While the philosophy is not new, its application in a low-cost way in rural communities by Ms. The idea is that students are placed in the center of the learning process. The method transforms the conventional learning paradigm where the teacher is the only one talking and conveying information in a classroom. “We started the fire from the bottom up, by making small changes in classrooms and working with rural teachers to improve morale, results and resources.” Colbert, while in Doha to receive the prize. “When you see these isolated, invisible schools, why wait for big educational top-down reform from the government?” said Ms. The prize is an annual award, funded by the Qatar Foundation for Science, Education and Community Development, that recognizes innovative contributions to international education. Colbert and the model have won a string of awards over the years, most recently the $500,000 WISE Prize for Education awarded by the World Innovation Summit for Education in Doha, Qatar in October. By 1988, Unesco declared that Colombia was the only country in Latin America and the Caribbean where rural schools outperformed urban schools because of the Escuela Nueva method. The Escuela Nueva’s strategy also aims to make education more relevant to the students’ daily lives and those of their families - mapping the area where they live, for example and learning about the agricultural calendar, and the learning and teaching materials direct students to share what they learn in school with their families and communities.ĭecades after the model was first developed in 1975, Escuela Nueva has received support - including financial - from the Colombian government, Unesco and The World Bank, and was implemented into a national educational policy in Colombia in the late 1980s. “If a student is away due to illness or farmer parents who move around, when he comes back to school, he can follow his learning guides where he left off - so students are motivated, self-esteem stays high, and they never repeat grades.” “If a student learns faster, I can guide him and he can go even faster and if a student has difficulties or has been away for a long while, he can be supported,” said Ms.

In the Quindío region of Colombia, around Armenia, for example, students must overcome not only poverty and a lack of educational resources but also a culture that encourages children to work to contribute to a family’s income - and the lure of easy money to be made from dealing drugs.Įscuela Nueva’s flexible program encourages dropout students to come back to school to study at their own pace and to take exams when they are ready. Inadequate resources and low academic achievement usually lead to high dropout and repetition rates in traditional schools.

Mazzo, teaching multiple grade levels in one classroom in rural communities. The method, developed by Clara Victoria (Vicky) Colbert de Arboleda in the 1970s, was designed specifically for teachers like Ms. Mazzo has used this method of teaching, known as Escuela Nueva or “New School,” for 28 years after experience teaching in a traditional public school in Colombia.

Her primary school students are often among the first in their families ever to have set foot in a classroom. Using this method, she has taught generations of children, the sons and daughters of local farmers and coffee growers, to read, write and do math. Mazzo moves among them, serving as a guide more than an instructor. Rather than standing by a blackboard at the front of the class, Ms. In her school’s single classroom, she teaches children of various ages and grade levels who work in small groups at their own pace. Myriam Mazzo is a teacher in the central Colombian city of Armenia, a rural town of about 300,000 people nestled in the mountains southwest of Bogotá.

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