 places were enabled within the entire Cusco region, with […]
As a result of the national educational meeting of Peru, many UGEL’s from the different departments of Peru learned about the work we do and contacted us requesting our intervention in their fields of work through alliances or agreements; One of them is the UGEL Antabamba with whom we are currently coordinating to participate in […]
(Teachers UA Gran Chaco and Authorities – Digital Tools Training Workshop – Caiza June, 2023) This year we are working with the Higher School for Teacher Training in the department of Tarija, which is made up of a central office in Canasmoro and two Academic Units also located in rural areas. This month we visited […]
(Teachers from the Peru Río Apere community – Mass Training Workshop – Sana Ana 2023) Since the 2022 administration, our training workshops have been face-to-face at the request of the Beni teachers and this year, although we are only working in two educational districts: Guayaramerín and Santa Ana-Exaltación, it was no exception. In June, we […]
This week Alma was invited to Peru’s first national educational meeting. Heads of the Ministry of Education, Regional Governors, Regional Educational Heads, and specialists from the entire country came to Cusco to discuss Peru’s continuing educational emergency in order to share data, obstacles, needs, and offer possible solutions. Alma was invited to represent the latter, […]
In Bolivia, there is only one way to become a public school teacher: by graduating from the state-run public universities for teachers, collectively known as the “Normal”. This year we began working with both students and professors from the two Normal campuses in Beni and the three in Tarija. Both groups are learning to use […]
I get uncomfortable talking about impacts that can’t be measured objectively. It feels like the old western traveling salesmen who would sell miracle potions – all talk and no proof – except I’m selling social/educational impact instead of magic cures. But in this case, because it’s a blog and not an evaluation, I’ll allow myself […]
I remember years ago, sitting and waiting for hours just to speak with an educational administrator of an isolated province. In fact, I can recall various plastic chairs where I parked myself, intent on getting a meeting with someone who never heard of Alma and at the moment had better things to do. Therefore, it’s […]
In both Bolivia and Peru, the school year is starting. This is always a busy time where we finalize plans with state authorities and implement the projects we began planning in December of last year. But one part of the new school year struck me this year: much of our staff, who have been working […]
I remember, years ago, sitting in a small room in Sucre, Bolivia with the heads of the Education Comittee of the Quechua Nation. Bolivia’s constitution considers the country a nation of nations, with each indigenous nation having a certain level of autonomy. Whether this structure is true in practice is a separate debate. The point […]
We use a variety of measurements to evaluate the impact of our projects, and I particularly enjoy mining the data to contextualize them. For example, the data from our Peruvian ecourse specialization in Innovative Pedagogy shows that there is no correlation between passing grades and teachers in rural or urban schools, internet connectivity, or time […]
In September I wrote a blog about the Ministries of Education in Peru and Bolivia taking up our Alma teaching methodology and including it in state-run training programs. Recently, in late November, we had a meeting with UNEFCO, the branch of the Bolivian Ministry of Education that is responsible for training Bolivia’s 150,000 teachers and […]
Over the last month I had the opportunity to speak with students in two classrooms in Canada: Dr. Carmen Rodriguez de France’s Indigenous Education at the University of Victoria and Dr. Dustin Ciufo’s Playful Pedagogy at Trent University. Both courses had very different focuses and goals, but a common theme that always threads through education […]
Over the past two years, over 30,000 Peruvian and Bolivian public school teachers participated in Alma’s training programs. And though that is a big number, only a percentage of them were able to receive year-long accompaniment in our focus groups, because we simply don’t have enough staff to work on a daily basis with 30,000 […]
From 2019 to 2021, Alma grew its reach by a factor of 1000. That’s right! We went from training 30 public school teachers working with 525 students, to 31,050 teachers working with 499,656 students! Though those numbers are exciting and evidence of buy-in from teachers and educational authorities in Peru and Bolivia, they also represent […]
Due to the large demand for our training program on Innovative Pedagogy and our limited budget, we created an ecourse to allow us to accompany as many teachers a we can in our program with limited staff. In the Region of Cusco, we set a goal of getting 300 preschool and primary school teachers signed […]
The new school year began in both Peru and Bolivia, and after months of planning, coordinating, signing and resigning contracts, etc. we are finally back in the classroom with teachers and administrators training them to use Alma’s teaching methodology to bridge the gap between state mandated curriculum and classroom implementation. 2022 can also be considered […]