Ecuador Amazon Teaching Volunteers

While the schools in the area do get government funding, they do not have the resources to provide English instruction, and local knowledge of the language is limited. Volunteers help fill this gap by providing English instruction - with support from project coordinators - and building local capacity. Additonally, the schools have very little money to buy resources. The help of volunteers allows the project to notably increase the annual budget of the schools, which can, in turn, fund the supply of essential educational materials and school infrastructure maintenance and improvements. The project also campaigns to supply additional equipment to the jungle schools, such as the Book Campaign, working to build up a mobile library to benefit the school children along the road.

Another issue faced by the schools is a lack of teachers. Although numbers at each school are not particularly high, it is normal for one teacher to be teaching 30 children of all different age groups and levels all at once. Volunteers allow schools to be split into classes, allowing the teacher to focus on one age group at a time, while the volunteers can take specific classes, broadening the children’s education immensely. In line with this, the project works to a structured curriculum with the jungle schools to make sure that volunteer teaching has the utmost benefits for the children. To make it easier for one volunteer to pick up where another left off and build on previous work, the use of structured lesson plans is central to a volunteer’s time on the project.

Building a stable learning environment is really important for the jungle community children as it will give them so many more prospects in the future and this is what the teaching project is aiming to do.

You will primarily be working in the classroom in the mornings, rotating through a pre-defined weekly schedule that has been drafted by the local school district, covering up to five of nune schools the project works in along the Arajuno Road. Prime examples of the schools that you will be working at are:

Km 35 School – Located at 35 km along the road, this school serves a small, roadside community and has around 30 students a year. The school has two classrooms, a nursery and a storeroom and modern toilets that are sometimes out of use. One teacher often teaches all 30 children at once.

Esfuerzo 1 School - Located approximated 3km in from the Arajuno Road along a dirt road, this school is situated on the edge of a small community. Approximately 25 students attend the school and are typically split between two teachers, combining several grade levels at once. Apart from the two classrooms, the school has access to a community building, flush toilets, a dirt playing area, and in recent years have started raising chickens and have started a school garden.

As a volunteer, your normal teaching day will start before 7:30am to ensure that you arrive at the schools in time to teach. The journey time from your volunteer accommodation to the schools varies between 15 and 45 minutes, walking is required to reach some of the schools due to their remote nature (most days there will be an on-road school that doesn't require any walking and one off-road school that does require some walking) .

Classes generally start at 7:30am and end at 12:30pm, although these hours may vary slightly at some schools. During this time there is normally approximately 4 hours of actual teaching time each day when you will be teaching English, with the support of the project coordinators, using the national curriculum and weekly lesson plan as a guide.

Once you have finished teaching for the day, you and your fellow volunteers will return to the volunteer accommodation to modify the lesson plan for the following school and prepare for the lessons. There may also be the opportunity to help out with afternoon activities, alternatively you can use the time to visit local attractions and explore the local area.  

Ecuadorian school terms are now running from September until the end of January and mid-February until early July. Volunteer opportunities don’t stop with the holidays though. As the children tend to have very little to do during the holidays, the project is runs a summer camp that gives them the chance to have a bit of creative freedom! The summer camp focuses on arts, sports and music as well as giving volunteers the opportunity to try out a few of their own ideas.

Community Projects also run throughout the year, but what kind of projects these will be depends entirely on funding and what needs doing within the communities at the time.