I spent this week in the rural highlands of Guatemala as part of the Greater Washington Reading Council's International Literacy Project (www.gwrc.net).
While there, I helped provide literacy support and professional development to teachers at the Centro Educativo Privado Experimental William M. Botnan, a Kindergarten through Grade 6 school located in the village of Santa Avelina, municipality of San Juan Cotzal, department of Quiché, Guatemala. Guatemala is a small, Central American country located just south of Mexico. It is endowed with incredible natural beauty and a vibrant pre-Columbian culture still present in the Mayan communities of its rural highlands. This culture is manifested in the indigenous languages spoken by the inhabitants of these mountainous regions. Before the 1996 Peace Accords, which brought an end to long years of civil war in Guatemala, students who attended school in these villages were immersed in Spanish from the minute they entered the building. There was no instruction in the home language. Few learned to read. What meager educational opportunity existed previously was further diminished by years of civil war. The teachers at this school have worked to establish a program of bilingual literacy. The goal is to introduce literacy in the home language, Ixil, and transition to literacy in Spanish by the end of sixth grade using a 90/10 model: 90% Ixil instruction/10% Spanish instruction in Pre-Primaria (Kindergarten), transitioning to the reverse by Grade 6. The school was built by and is partially funded by the non-governmental organization HELPS International (www.helpsintl.org). HELPS envisions "Hub" schools that successfully implement a well-designed learning program to serve as teacher learning centers and technology resource centers for surrounding schools. The school serves as an educational headquarters for the Ixil Triangle and as a model for expansion of educational initiatives throughout Guatemala.
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