LOS FRESNOS — Six teachers from Honduras are taking back new ideas and new friendships gained during a week-long visit to the school district.
The trip, organized by The Friends United Program/Amigos Unidos was the eighth such visit here and was sponsored by Rotary International with donations raised in the United States and Honduras, said two women who spearheaded this year’s visit.
Charlotte Ruoff of Independence, Mo., and Dorothea Cole of Los Fresnos are both retired teachers and members of Friends United.
“It convenes every year in January,” Ruoff said. “This is the eighth trip. Los Fresnos has been very kind to us.”
Bessy Pacheco, who recently retired from the Honduran Education Department in Tegucigalpa, the nation’s capital, coordinates the program in that country, Ruoff and Cole said.
The Friends United Program conducts staff development training for teachers in Honduran public schools each year, provides Teacher Resource centers in major cities in Honduras and works with the Honduran Department of Education to develop model schools, the two retired teachers said.
The program also provides “traveling classrooms” that include materials and equipment on a rotating basis, assisted with funding from Rotary International, Ruoff said.
Teachers from Honduras only make one trip to Texas, except for Bessy Moreales Pacheco, who is director of the program in Honduras. She makes the trip each year, Ruoff and Cole said.
The first traveling classroom was established in Tegucigalpa and was furnished with help from the Tangible Love Fund of the Community of Christ and the Independence, Mo., Rotary Club.
Each traveling classroom is contained in a large plastic box and costs about $10,000 to equip with a computer, copier, laminator, letter-making machine, office equipment, supplies and books, Ruoff said.
Teaching aids made with materials in the “traveling classroom” stay at the school and then the “classroom” travels on to another school, Ruoff said.
During the teachers’ visit here, they visit seven elementary schools, spending one day at each school, each teacher selects one place of interest to spend a day re-visiting, Ruoff said.
None of the visiting teachers speak English, the two retired American teachers said. All training conducted in Honduras is in Spanish.
“In Honduras, promoting good elementary education is our main goal,” said Cole. “That’s where the biggest need is now.”
Teacher Idalia Dominguez, of Department de Cortes Ciudad San Pedro, Sula, Honduras, said she was impressed most with the way classrooms operate in the United States,
“The organization and the methods that I’ve seen in the school have impressed me the most,” she said.
Norma M. Rosales, of Departmento de la Choluteca, Honduras, said she enjoyed watching the art teacher work with children.
