On Friday March 28th, we completed our first in person training of the 2025 school year with our Innovative Pedagogy work group; made up of specialists from the Gerencia Regional de Educacion- Cusco (GEREDUC), the UGEL Canchis, and the UGEL Quispicanchi, who will be participating with Alma in a national innovative pedagogy contest hosted by the Peruvian Ministry of Education.
We spent the day practicing Alma methodology strategies that promote critical and creative thinking and socioemotional well-being in the context of local indigenous culture to achieve the goals of Peru’s national curriculum. The specialists worked together in teams, implementing Ama strategies to fully grasp and understand how these will unfold in a classroom setting. The same specialists will be accompanying the participating teachers in Alma‘s Innovative Pedagogy course along with Alma staff. Therefore, it is important that they don’t only understand the theory of these critical thinking strategies, but also understand their practical implementation and how they bridge the gap between curricular theory and classroom practice.
It is always rewarding to work with motivated teachers and administrators on improving the quality of public education and indigenous communities in rural Peru. However, what we learned again last Friday is that our strategies, apart from being effective critical thinking tools, are also fun!