Remote Education for a Changing World

We are aware that education is a collective responsibility; therefore, to reduce the educational gap that increased due to the pandemic, at Radix Education, we propose to generate collaboration networks between community actors to improve educational opportunities:

Pathway 1 Teachers: training for remote and hybrid educational settings focusing on Math, Literacy, digital and social-emotional skills.

Pathway 2 Students: personalized learning guides through games to promote remote education. 

Pathway 3 Family members: pedagogic strategies to strengthen social-emotional skills to promote safe and mental health in peaceful spaces. 

Pathway 4 Volunteers: community volunteers to collect math books and toys for our Mobile Learning Stations to keep our students interested and promote learning through play to keep them closer to school.

Due to the pandemic, the inequalities increased. In addition, school dropouts also increased problems such as lack of educational opportunities, domestic violence, and socio-emotional problems. 

Just in Mexico, 5.2 million students dropped out the school according to the Survey to Measure the Impact of COVID-19 on Education 2020 (INEGI); the specific reasons associated with the problem are:

• Lost of contact with teachers or not being able to do homework (28.8%).

• The layoffs of a family member or the reduction of the family salary year (22.4%).

• The lack of a computer or internet connection (17.7%).

The National Institute of Public Health of Mexico study revealed that our children increased their stress level, for example:

• 60% of the cases are due to the affectation of the family economy.

• 35% because of the loss of their parents' job.

• 18% because of the death of a family member (COVID).

This outlook shows us the urgent need to guarantee remote learning that allows:

• Increase the participation and permanence of our students with a focus on digital skills, literacy, and mathematical thinking by hybrid education.

• Strengthen the ties between parents, students, and teachers by developing socio-emotional skills to build a peaceful culture and stop school dropouts.

The Blended Learning approach (Bonk; Graham, 2006) projects learning environments beyond four walls and allows us to configure our educational environments in a flexible way that combines face-to-face counseling, work on materials design for each context, and remote monitoring. In this sense, we propose 4 action strategies to implement during 2.5 years:

• Pathway 1: Teachers' training focused on hybrid and personalized educational practices, emphasizing literacy, mathematics, digital, and socio-emotional skills.

• Pathway 2: Students. Using the methodology of Learning through game to create remote learning experiences, we will ensure that all the students learn and improve their socio-emotional, literacy, and math skills.

• Pathway 3: Parents. Through an accompaniment program based on dialogue and active listening, we will reinforce parents’ socio-emotional skills.

• Pathway 4: Volunteers. With the support and expertise of the different community members, we will create Mobile Learning Stations with different materials that help strengthen mathematical thinking and literacy in educational communities.

Principal beneficiaries:

Students, teachers, parents from rural, semi-urban, and urban communities of low socioeconomic incomes. We want to impact 5 states: Oaxaca, Guerrero, Baja California Sur, Jalisco y Colima.

Problems detected:

• Pathway 1. Teachers: lack of professional training to offer a hybrid education that responds to the needs of their community.

• Pathway 2. Students: school dropout, academic backwardness, a physical and mental health crisis.

• Pathway 3. Parents: lack of emotional support to attend to the basic problems that their children experience at school and outside of it.

• Pathway 4. Volunteers: absence of citizen co-responsibility to address public problems in the educational field.

Proposal Solutions:

The Remote Education for a Changing World program attend the next numbers of beneficiaries during 2.5 years: 

• Pathway 1.- 2,600 teachers in continuous training spaces for remote education focusing on socio-emotional, digital, mathematical thinking, and literacy skills.

• Pathway 2.- 4,000 students attended directly, and 130,000 students attended indirectly through a hybrid personalized learning program to strengthen literacy, mathematics, digital and social-emotional skills.

• Pathway 3: will guide 4,000 parents through a hybrid program that reinforces their socio-emotional skills and the emotional bond with their children.

• Pathway 4.- 200 volunteers for active participation in our Mobile Learning Stations and creating pedagogical materials for our students.

How do we do it?

To understand the needs and realities of each context, we implement a methodology composed of 5 phases that work cyclically and in constant evaluation during the course of the program.

 1.- Decision making based on data, we use:

• Diagnostics.
• Instruments for measuring impact: satisfaction surveys, observation, exit questionnaires.
• Spaces for reflection and feedback with community actors.

2.- Contextualized workshops:

• Our learning spaces and training are adapted to the students, teachers, and parents' needs. We adapt using the data obtained from the surveys, diagnostics… 

3.-Accompaniment and monitoring:

• A monitoring plan is generated to continuously evaluate the program's impact on students, teachers, parents, and volunteers.

4.-Implementation of good practices:

• Hybrid class observations and feedback on community planning allow us to evaluate the program's impact, identify good practices and share with other teachers, parents, and volunteers to attend to our students. 

5.-Alignment to a shared vision of the schools:

• The context analysis is always aligned to the vision and the needs of each school in which we collaborate.

Our population aligns with the challenge because we increase learners' participation in remote environments by promoting the creation and application of personalized and innovative learning guides to guarantee the connection and permanence of our students in school. At the same time, we train and support teachers to transform the way to teach and learn. In addition, we provide tools for socio-emotional content at home and the promotion of a peaceful culture with parents. Finally, we also join civil society through volunteers who assume the collective responsibility of promoting access to education.

Remote Education for a Changing World program currently operates in urban, semi-urban, and rural communities in the States of: Baja California Sur, Oaxaca, Colima, Jalisco, and Guerrero. We have been implementing this program for 1 year impacting 1,324 teachers, 1,970 students, 1,246 parents, and 120 volunteers with positive results in the communities. If we obtain financial support, we will extend our program to more communities in the regions where we are actually participating.

Our project has an innovative approach because it integrates all members of the educational community to transform the way to teach and the way to learn through our methodological strategies in a remote context:

• Radix guides for remote education  (Blended Learning)

• Learning Maths through game (Lego Foundation) 

• Learning Literacy through game (Radix Education pedagogy )

• Radix guides for parents  (Radix Education pedagogy)

With the program, we have been able to strengthen the entire educational community despite the pandemic, and by now, with one year of work in this program, we have positive results indicators:

Pathway 1.-Teachers: 

•    98.2%  total satisfaction of the program.

•    98.58% of voluntary attendance to training sessions.

Pathway 2.-Students:

•     89.5% remain enrolled at school.

•     45% participates in Mobile Learning Stations.

Pathway 3.-Family members:

•     84.51% participate in remote parenting education.

•     28.67% participate in dialogue spaces for parents maintaining a healthy distance.

Pathway 4.-Volunteers.

•     12.5% donate educational material for Mobile Learning Stations.

•     39.58% of volunteers participate in the design of Math and Literacy materials for students.

• Current number of impact people: 3,419

• Number of people we will impact in a year: 6,838 

• Number of people we will impact in five years: 17,095

Assessment instruments for teachers, students, parents, and volunteers:

• Initial diagnosis of needs.

• Satisfaction and attendance surveys.

• Checklists.

• Exit questionnaire (skills assessment).

• Trackers

• Virtual class observation rubrics.

• Testimonials from all participants.

Our quantitative indicators for teachers, students, parents, and volunteers are: 

• Enrollment: decrease the school dropout rate.

• The number of children who pass the school grade. 

• The number of children who improve their grades.

• The number of children enrolled for the next school year.

• The number of beneficiaries participating in the activities.

• The number of beneficiaries who start and finish the program.

Full time: 9 persons

Partial time: 3 persons

Support: 3 persons

• Through Proyecto Nuevo Maestro, Radix Education is an organization established as a pioneer in teacher training and support in the country since 2015.

• Has a team of professionals from different areas such as Education, Psychology, Gender, Sociology, Environment, Mathematics, Literacy, among others, to provide training and monitoring to educational communities.    

• Our team is conformed of highly trained and passionate people in education who have experiences and professional training in socio-emotional skills, human rights, early childhood, inclusion, gender, technology, pedagogical methodologies that allow us to share learnings and ideas through dialogue.

• In addition, we have alliances and networks with other institutions and organizations, which allow us to expand our own panorama and learn from others' experiences.

• As an organization, we seek to focus on the diversity of people, profiles, thoughts, ideas, and non-discrimination based on sexual preference or orientation.

• Our recruitment plan includes equality in women and men in projects and managerial positions, horizontal communication, and equal growth opportunities.
  

• Radix Education has a Culture and Strategic Leadership Department in the work team to experience systemic change from our organization. Our Radix DNA of the collaborating team is composed of:

- Collaboration and autonomy.

- Adaptability and resilience.

- Collective leadership.

- Assertive and empathetic communication.

We applied to “Solve” for expert mentoring and accompaniment to increase the impact of our proposal and improve the implementation in the places where we are now and in the future.

We are also interested in receiving financial advice to strengthen ourselves in this area because, in addition to having access to grants and investments, we are interested in being financially sustainable to increase the number of people on the implementing team.

We know that they have a team of professionals and experts who can provide us support and guidance to generate alliances with people and organizations interested in providing better opportunities and comprehensive education in Mexico.

• Public relationships: position the organization in the market and make it known in international media.

• Monitoring and evaluation: create a specific strategy for data-based decisions, making external and rigorous instruments for measuring impact and clear indicators for each intervention.

• Product distribution: increase social relationships and alliances. Create a solid base of organizations and companies interested in investing to guarantee the right to education.

• IDB (Inter-American Development Bank), the link with this organization can be seen through the collaboration for an impact evaluation plan external to Radix Education that allows us to evaluate our program.

• National Geographic: generates an alliance that allows us to build a pedagogical plan to promote care for the environment in our educational communities. 

• The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) generates virtual meeting spaces with teachers worldwide.