Experience of the Assumption School, León - Nicaragua
(Province of Central America-Cuba)
The shift from face-to-face to virtual modality has prompted us to reflect and rethink how to make a virtual educational process without losing sight of equity and equality.
In this time of pandemic, we use constant communication with students to follow their learning process, within this virtual modality, through videoconferencing, WhatsApp, being more attentive to those who still have difficulties accessing the Internet, or those who are affected by Covid-19.
We continue to have a virtual classroom structure that has allowed us to maintain this modality and ensure student learning. They are more adapted to this mode of communication, they work with greater autonomy and independence to access the homework that corresponds to them.
For the teachers, we have set up a training support of the different modalities in lein with didactic sequences. The interdisciplinary approach has enabled teachers to take greater ownership of the programme through exchanges of experience, which has guaranteed mutual learning, greater security and teamwork. The constant accompaniment by the management team has allowed a greater appropriation of the educational process that we carry out in the school and we have strengthened our organisation, planning, articulation and academic follow-up of the teachers' work.
We have teachers trained in pedagogy and digital skills, which means that there is a capacity well in place in the school to recreate what we do in research to develop 21st century skills in them and their students.
The flexibility that the MINED (Ministry of Education in El Salvador) has shown in this period of pandemic has been important in moving forward in this modality, in this sense we have maintained and strengthened communication with the municipal and departmental delegation of León. We have received information in good time, which has enabled us to organise and plan activities in a coordinated manner.
Support for families has been maintained in the face of economic difficulties, Internet access and the loss of loved ones.
There are spaces created in the monthly planning of the school that allow for the reinforcement of the socio-emotional skills of the teaching staff. These spaces are run by the school's team of psychologists.
The teaching staff has started the process of applying the evaluation instruments of the formative approach. This implies that the families are informed about the evaluation criteria so that they know what is to be achieved in the pupil.
Virtual classroom: Families are in the process of not creating dependency on their sons and daughters to enter the virtual classroom, in the same way that they understand that the protagonist of learning is first and foremost their daughters and sons.
Methodology: The work carried out by the teachers to plan their classes based on the logic of the didactic sequence and the interdisciplinary approach has been assimilated and understood by the families and there is satisfaction with the pupils' learning results from the implementation of this process.
Communication: Meetings have been held with the parents' board of directors, as well as with the families of the different classes in a virtual way to evaluate the process we are carrying out as a school and to seek together the improvement of the quality of education.
Evaluation of learning: families have more clarity about the evaluation strategies implemented by the teachers, which has enabled them to know the evaluation criteria used by teachers in the different subjects.
Mario Méndez
Reference Person for Transformative Education in the Province of Central America - Cuba