Summer 2016 Trip
In June of 2016, the Cotinga Foundation sent a team of 9 teachers and 3 support members to the special education school in Cayambe, Ecuador. This was the second year for Cotinga Foundation and the third year for the founder, Terry Lancaster.
We spent the mornings working in the classrooms, interacting with the students and answering questions from the teachers while modeling teaching skills. In the afternoons, we held seminars for the teachers: reading, writing, math and behavior skills.
This year, we took 900 pounds of supplies and teaching materials to the school. For math, we taught 10 different math folder games for the classrooms, fabric number lines for the walls, calculators, and fabric fish games. For behavior, we taught the use of elastic chair bands, behavior charts, squeeze balls, weighted vests and lap pads. We wrote social stories that were laminated for each classroom to teach the students how to interact with each other and in life situations.
The area of reading was our biggest emphasis this year. There were no books in the school before the Cotinga Foundation came. This year we modeled to the teachers how to teach a book about animals and printed one off for each student to take home, which was the first book of their own. We also taught simple sentence writing based on that book. We brought 137 pictures books in Spanish. These were beautiful story books like Clifford, Biscuit, Curious George, Dr. Seuss and other classic children’s books. There are no libraries in this area of the country, so there are no books in these homes. The idea of reading a book to the students was a new concept to the teachers. They were thrilled as we taught them how to read to the students and how to involve the students in learning about the book.
The students got to experience a lot of fun, new things. They learned to make things with pipe cleaners and received coloring books in Spanish with crayons. There were a lot of new recess activities involving inflatable rings, soccer balls, colored vests to make teams and cones. They loved the sidewalk chalk and relay races that we taught them. We encouraged the teachers to organize these games so that all of the students could participate.
All the students and teachers at the school received a Cotinga bracelet and beautiful Cotinga Foundation string backpack. We brought much joy, excitement and encouragement to the school as we shared our knowledge.
One of the members of our support team oversaw the laundry, cooking, childcare and many, many tasks throughout the week as we were at the school. That allowed our sponsors, Dave and Brenda Meyer to both translate for us each day. It also allowed the rest of the team to complete needed projects for the next day.
For the first time, Cotinga partnered with Genesis church to send two men to work on a special construction project at the school. They raised their own support and supply money through Genesis church. In an unusable building they: cleaned out all the junk, rewired all the rooms for safety, fixed the ceiling, built a long ramp to make the building accessible, fixed the walls and hired two Ecuadorians that finished painting the rooms after we left.
One afternoon we invited the parents. We talked to them about how they can partner with the school to increase their child’s learning and behavior. We helped the teachers connect with the parents and worked on collaboration.
Cotinga is creating some additional partnerships with a workshop that is being developed for the students after they graduate from the school. We toured that and gave some advice. We also met with the secretary of education of that region. She thanked Cotinga for their work and asked about partnering with other schools in the future.
So much progress has been made since Terry first walked through the doors of the school in 2014. So much is yet to be done, but the school has been recognized as one of the top special education schools in the country. The director of the school has given the Cotinga Foundation credit for that. Thank you for your interest and participation in this wonderful work.