Yapacani is a rural town in Bolivia, north of the city of Santa Cruz.  Most of the people who live there are migrant farm workers from the Bolivian high valleys and the Altiplano. They don't have much schooling.  Some have finished the third or fourth grade, but others are illiterate.  Like most parents, the people of Yapacani want their children to have better lives.  "We want them to at least know how to read and write so that they do not suffer what we have suffered," says a father with tears in his eyes.

An initial evaluation showed that 80% of the second grade children at the Cesar Banzer School couldn't read or write.  The teachers, seeing the tests, asked, "What did we do wrong?"  With the help of the Andean Centers of Excellence for Teacher Training (CETT Andino), they realized that the children weren’t learning to read and write very well, because they were taught using traditional techniques that emphasized copying and rote repetition.  For example, they were asked to repeat “pa, pe, pi, po, pu,” syllabic sounds, over and over again. The children filled their notebooks with examples and copies of texts, but without understanding what they were writing. Not surprisingly, they quickly forgot their lessons.  

Merlín Ayala, the school's first grade teacher, took this problem seriously and decided to apply the new teaching approaches she had learned through CETT Andino. "I started [using the approaches] the first week, every day for 15 minutes, and after one month, the children could already recognize any letter.  They knew what it was called, and they knew its sounds..."  And, more amazingly, by mid-April most of the children in her class were able to read. "I was really impressed by their progress," she says.  "Now it is June, and I only have three children that still need help."

Merlín's success caught the attention of the other teachers in the school, who realized that they could also achieve better results by using CETT's participatory, child-centered teaching approaches.  Teachers from other schools and even the school district officials became interested.  Merlín now receives a constant flow of visitors seeking to learn more about her experience.  

As is usual at the Cesar Banzer School, Merlin’s students will continue having Merlin as their teacher in second grade.  This means that they will have the chance to become even stronger readers.  Unfortunately, many of Merlin's students will be able to go to school only through third or fourth grade, because they must help their families earn a living.  But the difference is that by then most of her students will be able to read well.