After an intensive period of theoretical and practical classes and extracurricular activities, the students, teachers and municipalities of the We Learn Access programme of Fundación Educacional Oportunidad and the U.S. Embassy in Chile, made a positive balance of this first year of joint work.
With the presence of community authorities, parents, English teachers, management teams and of course the students of the Liceo Mistraliano de Paihuano and the Edmundo Vidal Cárdenas school in Vicuña, the first year of the We Learn Access programme came to a close, with a positive balance for students and teaching teams.
The Access initiative, carried out by the U.S. Embassy in more than 80 countries, was carried out for the first time in the Elqui Valley in alliance with Fundación Educacional Oportunidad to provide scholarships for two years (360 hours) to first and second year students from Vicuña and Paihuano to learn English intensively through classes in addition to the Ministry's curriculum and outside the regular timetable, in which technology, games, projects and music are cross-cutting elements in each unit of study. The ultimate goal is for students to achieve an upper-intermediate level of English (B2 according to the Common European Framework).
During this year, Access students participated in different activities framed in 4 thematic axes: astronomy, environmental protection, cultural identity and leadership skills, which allowed them to learn English in a practical way through experiences such as: modelling their clothes, creating Halloween stories, going out to meet neighbours, explaining food recipes, describing their community and school, among others.
Regarding these activities, Constanza Rojas, a 1st year student at the Edmundo Vidal Cárdenas school explains that "people think that our Access classes are just about sitting and writing all the time, but most of the classes are very didactic and entertaining and we can learn English in many ways".
In addition, to meet the objectives of the programme, the 31 young people had the opportunity to participate in different extracurricular activities such as a winter camp, a visit to listen to the La Serena Symphony Orchestra, a talk on climate change with the director of the UDD Sustainability Centre and a visit to the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory.
Regarding these activities outside the classroom, Claudia González, local coordinator of the programme and English teacher in Paihuano, explained that "the programme also includes a series of extracurricular activities where students have the opportunity to speak and listen to English and that this is not only part of the classroom, but of a set of activities that allow them to learn this foreign language in a better way".
Elizabeth Araya, a student from the Liceo Mistraliano in Paihuano, highlights the visit they made to the El Tololo observatory. "Going to an observatory is not done every day and we also learned about how it works. Being in this programme is a great opportunity to learn a language that is needed all over the world," she says.
The progress made by the students this year has been remarkable, according to the principal of the Edmundo Vidal Cárdenas school, Ruperto Pizarro, "we have students who belong to Access who can maintain a fluent conversation. They can speak English better, they have improved their vocabulary and pronunciation, we are very happy with the programme.
Ana Ochoa, principal of the Liceo Mistraliano de Paihuano, shares the opinion of the Peralillo principal, since "the students have made progress and we can see it in the review of the evaluations, and we hope that with the implementation of the second year it will be even more significant". Regarding the programme, the principal considers it "a great opportunity that the whole educational community values very much".
