Announcement published by Our School
An innovative education that helps transform lives as a driver for social and economic change is the message of educators from 23 countries who have met in Puerto Rico to share pedagogical solutions to inequality and poverty.
At the Third World Conference on Transformative Education, being held at the University of Puerto Rico through the initiative of the alternative education center Nuestra Escuela, various educational, cultural, and community projects from our island, South America, the United States, and Africa were highlighted today, along with an international panel discussing how education should change in the 21st century.
The first keynote lecture was given by Dr. Nelson Colón Tarrats, from the Puerto Rico Community Foundation, with his topic “Weaving Networks: The Ecology of a Transforming School.” Michael T. Ndemanu, from the Global Institute of Transformative Education, Cameroon, presented his keynote lecture on the topic “Undesigning and Redesigning Education for the Present and the Future: What Would It Take and How Would Transformative Success Be Measured?”.
At the roundtable on Education in Africa, Kennedy Oronjo, project director of Shule Yetu (Our School in Swahili) in Nairobi, Kenya, and Rosemary Bosu, from Ghana, presented the topic of how to teach equality in an unequal society. They discussed how this requires transformative leadership from educational leaders to achieve quality education for disadvantaged students in their schools. The Shule Yetu project is supported by Nuestra Escuela of Puerto Rico.
Among the day's conferences and workshops was a panel by the Boricua artistic group Agua, Sol y Sereno, in which Tania Adorno and Pedro Adorno Irizarry developed the theme “Pedagogy of Imagination: From the Artistic-Cultural Practices of Teatro Agua, Sol y Sereno.”.
Other topics during the day, among the great diversity of presentations on the agenda, were: Recognizing parents as co-educators, the curriculum in Kenya; the magic word, transformative vocabulary in children with Hispanic heritage in Michigan; solidarity justice and peace; interculturality and creativity in multilingual students in a Peruvian identity course in San Antonio, Texas; education, transformation, and joy, led by the Semillero project from Brazil; ecopacifism, ecopedagogy, and culture of peace; and “Transforming education in industrial engineering: the use of rubrics and project-based learning.”.
In the afternoon, the Round Table “Rethinking Transformative Education in the 21st Century” was highlighted. The following participated in this international panel: Justo Méndez Arámburu and Ana Yris Guzmán, co-founders of Nuestra Escuela in Puerto Rico; Michael T. Ndemanu, from Cameroon, and Serafín M. Coronel Molina, from Peru, co-founders of the World Conference on Transformative Education; Tom J. McConnell, David Akana, Edmund Folefac; Juanita Rodríguez Colón; Palmira N. Ríos; Carlos E. Severino Valdez and Sandra Cruz García.
Ana Yris Guzmán expressed that “it is a great pride for Our School to host excellent educators from so many places around the world who have come to Puerto Rico to share their knowledge on how we should improve education for the benefit of our children and young people. Education saves the world, and we educators are putting all our effort into creating a better society, with equity and social justice.”.
The WCTE event started in 2018 in Kenya, Africa. Our School and the Alliance for Alternative Education are hosting this third conference in Puerto Rico, which is co-sponsored by the Global Institute for Transformative Education (GITE) and the University of Puerto Rico, among other organizations.
The theme of this year's educational conference is “Transformative Education in the Americas.” There is a strong representation of countries from the Americas at the conference: Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, United States, and Canada. There are also representatives from the Netherlands, Cameroon, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, and Gaza (Palestine).
Professors, social researchers, teachers, and students attended the event. The talks are open to the general public. For more information about the WCTE, you can visit https://gite.education/wcte-2024/ .