CAS Project

Patricia Castillo & Vera Facusse

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A NEW ERA

This project was born at the Brown University Program’s Leadership Institute, where Patty had the privilege of working with an expert in the field of sociology over the summer in order to create a meaningful action plan.

The project was carried out in the following school year, when she teamed up with Vera Facusse,

and with the help of Nicolas Reyes, Jose Castillo and the director of tiny school in neighborhood La Era,

created a six-month intensive computer science program that would benefit 5 underprivileged students.

They all received certificates and a laptop to continue practicing their skills and learning more about the world through technology.

Patty attended the class:

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CEEC 0917 Summer 2017 LEADERSHIP & GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT

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Professor: Aisalkyn Botoeva (aisalkyn_botoeva@brown.edu)

Leader Fellow: Marisa Fernandez (marisa_fernandez@brown.edu)

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Location: Rhode Island Hall 108, Providence Rhode Island, USA

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July 10-July 21, 2017

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Here she was tasked with created an action plan that would help her community in a meaningful way. The next slides show her work.

Planning / Researching (at Brown University)

The issue/problem I am trying to address is: Of the many problems that the country of Honduras has, the one that stands out the most to me is education. Education is such an important part of my life: in part because of my formal education but also because I enjoy learning about the world around me, constantly picking up new hobbies and becoming a well-rounded person. For my action plan I have decided to give a group of underprivileged girls from my local community an opportunity to learn about one of my favorite hobbies: Computer Science. I am concerned about Computer Science Education in the public schools of Honduras. I want to increment S.T.E.M. every school so that the students have a basic knowledge of how to handle electronics and perform tasks such as typing and coding.

The root of this problem lies in the government, more specifically funding. The public school system in Honduras is undeniably flawed as there have been far too many budget cuts that negatively affect the education of the average student. A small amount of the funds are going towards schools and a small amount of that money is going towards Computer Science Departments. Consequently, these institutions lack resources such as computer labs and qualified instructors.

I would like to look into the kids families, what their school’s are like, and overall, just get to know each one of the students individually, and I will along the way. I can spend hours and hours researching and looking at the statistics but I still have no idea of what these girls have to go through on a day-to-day basis. This program will ground me, make me appreciate the privileges I have and motivate me to keep on designing initiatives like this one and helping others.

Action Plan Presentation (at Brown University)

For my Action Plan I have decided to grant lessons to students that go to public schools system on my favorite subject: CS. I am concerned about CS Education in the public schools of Honduras since of the small amount of the funds that goes into schools in general, the Computer Science Departments receive little to no support. Consequently, these institutions lack resources such as computer labs and qualified instructors. I want students to get exposed to advanced electronics and are able to perform tasks like typing and coding. We live in a modern world, and computer literacy necessary for many jobs and even careers.

I would proceed to recruit what high-school students who enjoy technology and are willing to be a part of this project will be a candidate for participation in this initiative . After assembling this team, we will approach the local public schools, tell them about our project and hopefully they will introduce us to their best students for us to invite to participate. Once a schedule is in place and a location is established for the program, we will diagnose each student and design a 6-month individual study plan to teach them new skills. I will need access to the HS Computer Lab, transportation for the students and most importantly, peers to support me and serve as teachers.

Action Plan Presentation (at Brown University)

My ultimate goal is to get to know every student that gets recruited. I will teach them but also learn about their family, school, and overall, just get to know each one of them individually. This program will ground those involved, encouraging us to appreciate the privileges we have and motivate others to design initiatives to this one.

At Brown we were given a lot of freedom. When I say freedom I don’t mean that we could go anywhere in our free time, but instead freedom to think. We weren’t taught that something was right or wrong, but rather asked to make up our own minds. Often we would be strategically placed in a situation where we had to think differently than we normally would. A valuable lesson I learned was that anyone can be a leader. I used to think that I was a leader simply because of the leadership positions I’ve filled during my academic career. But the truth is, anyone who has the power to guide the group and help everyone reach their goals is a leader.

Project Proposal (in Spanish) for the superintendent of the schools in the

La Era neighborhood

Action:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BzunjyZ6KeIvflhFUm9lTlZoTGVQVXRBTWJMRm9na3NOclZyNC1QVkd0Z3lsTWFSQ2M2VWs?usp=sharing

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We have attached a drive that in it has our lessons plans that we taught every Saturday morning for six months from 8 am to 11am. In these lesson plans we included the instructions of how we would teach the kids to use Google drive with its email, slides, documents, calendar, etc.

�In these lesson plans we also taught the kids to type and the structure of writing formal emails. We divided the lessons by the advancing of the students with their typing skills and by level of importance. Some of the lessons including typing courses, using google documents, mail, slides, sheets, etc. We would also have a lunch break between classes and would play games with the kids and hold activities that would foster nationalistic pride, self confidence and most importantly, make them reflect upon their growth during the course and in general, as the future of Honduras.

Reflection

• What did you learn from this experience?
• From these experiences we believe we both have grown and learned as:
• We were humbled by this new experience to the kids that we have been taught since we were little children
• We were affected by the fact that the children had to walk to and from the classes in a relatively dangerous neighborhood, yet they always came filled with enthusiasm and energy to our classes.
• We became exceptionally good at giving classes to children and keeping their attention in the lesson plans, thought planning was new to us and exceptionally difficult.
• We also became more organized in a sense of planning lessons plans specifically for the understanding of these children and having everything in files easy for the children to access.

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• What feelings did it generate in you?
• We believe at first we felt nervous and did not really know what we were getting ourselves into exactly, but we were also very excited about this project.
• In the middle of the project we were having difficulty finding how to teach them specific things that would generate knowledge in these children that would serve as life-long habits.
• In the end we felt sad to leave the kids behind, but felt a feeling of achievement due to seeing their progress and how advanced their skills in typing and using Google Drive had become.
• When we reflected all that we had done for these children, the life-long skills we had enabled for them and finally giving them a computer we felt very proud of ourselves and felt like we had finally given back to the country that we grew up in and has given us so much.

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Reflection

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• Did you meet the goals you had set at the beginning? Why or why not?
• We did meet the goals we had set at the beginning and even exceeded them because the children were able to type proficiently and manage Google Drive to the level we predicted they would, and when we were finishing to give them the lessons we ran out of things to teach and started adding new information that we did not count on teaching them at the beginning but in the end in fit in perfectly.
• What would you do differently if given the chance? What is your biggest accomplishment?
• If given the chance we would have better internet connection for the lessons because we believe a lot of time spent not connecting the kids’ computers to the internet Patricia's father had provided for us.
• This small detail created a big impact in the time we calculated for each lesson, and would plan for a better connection reaching the computers.
• We believe that our biggest accomplishment was not only teaching the kids to manage their computers effectively but we also made them reflect of their individual situations and the situation of our country, inspiring them to become a greater and better future for Honduras.
• Was the collaboration with others easy or were there challenges?
• We believe that collaboration with other’s was very challenging due to many of the people that we worked with being unorganized in their work and many delays affecting the creation of the project due to this.
• But when everything was set we believe that collaboration between us, the parents, the principals was really easy due to technology and the easy-going personalities that we all had that were okay with anything we asked of them.