Developments have continued in Guatemala with the INCE team! During a meeting with all consortium members in Guatemala in July, the team envisioned the potential to build on the work of one of the consortium partners. This partner has been working hard in Guatemalan society with leaders in general, school administrators, teachers and even school children and instilling important values for the personal development and personal interaction with one’s social environment. Values such as (self-)respect, care, stewardship, developing one’s potential and many more are part of this.
Linking hearts and minds
INCE Guatemala believes it is crucial to ensure that before we work on the skills and competencies of school leaders and teachers, we need to ensure that their being/their hearts are in the right place. That ensures a fertile ground for (re-)learning the important pedagogical approaches and methodologies. Talking with our colleagues at Driestar Christian University for Teacher Education, this connects well to their approach of linking hearts and minds with competencies.
INCE Guatemala sees the potential to have a generally more value-based trajectory to be developed in close collaboration with the public system and a further developed Christian integrated trajectory to serve the private system of education. Both are to be closely linked, so they can be backed up by the Ministry of Education, as INCE Guatemala believes that true system change and long-term sustainability of education in a country cannot be achieved if the government is side-tracked. The consortium will pro-actively develop this collaboration.
Presidential elections
Elections for the Guatemalan Presidential and Parliament were recently held and in January a new government will be established with new Ministers. Through the INCE network, partners are actively meeting with the various candidates for the position of Minister of Education to ensure we continue a fruitful collaboration with the Ministry.
The local coordinator is already developing an initial framework overview of the four phase, ten module school improvement / accompaniment program we will develop over the next few weeks and months with the relevant stakeholders in Guatemala. Most probably a workshop will be organized in Guatemala to build this framework in October, so it can be worked out in November-December. By February 2020 we will start implementing this framework in the first schools. We look forward to continuing our meetings with interested parties who can in some way add value to our project, hand in hand towards an impactful education system in Guatemala that continues to unleash the potential of this beautiful Central American country.