My workday morning starts out with a very dusty and bumpy ride through the working class neighborhoods of Puerto Vallarta. As the school’s SUV approaches the gates, my smiling students run in flip-flopped feet to greet me. They help me carry my teacher bag, my thermos of tea and the morning breakfasts to the classroom and we immediately start the lesson. Our students come on the shift opposite of their public school schedule to learn English and computer skills, completely voluntarily.

I teach grades 2, 3 and 4, and by now, they know the drill. We warm up with a quick introduction, sing a few songs and dance around to get the wiggles out, and then work on the current units’ vocabulary and sentence pattern. As a small non-government funded, non-profit school we are blessed to have computers, internet and TV’s in each classroom and for many of the students, this is their first encounter with technology.

Even small things such as teaching aids, board games, and classroom decorations make our teaching and learning environment more fun, interactive and efficient. Our new toy for this coming school year – Scholastic’s Little Red Tool Box – contains magnetic letters and sight words that allow students to move, manipulate and build their own words and sentences. Thanks to donations like these from Isa Mundo Foundation, English class becomes a gateway into a new world.

From Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, muchas gracias Isa Mundo!

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Isa Mundo Foundation has been supporting the Volcanes Community Education Project since 2011. The first Isa Mundo Education Centre project in Mexico was launched in this school.