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Juan Pablo Romero (right), founder and director of Los Patojos, talks with current student Christopher Alvarado, who participates in the construction and maintenance of the new campus.
Fourth graders prep dough to bake during a cooking class. Los Patojos has grown into a community center and school educating over 300 students.
Teenagers play chess during a break at the main Los Patojos campus.
Pre-elementary school children look through workbooks.
Current students Steven Garcia (left), 16, and Luis Hernandez, 15, help construct around the athletic field in Los Patojos' new campus.
A woman walks two children in Jocotenango.
Juan Pablo Romero holds a young plant which, when fully grown, will be used as renewable firewood.
Jonathan Ramirez, 16, breakdances at Los Patojos.
npr:
Imagine a small, developing nation whose education system is severely lacking: schools are poorly funded, students can’t afford tuition or books, fewer than half of indigenous girls even attend school — and often drop out to take care of siblings or get married.
These are the schools of rural Guatemala.
Now meet a firebrand educator who thinks he has a way to reinvent schools in Guatemala.
His school is called Los Patojos, a Spanish word used in Guatemala that means “little ones.”
Los Patojos is in the mold of Montessori and Waldorf schools. It focuses on the whole child — the intellectual, the artistic, the physical and the practical. Teachers show the students how to bake bread, to take photographs, to frame a building — and they also instill pride of place.
“Guatemala wants to become Mexico. Mexico wants to become the United States. The United States wants to become Europe. I don’t want to become anything. I want to become Guatemala,” says Juan Pablo Romero Fuentes.
He is the 34-year-old founder of Los Patojos and its unlikely headmaster. His arms are heavily tattooed, he careens around the cobblestone streets in a beat-up 4Runner, he dresses like a rock guitarist (which he used to be) and he f-bombs his way through interviews.
Seeds Of Maya Genius Grow In A New Kind Of School
Photos: James Rodriguez for NPR
(Your picture was not posted)
Juan Pablo Romero (right), founder and director of Los Patojos, talks with current student Christopher Alvarado, who participates in the construction and maintenance of the new campus.
Fourth graders prep dough to bake during a cooking class. Los Patojos has grown into a community center and school educating over 300 students.
Teenagers play chess during a break at the main Los Patojos campus.
Pre-elementary school children look through workbooks.
Current students Steven Garcia (left), 16, and Luis Hernandez, 15, help construct around the athletic field in Los Patojos' new campus.
A woman walks two children in Jocotenango.
Juan Pablo Romero holds a young plant which, when fully grown, will be used as renewable firewood.
Jonathan Ramirez, 16, breakdances at Los Patojos.
npr:
Imagine a small, developing nation whose education system is severely lacking: schools are poorly funded, students can’t afford tuition or books, fewer than half of indigenous girls even attend school — and often drop out to take care of siblings or get married.
These are the schools of rural Guatemala.
Now meet a firebrand educator who thinks he has a way to reinvent schools in Guatemala.
His school is called Los Patojos, a Spanish word used in Guatemala that means “little ones.”
Los Patojos is in the mold of Montessori and Waldorf schools. It focuses on the whole child — the intellectual, the artistic, the physical and the practical. Teachers show the students how to bake bread, to take photographs, to frame a building — and they also instill pride of place.
“Guatemala wants to become Mexico. Mexico wants to become the United States. The United States wants to become Europe. I don’t want to become anything. I want to become Guatemala,” says Juan Pablo Romero Fuentes.
He is the 34-year-old founder of Los Patojos and its unlikely headmaster. His arms are heavily tattooed, he careens around the cobblestone streets in a beat-up 4Runner, he dresses like a rock guitarist (which he used to be) and he f-bombs his way through interviews.
Seeds Of Maya Genius Grow In A New Kind Of School
Photos: James Rodriguez for NPR
(Your picture was not posted)
