CIRED delivers training for high school teachers in Guatemala

Efforts to strengthen Guatemala’s agricultural education system continue through the Education for Agriculture, Forestry and Agroindustry project in Guatemala. Recently, Virginia Tech researcher Henry Quesada collaborated with professors Julieta Mazzola and Daniel Sherard from EARTH University (Costa Rica) to design and deliver a training on concepts, best practices, insights, and experiences on the integration of experiential learning into the agriculture and forestry curriculum.

A total of 146 high school teachers from the 18 agriculture Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) high schools in Guatemala attended the training, which followed a practical approach so that attendees were able to integrate theory and practice.

The primary goal of the project is to redesign and create new curricula in agriculture, forestry, and agroindustry for high school education in the Central American nation. The improvement of curricula in agriculture and forestry is critical to fighting poverty and providing more opportunities to rural areas.

EARTH University’s model of learning-by-doing has become a benchmark in agriculture international education. Combined with Virginia Tech’s expertise integrating experiential learning activities into classroom settings, the result was a training experience that was well received by participants. The next training, scheduled for November, will include Luis Escobar, a Fish and Wildlife Conservation professor at Virginia Tech.

The project is funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an independent U.S. organization that focuses on providing foreign technical assistant to mitigate poverty in developing countries. The German non-governmental organization GOPA leads the project and has partnered with EARTH University and Virginia Tech to implement it. Both higher education institutions and GOPA bring extensive experience and expertise in the country and the Central American region.