Provide quality education to 1750 youth in Panama

HOLA AMIGOS! Thank you for your important contributions! 

Today more than ever, Enseña por Panamá works to promote quality education in every corner of the country. In 2021 we managed to directly impact the lives of more than 2800 students and 3200 teachers of the official system. 

With the experience and learnings of five years, we transformed ourselves to respond to new challenges through three lines of action:

• Distance education for students
• Virtual training for teachers from all over the country
• Early Childhood Education Initiative 

In this report, we would like to focus on our “educational leadership program.”

Enseña por Panamá seeks to promote a space in the Panamanian educational system where students develop competencies, talents, and life skills, while enhancing their leadership for the benefit of their community . To accomplish this, we want to link our educational leadership program to public school teachers outside the program, so they can receive training and support.  They will acquire new skills and abilities to transform the educational and social reality of the country. We believe that all children and young people in Panama deserve a quality education that helps them improve their quality of life; our program promotes spaces for academic and socio-emotional development of all our students and their communities (as mentioned in priority #8). 

“My active classroom”  is being carried out through two lines of action that seek to integrate our SEL learnings acquired through our participants and initiatives to the educational communities in which they are training and accompanying teachers, directly linked to priority # 4. They will co-create safe spaces, healthy, inclusive and active listening (as mentioned in priority #1) that will contribute to a better connection between students and teachers, especially for those making the transition from distance education to blended and face to face learning.

The lines of action are:

First action line: Training and continuous support of teachers, with a special focus on developing social emotional skills. 

Second action line: 40-hour virtual seminar for public school teachers where they also build and strengthen their own social emotional skills and that of their students. 

Specific objectives

1. Create virtual / face-to-face training and support spaces depending on the contexts to strengthen SEL in teachers. 
2. Guide teachers in integrating strategies that promote SEL in students into their classroom planning. 
3. Monitor the implementation of strategies to promote SEL in students. 
4. Provide teachers with a manual of compiled practices that allows them to continue with the implementation of SEL strategies in their educational community.

Progress report

First action line: Training and continuous support of teachers, with a special focus on developing social emotional skills. 

Comments: Enseña por Panamá has completed the planning and design of the program content (30% progress).During the pandemic, Panamanian public schools were closed for two years; teachers and students stayed at home and tried to continue their learning process. After 3 months of classes, the schools shut down again. This time, diverse educational unions as well as other unions went on strike for over a month. They reached an agreement on August 1st and now are slowly going back to school. Because of this, it has been difficult to contact and plan training dates with schools. In addition, this week the school calendar year drastically changed (no vacation time for teachers or students) thus we are trying to understand when it is a good time to start our training. 

Second action line: 40-hour virtual seminar for public school teachers where they also build and strengthen their own social emotional skills and that of their students. 

Comments: Enseña por Panamá has  completed over 40% of this action line; we have trained over 119 teachers. The teachers participating in the program rated it 9.5 out of 10 points, highlighting that it is a much more demanding but proactive and practical seminar they have taken.  The majority of them want to continue working with us and participating in future seminars. 

Our team learned various lessons: 

1. The first training portion was done during a week where students had vacation, thus the teachers had more time to participate. Once school started, it was hard for them to continue equally engaged. 
2. Teachers suggested that this seminar should take place in the summer, where they have more time. 
3. After the seminar the teachers realized that social emotional skills is a very important topic and that could help their students have better lives. They used to see SEL as something that only psychologists or social workers would know about. 
4. Other training needs arose: they want to learn more about monitoring and evaluation, mental health and emotional regulation. 

Some of the execution challenges where: 

1. Access to the internet and an electronic device. 
2. Some of them were used to taking time off during  students’  break, especially during the pandemic thus they had a lot of questions surrounding the seminar duration and expectations. 
3. Teachers felt that they didn’t have enough time to meet their obligations. 
4. Teachers had a different experience with other online training seminars; they  had mainly participated  in webinars. Our training seminar required their active hearing and participation; they had assigned homework and were asked to actively participate during class. 

Additionally, please respond to the following questions:

• How did the activities your organization conducted impact the education system beyond the particular classrooms of network teachers, ultimately contributing to a stronger education system?
• In terms of the content creation process, it has been an incredible learning experience to work with our participants (fellows) and alumni. Having their real-hand experience in the content creating process is essential. They have even brought voices from their own school communities into our conversations and shaped the program for each community. This in turn has strengthened the relationship we have with our participants, alumni and educational communities, as well as our work with the Ministry of Education. 

• How did this project contribute to developing students as leaders who can shape a better future?
• ExP’s team has been following up with teachers and some of their students; most of them have been applying what they learnt in the seminar to their classroom. Many of them mention that their relationship with their students and parents have greatly improved. Although we have done one training, we are confident that with time and follow up these students have a better chance of becoming leaders in their communities. 

The “My Active Classroom” seminar was a valuable space for teachers to challenge themselves and reflect about their practices. Below are some of the main reflections  from teachers that participated in the seminar:

• I believe that the topics developed during each session have been a valuable contribution to reinvent ourselves as teachers. Being critical and reflective regarding the aspects that we can improve by ourselves, to optimize our activities and presence in the classroom.
• Magnificent. I understood the value of cultural guidelines in teaching. The importance of making everyone feel comfortable in the process of acquiring knowledge that is necessary for life without feeling you are imposing it on the students; it has been a pleasure to take this course. I will transmit this pleasure to my students, so that they can educate themselves and achieve their goals. 

If you would like to reach one of our new teachers or our summer schools students, or, please access our website, www.ensenaporpanama.com or write to us at info@ensenaporpanama.com.

Links:

• Website

HOLA AMIGOS! Thank you for your important contributions! 

Today more than ever, Enseña por Panamá works to promote quality education in every corner of the country. In 2021 we managed to directly impact the lives of more than 2800 students and 3200 teachers of the official system. 

With the experience and learnings of five years, we transformed ourselves to respond to new challenges through three lines of action:

• Distance education for students
• Virtual training for teachers from all over the country
• Early Childhood Education Initiative 

In this report, we would like to focus on our “educational leadership program.”

At Enseña por Panama we are convinced that strengthening our student’s social emotional skills is key for their development. Since 2017, we have been creating and strengthening our social emotional skills program and have obtained extremely positive results in our student’s personal life and academic performance. One of the most notable areas has been to develop perseverance among our students and their families. Parents who were familiar with our programs connected much more with their children and their teachers. During the pandemic, this helped us continue supporting these parents. We want to expand our program and reach more students. To achieve sustainability and scalability, we will foster and develop socio-emotional skills across Panamanian teachers who then can replicate our program with their students and their families. 

Through our educational leadership program and experience with training over 3000 teachers (40 hour plus seminars) during the COVID-19 pandemic, we have found strategies to continue guaranteeing (to the extent of the resources and possibilities of the communities) high quality education.  At the same time we have strengthened the socio-emotional skills of our fellows and restructured our social emotional learning (SEL) program to have a higher impact on teachers. They develop and strengthen their growth and determination mindsets as well as social Impact and systematic leadership mindsets.

Through his program, we have learned three key lessons:

1- The development of SEL requires teachers to go through a process of internalization and reflection:a teacher that has a hard time recognizing their own emotions, feelings and thoughts finds it difficult to create classroom environments that favors SEL. There are four challenges found in the new IDB study (2020), Educating for life: The development of socio-emotional skills and the role of teachers in the face of the new normal, that we directly address in our program: “To develop socio-emotional skills in students depends, to a large extent, on the quality of training and support those teachers receive to implement them properly. The most effective teacher training programs, in addition to training, usually include mentoring and feedback.” 

2- It is urgent that teachers implement the new strategies they learnt about classroom environment design as well as work with the communities. According to a UNICEF study (2020) carried out on young people between 13-29 years old in 9 countries of the region on the impact of Covid-19 on the mental health of adolescents and young people, “a situation that generates high concern and is a call to the national health authorities, is that 73% have felt the need to ask for help in relation to their physical and mental well-being. Despite the above, 40% did not ask for help.” Students, families, and teachers need spaces to express their emotions and have moments of connection and re-socialization. Those teachers who manage to implement them, make better decisions to continue guaranteeing comprehensive learning regardless of its modality and can better connect with their communities. 

3- In times of crisis and uncertainty, it is necessary to work on developing a growth mindset and determination; it allows students to continue setting goals even amid the challenges that this moment has brought. As the UNICEF study (2020) reports, “The general situation in the countries and their localities has affected the daily lives of young people, as 46% report having less motivation to carry out activities that they normally enjoy; 36% feel less motivated to do usual activities.” Developing a growth mindset is by far the most difficult to build but it will have a positive impact in all components of life. 

Enseña por Panama seeks to expand the impact on educational communities by implementing the "My Active Classroom" project. It will be carried out through two lines of action that seek to integrate our SEL learnings acquired through our participants and initiatives to the educational communities in which they are training and accompanying teachers, directly linked to priority # 4. They will co-create safe spaces, healthy, inclusive, and active listening (as mentioned in priority #1) that will contribute to a better connection between students and teachers, especially for those making the transition from distance education to blended and face to face learning.

At the end of the year, we will have worked directly with more than 300 teachers. In turn, they will work directly with over 4000 students. Our focus in SEL is teaching growth and determination mindset, as well as social impact and systemic leadership mindset to our students. It will not only help them academically but will build their skills to become active and thoughtful citizens, positively impacting their communities and their country. 

If you would like to reach one of our new teachers or our summer schools students, or, please access our website, www.ensenaporpanama.com or write to us at info@ensenaporpanama.com.