Five high schools in Arica participated in the closing day of the year “Chaka: A community that learns”.

The Chaka program, developed in the Region of Arica and Parinacota by SUMMA, the Laboratory for Research and Innovation in Education for Latin America and the Caribbean, in alliance with the Luksic Foundation, held the closing event of the year “Chaka: a community that learns”.

The meeting brought together teachers, directors and technical heads of the Padre Francisco Napolitano, Agrícola José Abelardo Núñez, Don Bosco, Miramar and Leonardo Da Vinci high schools, where this pioneering program in Latin America is being developed, with the aim of improving educational quality and equity through in-depth learning.

During the activity, which included group work, the attendees reflected on the achievements of 2022 and reviewed, among other activities of this year, the five professional training cycles that were carried out and that addressed the topics of metacognition, dialogue and collaboration, formative feedback, Chaka Classroom and socioemotional learning.

Rafael Carrasco, deputy director of SUMMA, commented that “it was an opportunity to recognize the enormous work and commitment of all the school communities in a year that has been very hard for everyone, due to the pandemic and the return to on-site classes”. Adding that “it is important to highlight the collaborative approach that has been carried out for the professional development of teachers in this learning community that is Chaka, working with the same principles that are used in the classroom: dialogue, metacognitive reflection, feedback and socioemotional care”.

With a view to the future, the schools identified the challenges for 2023, focused mainly on strengthening the schools as communities that learn, dialogue and develop in an environment of mutual care; strengthening the work of accompaniment and feedback between classroom teachers and management teams; consolidating the bases for the continuity of collaborative work logics; and deepening the installation of pedagogical practices based on deep understanding.

Macarena Avila, coordinator of Education Projects at the Luksic Foundation, said that “we have worked together with SUMMA to accompany the high schools in the challenges that this year brought with the return to classroom attendance. The return to classes, added to the challenge of the educational communities to experiment in depth and be able to apply the basic elements of the program has not been easy, but on this day we were proud to see how each school has soaked their classrooms with the elements proposed by Chaka, without neglecting the characteristics of their communities and students”.

Ema Llanos, a teacher at the Don Bosco School of Technology, said that the teachers “have been the protagonists of the activity, which I liked very much”. He was joined by Christopher Mancilla, a teacher at the Leonardo da Vinci School. who described the meeting as “a fruitful day, with the opportunity to connect with the opinions of different schools, which was enriching for us as a team”.

Chaka means “bridges” in the Aymara language and seeks to promote collaborative learning within the educational communities, among the network’s schools and between them and their local ecosystem.