A Honduras school offers hope amidst despair

To me, the slums that carpet the hills around Tegucigalpa, Honduras are some of the grimmest places on earth. A mix of poverty, violence, unemployment, drug abuse and alcoholism, and broken families casts an almost perceptible cloud of despair and hopelessness over many of these communities, often asphyxiating any serious aspirations or ambitions for a better life.

Rather than offering students a glimpse of life beyond the confines of these slums, many of Honduras’s schools reflect the neglect and privation that make its education system one of the weakest in the Americas. Dilapidated buildings, overcrowded classrooms, poorly trained teachers, school violence, daily visits by gangs collecting their impuestos de guerra (war taxes), high rates of teacher absenteeism and strikes, patronage and corruption, and the failure of education to prepare students for the world of work lead many youth (in some cases more than 50%) to drop out after grade 8 (UNICEF, 2012).  Not surprisingly, many parents and youth themselves hold the formal education system in low regard.

A public school that offers hope

But in one of these peri-urban slums is Escuela Cerro Grande—a school that offers a view of what a good education can be and the promise a good education holds. Younger children tend the school garden (with fresh produce sold at low cost to families) while fifth and sixth graders learn cooking or woodworking at two of the school’s five micro-empresas. All children learn English and computer skills. Students are expected to excel (indeed 92% are passing their classes) and the school offers a host of in-school and after-school support to ensure success. Parents sign a contract outlining their responsibilities to their Cerro Grande student; and the principal is known to show up at home with strong and unsolicited advice for the parent who violates the terms of that contract or whose child-rearing practices are deemed unfavorable to student learning.

High standards for students and teachers

These high standards apply to teachers. When the principal, Irma Esperanza Lopez,  arrived at the school several years ago, she came with a vision, and told teachers that to attain it, they would need to work harder or leave. Many did leave—and were replaced by teachers who organize after school classes and hold weekly learning sessions for one another. Most of all, the high standards apply to students. The school has an unheard of 0% dropout rate. Others may not continue with school but at least have skills that make finding a job easier. Remarkably for a Honduran government school, Cerro Grande has a waiting list.

High performance combined with community support

Escuela Cerro Grande follows the template of a “high performing school” (Shannon & Bylsma, 2007). Strong principal and teacher leadership promotes a shared vision of excellence with high standards and expectations for all students. The principal monitors learning and teaching in the classroom. Teachers work closely with one another, with families and with students. In addition to the Government’s school evaluation, the principal has introduced a more rigorous one. Professional development for teachers is frequent and focused. The school enjoys extraordinarily high levels of support from the community. Mothers say that teachers are “partners” in their child’s upbringing and parents pay the salaries of the English and computer teachers. There are other signs of community support too: the school has not been vandalized, nor equipment stolen, nor the garden raided.  Most tellingly, gangs do not come to the school demanding their impuesto de guerra.

Cerro Grande is also a full-service community school. It offers a host of medical, psychosocial, employment, nutritional, and recreational supports to its 900 students and their families, from micro-enterprises to parenting classes. Schools promise sustainability for such service delivery—they will be around long after external aid projects depart.

I was struck by Cerro Grande for three reasons. First, it embodies what education should be —not simply a mirror reflecting back to students the confined limits of their reality but a window that opens for them a panorama of possibilities and opportunities. The school represents the triumph of will, grit, imagination and commitment over the nihilism of poverty, corruption and violence.

Next, Escuela Cerro Grande instantiates the concept of “school reform.” We actually do know what makes schools effective and it is often a set of inter-connected, long-term and sustained approaches. Yet many international aid and government programs unbundle these approaches in favor of one or two interventions which, not surprisingly, fail when applied in isolation.

Lessons for donors and government

Finally, I have spent a lot of time in a lot of very poor schools in a lot of countries—usually, as part of a “development” project.  I have yet to see any school-based donor or government program offer a similar set of full-service supports as Cerro Grande. However, a school like Cerro Grande can offer critical lessons for funding and designing education programs in marginalized environments.

Cerro Grande teaches us that educating a child requires not just an academic investment, but a human and social one as well. It teaches us that children who are hungry, who struggle with the depression and stress of poverty and violence, who are unwell or abused or have addiction problems need more supports go to school and stay in school and succeed in school. And it reminds us that children live in families and communities, and when those families and communities are broken, a part of that child is also broken. But with supports and opportunities provided by caring adults and institutions, many children and their families can develop the necessary resiliency, skills and dispositions to overcome the worst kinds of adversity even in the worst possible environments.

Notes:

(1)  For more information about Escuela Cerro Grande, contact Karen Galindo

(2)  Parents I interviewed spoke of two other schools—Santa Teresa de Jesús and Santa Clara de Asís—as schools that combine high academic standards with a full-range of services. Both are run by the Spanish NGO, Fundación del Valle.

(3)  Two examples of full-service community school programs are the Boston Promise Initiative and the Harlem Children’s Zone.

(4)  Thanks especially to Karen Galindo of Esceula Cerro Grande and Beth Mayberry of EDC/Proyecto METAS Honduras for fact checking and feedback. Thanks too to Alejandro Paredes, Chief of Party, Proyecto METAS. (Cerro Grande is not affiliated with Proyecto METAS or EDC)

References

Escuela Grande principal, teachers and parents, interview by Mary Burns, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, April 21, 2013.

Shannon, G.S. & Bylsma, P. (2007). The nine characteristics of high-performing schools: A research-based resource for schools and districts to assist with improving student learning. Retrieved from http://www.k12.wa.us/research/pubdocs/NineCharacteristics.pdf

UNICEF (2012). Honduras: Estadísticas—Educación. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/honduras_statistics.html