Lloysi Mozombite Robledo is a teacher at the New Palestine School in Aguaytía-Ucayali, Perú, and this is her story.

"I work in the New Palestine School, which is located two hours from the Aguaytía District in the Ucayali region of Peru. New Palestine is a very poor agricultural community dedicated to corn cultivation. I graduated as a teacher two years ago, and although teaching is a passion for me, I have very little experience as a primary school teacher.

Before my CETT Andino training, I taught reading and writing to my students as I had been taught: the whole class repeating aloud, and also with that famous practice of filling up pages with exercises. My first grade students filled up pages with exercises because I required them to, but they got really bored and, in addition, when they got home, their mother or big brothers did the work for them. As a result, my children did not learn to read and write.

Since I have been participating in the Andean Centers of Excellence for Teacher Training (CETT Andino) Program, I am able to better help my children. I feel much more secure and I no longer resort to filling up pages with exercises, which my children hated. Now I use materials and techniques that I learned with CETT Andino and the results are incredible. They not only quickly recognize their names written in different types of letters, but they also recognize the names of their classmates and words in different contexts.

I am very happy because my students are very cheerful and enthusiastic when I put them to work. What a difference compared with how it was before! However, something unexpected happened with the parents. They started to complain that I was not making the children fill up pages; they thought that I was not teaching because I was not using the page-filling method. So, I held a teaching session with the parents so that they would understand how we worked in the classroom and how they could better support their children to learn to read and write. I admit that at the beginning it was difficult for the parents to understand my new work style, but since I felt convinced that what I was doing was correct, I was able to convince them. Now the parents support me, and my children enjoy it when they read and write.

And to think that before I participated in CETT Andino, I repeated the same model that I was taught: reciting the alphabet, copying endless homework. But now, I can say that I have been liberated, and I see myself becoming more creative all the time, seeking new ways of teaching reading comprehension."