Rebirth of a condemned school

How a dumping ground for troubled students became an oasis of learning in a working-class suburb of Santiago, Chile

By Paul Constance

They called it the “garbage can school.”

Students who were expelled from public primary schools in Pudahuel, a large working-class suburb in Santiago, Chile, were almost always sent to the Escuela Albert Einstein. There they joined a sad assortment of violent, learning-disabled, or substance-abusing children that had been thrown out of every other nearby school.

Everything about Escuela Einstein, which houses both preschoolers and primary students through the eighth grade, spoke of failure and indifference. Classroom walls were the color of lead and lacked any decorations or instructional posters. Students could often see their breath in the unheated classrooms because dozens of windowpanes were cracked or missing. The school’s bathroom facilities were caked with years of accumulated filth. The physical education facilities consisted of a weed-choked lot. There were no tables in the cafeteria and the kitchen did not meet basic sanitary standards.

Very little learning took place during class time. Many students brought drugs and alcohol to school. Fights were constantly breaking out, and the local police were frequently called in to restore order. Absenteeism and desertion were rampant: of 400 students that enrolled at the beginning of a typical school year, only half remained nine months later. Parents—even those who had no other options—were choosing to keep their kids away.

By the time Gladys Tejea heard that the municipal government was looking for a new principal for Escuela Einstein in late 1995, the school was widely regarded as beyond repair. She visited the school to see for herself. “It was a disaster,” she recalls. “The children were simply left to do what they wanted. They didn’t have a place to eat… There was no commitment with the parents; no relationship with the local community. It was a total chaos.”

But Tejea, who was a veteran preschool teacher and the extracurricular programs coordinator at another public school in Pudahuel, was intrigued. After nearly 20 years of working with high-risk children in low-income neighborhoods throughout Santiago, she was convinced that a school like Escuela Einstein could succeed—but only under certain conditions.

A radical proposal. Tejea didn’t just apply for the principal’s job. She drafted a detailed proposal for turning Escuela Einstein around and submitted her plan to the municipal authorities in charge of managing schools under Chile’s decentralized education system.

Tejea envisioned a school where highly motivated teachers and social workers would respond to students’ educational, social and psychological needs in an attractive and stimulating environment. To do so would require a complete break with tradition, however. Tejea stipulated that she would only accept the job if she were allowed to do the following:

• Offer integrated social and educational services. Tejea was convinced that a school that focused exclusively on education could not succeed. Low-income children in Chile receive social services through daycare centers run by a government entity known as SENAME (for its Spanish initials). Tejea says that these centers rarely coordinate their efforts with local schools, and that they sometimes even compete with schools for children’s time. She proposed installing a SENAME office right on the Escuela Einstein campus and forming an integrated team under her leadership. That way, social workers, psychologists and teachers could work together with parents and students—all in one spot.

• Institute all-day programs. Children in most Chilean schools still attend only half-day shifts. Most students at Escuela Einstein were spending the rest of the day on the streets, where they were more likely to get involved in drugs or crime. So Tejea proposed an ambitious program of extracurricular workshops that would enable children to spend the entire second half of the day in school. The workshops would focus on artistic and creative activities such as music, dance, carpentry and computing, all of which would be designed to reinforce learning capacity in the children.

• Hire a hand-picked team. Tejea knew that it would take an extraordinary staff and a strong sense of teamwork to succeed in such a difficult setting, so she asked to be exempted from the system whereby teachers are assigned to schools by municipal authorities. Instead, she would dismiss the school’s existing staff and start from scratch, personally recruiting teachers with solid professional credentials, willingness to teach at least one extracurricular workshop, and above all, with what Tejea calls “a strong social vocation” (See sidebar, Why do you teach?)

• Apply for targeted government support. Tejea wanted Escuela Einstein to participate in a special program run by Chile’s Ministry of Education that is designed to help the country’s 900 worst-performing schools. (See link at right). In exchange for a formal commitment to improve the level of learning, the program offers schools special professional support plus additional funds for teacher training, community tutors, books and other learning materials (see sidebar, First, help the neediest).

• Foster parent participation. The relationship between parents and school officials at Escuela Einstein had deteriorated to the point where it was openly confrontational. Tejea was convinced that her project could not succeed without the active support of parents, so she proposed a variety of initiatives designed to improve parents’ understanding of each child’s progress and to enlist parents’ help in raising funds and maintaining school facilities.

continued…

Date posted: April 2002

The news about public education in Latin America is often presented as unremittingly bad, particularly in the poorest rural and urban areas.

Yet in every country, a few public schools stand out for their ability to provide a good education in even the most difficult settings. Why do these schools succeed where others fail? How does their experience relate to broader education reform programs?
In this occasional series, we take an in-depth look at public schools in low-income areas that have found innovative ways to improve learning, motivate teachers, and engage the support of parents and local communities.

Music makers…

Parents, take note!

Why do you teach?
First, help the neediest
An environment that encourages change
Innovation can be contagious

Chile's Ministry of Education