Lets Be Ready

"Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the World" (Nelson Mandela).

Hello everyone, it is a pleasure to write to you again. I hope you and your families are doing well. Everyone in the Let's be Ready program is very happy for this new school year, we hope to meet the expectations and goals proposed for this year.

The directors of the Let’s be Ready program organized a small two-day workshop last January, taking into account all the biosecurity measures due to the pandemic; this in order to share ideas of how it was worked during the 2020 cycle, and to show you a new method to work this year.

With the help of Nancy Carpenter, Lucy Diaz and I (Margarita Bejarano), we shared new ideas and a new method for teachers called “Critical Thinking”; based on the steps of Bloom's Taxonomy. We do a lot of research on this topic to understand it and thus explain it in a simple way to our educators. Surely you have heard it, it consists in ensuring that students acquire meaningful learning that lasts a lifetime; Making the child learn new knowledge and skills, after carrying out a learning process. We are all very excited to apply this new method.

As it is very extensive, we are going to start applying it in reading; that is why during these first 5 months we will work with 5 star books, putting into practice the steps of Bloom's Taxonomy and thus achieving an effective “Critical Thinking” in our children. We hope to have good results for the training in July, where everyone will share how it went, if it worked for them or not.

Due to the Pandemic, the government of our country has given instructions on how schools, colleges and institutions will work to teach during this year. Colors are being used to mark the places with the most infections, such as the traffic light. For example, if my community is in red, the boys still cannot attend classes. But if it is green, it can, but in small groups and only on certain days of the week, not every day. That is why we are working differently in each of the communities where our schools are located.

Some are giving face-to-face classes in small groups three times a week, others are making home visits every 15 days to leave homework and reinforce topics. And others are working with job guides; because the community situation is still at risk of contagion.

It has been a bit difficult to start this way, but we are willing to do everything we can to help our boys get ahead together. Even though some of us will continue to work from home, they are very excited and that is one more reason for me not to give up.

We have already started classes and it has been a success; I hope I can tell you more in the next report. Thank you so much for giving us another year of support and not leaving us. May God Bless you and allow you to meet your proposed goals for this year.

Greetings to everyone from Guatemala.