Maria Elena Fonseca was facing a huge dilemma. She was an experienced sixth grade teacher, but the school principal had asked her to teach the second grade instead.  Maria Elena was anxious because she didn't really know how to work with kids in the early grades.  She confessed that her first year as a second grade teacher did not go very well, but she was asked to continue teaching the second grade the next year, too.  She tried to teach reading and writing to her kids but nothing seemed to work.  Despite her best efforts, the children were bored; they were not learning, and she was always frustrated.

All of this changed when Maria Elena received training from the Center of Excellence for Teacher Training (CETT) in Nicaragua.  At first, she was skeptical about the training.  She had been to other teacher trainings before and they hadn't been helpful.  She thought, "Why are we [teachers] are always adopting every new flavor of teaching methods that are brought to us?"  But the fact that her students weren't learning made Maria Elena so desperate that she began trying out some of the things she had learned in the CETT training.  

She was surprised at her kids' immediate and positive reaction to her new "teaching style." Implementing some of the new techniques was hard but the in-classroom coaching that the CETT trainer gave really helped Maria Elena improved her teaching.  "That is the huge difference with CETT training," Maria Elena said.  “Other programs spend huge amounts of money to lecture you outside the classroom and do not help you in the classroom, where we need it the most.  After the CETT training, my kids finally learned to read and write.”  Maria Elena is very enthusiastic about CETT.   "After eight years of teaching," she says, "this is the first time in my life that I feel I can make a difference in my kids' lives."  By teaching her kids to actually read and write, she already has.