Escuela Caracol

In a country still recovering from a 36 yearlong civil war that ended less than two decades ago, there is a great need for our healing and comprehensive educational community.

Our commitment to building intercultural solidarity is serving an increasing number of families in the Lake Atitlan region of Guatemala and is becoming a solid model of em-powerment for the marginalized people in Central Ame-rica.

Escuela Caracol was founded in 2007 by two Ameri-cans, Joshua and Courtney Wilson, in an area that has been inhabited by indigenous Maya for thousands of years. It is one of the poorest regions in Guatemala, with 80% living in poverty, 25% in extreme poverty and only 62% of the children making it to grade 6. Only 8.5% of Guatemalan youth pursue university education, and for women it is LESS than 1%.

Waldorf education is a natural fit for this Guatemalan community where we teach children from Kindergarten through Grade 6 with a pedagogy that sprang from the intention of renewal in Europe following World War I. Ba-sed on the fundamental principles: freedom, equality and solidarity, creative expression, practical work, the natural environment and social harmony are part of each day at Cara-col. Also local indigenous customs are celebrated and honored as a consistent inspiration for the emergence of a new culture. The children are motivated, confident and self-direc-ted in their studies and in their relationships with their peers.

Now in our 8th year we continue to break through paradigms and emerge as a model of intercultural education in this community along the shores of Lake Atitlán. In this cultural center of the Ancient Maya we are following an impulse to celebrate and honor traditional customs while recognizing ways to integrate and emerge together as a new culture.

It is one of the po-orest regions in Guatemala, with 80% living in po-verty, 25% in ex-treme poverty and only 62% of the children making it to grade 6.

26 January – First day of classes02 March – Planning day for teachers 30 March – 03 April – Spring Break06 April – Planning day for teachers 24 April – Parade, San Marcos Fair27 April – San Marcos Fair (day off)01 May – Labor Day (day off)04 May – Planning day for teachers 11 May – Mother’s Day (No classes)05 June – Planning day for teachers 19 June – Anniversary and Summer Solstice

11 July – 11 Aug – Mid-year vacations 12 Aug – First day of class after the vacation15 September – Guatemalan Inde-pendence Day Parade16 September – Holiday for Guate-malan Independence Day30 October – Festival del Jocote02 November – All Saints Day03 November – Planning day 24 November – Last day of clases, Closing ceremonies

As we emerge we see an identity that integrates the wisdom of the past. At Escuela Caracol we give attention to numerous ancient customs including the traditional crafts of our Maya community. The ancestral professions are respected as much as any other pro-fession, and the survival of traditional crafts is threatened by the rise of globalization and technology. In our school we teach the ancient crafts as part of the handwork curriculum. For instance we make everyday objects with materials such as maguey, a fiber made of a cactus plant, that was traditionally used to make string. The string has many uses for the Maya people: fishing nets, nets to harvest avocados or to make backpacks and bags for carrying personal belongings. The latter, bags called “morrales”, are made by our students, they learn and work through all processes. They cut the maguey that grows in the gardens at Escuela Caracol, extract the fibers, and dry the material to finally weave by hand. Our community experience is enriched by the elders who come to share their knowledge of these ancient processes.

In additional to traditional handwork we continuing our commitment to intercultural education by teaching three languages. Spanish (the official language of the State of Guatemala), Kak’chikel (a local Mayan language spoken in San Marcos La Laguna) and English. Many of our activities combine all three languages and the students integrate them through their everyday activities.

The Kak’chikel language is not the only part of the Mayan cul-ture to which Escuela Caracol attaches particular importance. The traditional Mayan spirituality is practiced in our sacred altar, and we honor the energy of the day (nahual) at the beginning of each morning as dictated by the sacred calendar or Cholq’ij (a.k.a. Tzolkin). Throughout our school year activities arise that combine the Waldorf pedagogy with activities rooted in Mayan cosmology. Year after year we visit and we are visited by cultural groups and associations who dedicate their efforts to spread the ancient Mayan knowledge and history, such as Sot’zil Jay group, using art and music to honor their roots. And our own students succeed in bringing story to life through class plays constructed from the the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Maya.

Escuela Caracol provides a unique opportunity for our community for many reasons. In addition to offering high quality Waldorf pedagogy, through generous scho-larships received from donors in Europe and the United States, we also provide two nutritious meals a day for all our students, most who are impoverished and mal-nourished. Through donations we also are enabled to offer high quality class materials to sustain both acade-mic and the artistic practices. And there is an abundan-ce of dedication and love at Escuela Caracol.

We are an inter-cultural learning community. Our teachers continue their work by stu-dying to become Waldorf certified through programs in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Canada and the U.S. One of our founding teachers, Andrea Arrivillaga, became the first Guatemalan to earn her Waldorf Teacher Certification for Primary Grades, and Maribel Mendoza made history by becoming the first Indigenous woman to earn her Waldorf Teacher Certification in Early Childhood. Our school is inspiring the community of San Marcos in its material, mental, emotional and spiritual development in ways that still surprise us. Some commu-nity members are now beginning to demand that the public schools implement pedago-gical practices similar to ours. This is especially notable when you consider that many of these public schools still make use of teaching methods where violence and humiliation are part of the everyday experience.

We are happy and very grateful to be starting our second 7 year cycle, in which new horizons are opening before us. In our new school year, which began in January, enroll-ment was up 20%, our classes are full and we look forward to offering parent education workshops this year. Through donations we are even able to send our founding teacher, Andrea Arivillaga, to Dornach, Switzerland this spring for the International Association for Steiner/Waldorf Early Childhood Education conference.

We believe above all that our school community represents the vision of Rudolf Steiner’s pedagogy for freedom and from this impulse we are building intercultural solidarity and economic empowerment. We are a unique community and a strong model of what edu-cation can do when guided by the heart, we hope to inspire many other communities internationally.

Over 85% of our students are indigenous Maya who need the support of sponsors. Their education has been made possible by generous sponsors in Europe and North America who contribute to our Maya Student Fund. We love our sponsors!

“Our highest endeavor must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives.” - Rudolf Steiner

Expectant eyes watch as their teacher al-ternatively rises first the right hand, then

the left, and the song that gently leads her movements mesmerizes them and guides their small hands as though they were bound to her by invisible strings. About two or three are out of synch but with the next movement of the teacher they are all with her again. They advance following her sweet voice and the assistant teacher takes the hands of the

last two, they follow the melody out in to the garden and slowly the sound fades. It is a moment in the day of kindergarten.

This “divine imitative virtue” that lives so intensely in 3-6 years old children allows them to respond to every movement, every gesture of their teachers, in an attitude of “religious faith” that gives them the same certainty of a healthy developing body.

DAILY RHYTHM IN KINDER

TEACHER COLLEEN AND TEACHER SANDRA

8:30 - Short walk around the school grounds

8:50 - Morning Circle

9:00 - Bathroom and washing hands

9:15 - We eat fruit together

9:30 - Activity of the day: tale, circle or artistic activity

9:50 - Free play inside the classroom

10:50 - We pick up the toys

11:00 - Snack and cleaning and washing teeth

11:30 - Free play outside the classroom

12:15 - Washing hands and farewell

TEACHER MARIBEL AND TEACHER ANGELINA

8:15 a 8:30 - Children arrive

8:30 - Morning Circle

8:45 - We eat fruit together

8:55 - Free play inside the classroom

9:45 - We organize the classroom

10:00 - Tale

10:25 - Bathroom and washing hands

10:40 - Snack

11:10 - Cleaning and washing teeth

11:30 - Free play outside the classroom

12:15 - Washing hands and farewell

At 7:30 a.m. we start arriving: the teachers, that is. Maribel, Angelina, and Sandra, my colleagues in Escuela Caracol’s

preprimary school, walk down from Barrio #1 and I arrive on bicycle from the neighboring town of Tzununa. Sandra and I begin the day in our open-air classroom sweeping out wha-tever leaves and dust have blown in during the night. The sounds of birdcalls and carpentry are our background noise. At 8:15 the school’s front door opens and the children start to trickle in. The kindergarteners have the longest walk, to the back corner of our school where our two kindergarten classrooms are nestled under ma-tasano and jacaranda trees.

The first ones to arrive help us to set up the benches, wipe the tables down, and prepare fruit for our snack. Once all the children have arrived and class has begun at 8:30, we set out for a short walk around the school grounds. The first stop is our chicken house, where we leave our hens with fresh water, corn, and perhaps some fruit that we did not finish the day before. From there, we explore the gardens, say hello to the administrative staff in the office, or take in the primary school’s vegetable beds. On our way back to the clas-sroom we stop at the stone spiral to sing our morning ronda, or circle. Our class is taught in Spanish, but during the ronda we are able to introduce the children to the sounds of English and Kaq’chikel (the local Maya language of our area) through songs and verses.

A Day in the Life of a Maya Waldorf Kindergarten

By Colleen Donovan, Lead Teacher of KinderCaracol

A Day in the Life of the Waldorf Kindergarten was written by one of Escuela Caracol’s kinder-garten teachers: Colleen Donovan. Colleen is from the United States, and has been living in Guatemala since 2008 and working in Escuela Caracol since 2012. She is enrolled in the Early Childhood Education program at Sunbridge Ins-titute in New York. The other kindergarten tea-

chers at Escuela Caracol are: Maribel Mendoza, Sandra Perez, and Angelina Quiacain and they are all from San Marcos la Laguna, a highlands town on Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. Maribel Mendoza graduated from the Wal-dorf Early Childhood Education program in Cuernavaca, Mexico in 2014 and is the first indigenous Maya to earn Waldorf teaching certification. San-dra Perez is also working towards completing her certification through the Cuernavaca program.

Back in class it is storytime, drawing time, or watercolor time, depending on the day. The stories we tell are simple nature tales or Grimm’s Brother’s fairy tales, depending on the group we have. For many of the children, it is the first time they hear a story told in such a manner. Stories like La Zanahoria ( The Carrot) or La Boda del Tio Perico, (Uncle Perico’s Wedding) which are short, repetitive, and silly are always favorites among all ages. When the puppets come out to accompany the stories, the children are thrilled! Once or twice a year, Sandra translates one of the simpler stories into Kaq’chikel and takes over the storytelling.

After storytime is free play. The children scatter into groups, some playing house with our dolls and cooking tortillas and eggs on the comal to sell or give to their classma-tes; others arranging the benches side-by-side to take trips across the lake in their lan-chas. Castles and kingdoms are built on the floor from the large wooden blocks, entire worlds are created out of playsheets, flowers, and puppets. A few of the children get to be Sandra’s helpers, and go to the kitchen with her to prepare our daily snack. The children trickle into the kitchen during the first few minutes to snack on a piece of fruit, and then return to their play. Some help me indoors to wash the tables and benches of our class, to clean and sort the cotton that we harvested during our morning walks, or wash our class towels and sheets. When play time ends, we all clean up together, and then go to the pila to wash our hands and sit down for snack time.

Snack time in our class is, of course, based around wholesome, nutritious foods, but it is also based on the traditional foods of our Guatemalan highlands region. We eat tortillas, tamalitos, beans, queso fresco. We drink lemongrass tea from our garden or pinol, a warm cornmeal based drink. When snack is done, we say thank-you in three languages: Spa-nish, Kaq’chikel, and English. Then it is washing up time: most of the children help Sandra to wash, dry, and put our dishes away, while a few stay inside to help me clear the table, sweep the floor, and fill cups up with drinking water to use when brushing our teeth.

Once both the dishes and our teeth are clean, it is time to go play in our garden! The kids climb as high as they dare in the jocote trees, or use long caña sticks to knock ripe jocote fruits or achiote seed pods down from the trees. Others run around, walk across the balance beam, or search for ripe berries in the berry bramble. At the end of outdoor play, we all gather together again to sit in the shade of the jocote tree and sing our good-bye song, while the parents slowly arrive into our garden to take their children home. The morning is over, and the children leave with hugs and cries of “Adios seño!”

5

The 2015 school year has started. In a heartfelt ceremony ten families brought

their children to their first grade teacher with confidence in their intuition, Waldorf pedagogy, and this teacher, Ervin Quiacaín, who they will share the next 6 years. Su-rrounding the grade 1 children and their parents, were other members of the Cara-col family accompanying and celebrating all incoming students. Children of grade 2 will be the constant companions of the new grade 1 children, almost as big brothers and sisters they will experience the many joys of learning and growing together.

In class recently these grade 1 and 2 chil-dren were drawing with their feet straight and curved lines and soon they will be making graphemes of uppercase letters, sewing stitches in folders, laughing, run-ning, and jumping all around our bright and beautiful school. Mr. Quiacaín, teacher of these grade 1 and 2 students is simulta-neously learning and renewing himself to stand before the "old" second graders and rising with beauty and joy to maintain the reverence of the smaller children, barely in-troduced into learning.

THE 2015 MAIN LESSON BLOCKS FOR GRADES 1 AND 2by Ervin Samuel Quiacaín Sajvín

1. BLOCK: Form drawing January 26th to February 20th

2. BLOCK: Letters February 23rd to March 27th First grade: capital letters Second grade: lower case letters

3. BLOCK: Numbers April 7th to May 8th

4. BLOCK: Letters May 11th to June 4th

5. BLOCK: Numbers June 8th to July 10th

VACATIONS: July 10th to August 11th

6. BLOCK: Natural Sciences - Geography August 12th to September 4th

7. BLOCK: Letters September 7th to October 2nd

8. BLOCK: Numbers October 5th to October 31th

9. BLOCK: Closing Ceremony Preparation: Closing the 2015 School Year November 3rd to November 24th

6

The third and fourth class has begun the process between the stories of the Old

Testament and the Helpers of Humanity. What could be more interesting for the ages nine and ten? Since these questions about the veracity and origin have been in their soul, their attention is directed to the tea-cher. For them she is like a fortune teller, "she knows what we want to know now," they say. They continuously ask for more, and their devotion to her deepens daily.

One morning in the company of a parent, and Italian-born master baker, we prepared artisan bread using a starter taken from a hundred-years old mass. The children were very orga-nized and very happy, diligent about accuracy when measuring ingredients under the gui-dance of the father, an expert in this matter..

This group of 18 students are achieving by process the nurturing of healthy habits and it allows Teacher Andrea Arrivillaga to offer the children more experiences of self direction.

THE 2015 MAIN LESSON BLOCKS FOR GRADES 3 AND 4 by Andrea Arrivillaga Hurtado

1. BLOCK: Professions of our community January 26th to February 20th

2. BLOCK: Maths February 23rd to March 20th

3. BLOCK: Grammar March 23rd to April 23rd

4. BLOCK: Geography and Local History March 23rd to April 23rd

5. BLOCK: Maths (fractions) May 25th to June 19th

6. BLOCK: Grammar June 22nd to July 10th

VACATIONS: July 10th to August 11th

7. BLOCK: Zoology y Anthropology August 12th to September 4th

8. BLOCK: Maths September 7th to October 2nd

9. BLOCK: Geography of Guatemala October 5th to October 30th

10. BLOCK: The Mayas - Popol Vuh and Grammar November 2nd to November 18th

11. BLOCK: Closing and review November 19th to November 24th

The fifth and sixth grade began this school year on the second floor of the

new school building. This "height" has per-meated their new status as the older stu-dents, and contributes to the spirit of re-search that has piqued in the new block of Physics. Through trial and error the teacher

is showing how a scientist reaches the exact spot of research in any field of science.

Like her fellow colleagues, teacher Karin Pogharian, maintains the joy of knowledge in her classroom even with the challenge of having a wide range of developmental maturity in a mixed-age classroom.

1. BLOCK: Physics January 26th to February 20th

2. BLOCK: History - Greece February 23rd to March 13th

3. BLOCK: Maths March 16th to March 27th

4. BLOCK: Geography April 6th to April 30th

5. BLOCK: Maths May 4th to May 22nd

6. BLOCK: Spanish May 23rd to June 19th

7. BLOCK: Geometry June 22nd to July 10th

VACATIONS: July 10th to August 11th

8. BLOCK: Mineralogy August 12th to September 11th

9. BLOCK: History - Rome September 14th to October 2nd

10. BLOCK: Maths October 5th to October 30th

11. BLOCK: Astronomy November 3rd to November 24th

THE 2015 MAIN LESSON BLOCKS FOR GRADES 5 AND 6 by Karin Pogharian Venegas

escuelacaracol.org / info@escuelacaracol.org

“Mano con mano en el caminocon el canto hagamos

un dorado cordel,confiando siempre, siempre

en la sabia ayudaluz divina veré.

Arduo y difícil es el caminopero fuertes somosy al fin llegaremos.”

“Hand in hand on the roadwith our singing we will make

a golden string,always trusting, always

in the the wise helpI’ll see divine light.

Arduous and difficult is the waybut strong we are

and we will finally arrive.“

Snail (caracol), by local artist David Sacach.

Donation to Escuela Caracol.