stops learning loses the privilege of teaching

“I teach a child in first grade whose mother was my student. And that’s where I start to think this school is not mine. Surely, one day I am going to leave, and it will belong to the community. We have to take care of it”.

Professor Luis Colato is a teacher and a Language and Literature graduate. He has worked at the “Caserío La Joya” School Center in Torola, Morazán for 15 years. This is a rural school of 46 students with only two classrooms located in one of the poorest municipalities in the country. The area is surrounded by overwhelming vegetation.

Colato is from the town of San Miguel which is about two hours away by car. Therefore, from Monday to Friday, he sleeps there,

If us. behind the school. “Here I have a hammock and a bed, if I get bored of the hammock, I move to the bed”.

He says that when ConTextos arrived, the organization was well received.

“We had so much support in different methodological strategies. “You see, in language, even teachers make mistakes - he says - we want to tell the students to read but the teacher, sometimes, does not want to read. ConTextos came to push us”.

“And as someone once said we, as teachers, have to be reading constantly because whoever stops learning, loses the privilege of teaching”.

What would I like to see inside the library?

And what would I like to see happen in it?

Las Anonas School Center is located at the foot of the mountain. It has two classrooms, a yard, and 21 students… However, it is missing a library.

The principal and only teacher is Encarnación Martínez, whom everyone calls Chon, organized the community to assemble a ConTextos library for the tiny school.

One morning, mothers, fathers, students and ConTextos staff walked down a two hour by foot trail with furniture, carpets, puffs and books.

Chon gave up the principal’s office so that the library could be installed there.

He set up his desk in a classroom. From there he accompanies his students and whenever there is a break, he sneaks to the library to read.

Miriam Argueta & Maricela Romeo, Community Members