‘Educators who inspire’, award given to teacher Fabián González

“Educators who inspire” from the Share Foundation, was the recognition given to the teacher Fabián González for his creativity in the virtual classes that were dictated during the isolation in the city. His experience was one of 12 awarded out of 543 from across the country. Through costumes, origami, games, podcasts and even Tik Tok, the teacher brought the learning home to his students with the challenge of developing their logical and critical thinking.

With messages of self-care in health, in a very original way, the teacher made his 108 students and their families enjoy each of his classes, he found that self-care issues could be taken advantage of from the exercise of logical thinking.

“Hello, hello, hello… class is starting. We are all going together to participate in games and songs that will amuse us ”. With this song and with dance steps, Fabián’s classes begin, with a degree in Mathematics, who took advantage of the isolation to develop his own mathematical concepts for children, and critical concepts related to the coronavirus. Through association exercises, he taught them to identify in their homes the people who were most at risk of contagion or development of sequences with hand washing.

The greatest challenge for the teacher began when he entered the República de Guatemala official school at the beginning of the year, the challenge was already there, even before the isolation, because it was the first time that he had worked this subject with young children in an institution with an emphasis on thinking. logical for elementary school girls and boys.

“This meant that, together with my three colleagues who worked on this subject in primary school, we detached ourselves from a lot of knowledge in mathematics, we investigated more and we were trained in new didactics of mathematics, in art and in critical reading. to be self-taught “, says the teacher.

‘Learn with me’ was the reply. In this search in the middle of the isolation, Fabián raised real cases during the classes that were of interest to the children, allowing them to give their opinions and participate through virtuality, expressing what they felt, thought and considered the subject they were dealing with .

Social networks were his main allies in his teaching methods through games, he used WhatsApp, his YouTube channel, Spotify, even the TikTok application, as pedagogical and recreational tools. Getting into these apps, he saw the need to invent characters and dress up. An experiment joined by his wife who is also a preschool teacher.

‘The Susana spider’, an idea that was replicated by several of her colleagues, was another of her original methods that she created as a means of self-evaluation, which was considered very novel and effective with young children. It tells the story of a spider that forgot to make cobwebs and the children help it to remember, the little ones mark their marks with points, which later, using the rule, form a web and later color. “What remains in color is all the good they have done to progress from home and what remains without color is how little they lack for total progress,” explains Professor Fabián.

His Spotify channel christened him ‘Why? Why? Questions for boys and girls’ together with his wife choose topics that children usually ask, create their programs with the participation of a special guest creating an entertaining conversation so that the children feel identified. In his channel he has 7 podcasts on the air and a focus on self-care, he develops his purpose of generating opinion and criticism from students on topics that they are concerned about knowing.

Play is the medium that arouses children’s interest. From dressing up, playing games or telling stories with a tone of voice and story that engages any child, he teaches his subjects through creativity, for example, it has led him to work with literature taking the characters from a book with illustrations of animals , personifies, illustrates and builds them. With origami he created ‘The piranha fish’ a story that he uses to teach geometric figures. A circus trapeze artist is also part of her characters created with her children learn the number line.

After each activity, through videos and photos, their students make their own narrative creating stories.

“The activities and classes were very fun, my daughter always looked forward to this class with great joy,” says Cindy Ballesteros, mother of one of Fabián’s students.

Fabian’s love of early childhood education prompted him to continue creating and developing teaching strategies for his students. During the 9 months of his classes, nothing prevented his creativity from coming out, with the broomstick as a tripod for his cell phone, he recorded and shared all his knowledge, he learned to use applications that he had never used, he set up his recording studio and every day I fall more in love with early childhood education.

“The most significant thing is to see that the challenge of taking the school anywhere we could do it among all the teachers”, concludes Professor Fabián.

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