PresentationPhilosophy

Program

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“By reading we become contem-poraries to all men, & citizens of all countries.” Antoine Houdar de la Motte

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Presentation

Letters to Fly is a reading program for elementary school children that seeks to promote love for reading. It is the first project of international collaboration between Uni-versidad de Guadalajara (UdeG) and Fielding Graduate University (FGU). It is a program for social change, that connects students and faculty of both institutions to serve Mexican local communities through reading strategies that promote love for reading, love for science and love for the cultural roots of ancient

Mexico. It aims to develop the human poten-tial of children through the consolidation of critical thinking, problem solving and the im-provement of their communicative skills. Let-ters to Fly envisions the teaching of culturally adapted reading strategies that have proven to be successful in the United States, to Mexi-can elementary teachers. This will be done in order for the Mexican teachers to promote and encourage reading.

This program is envisioned as a starting point to reduce inequity. Currently, half of the Mexican population survives below the poverty line. In addition, the OCDE/PISA tests have made apparent that almost 40% of Mexican students are under the mini-mum level of performance in math, science and reading comprehension. Furthermore, national statistics show that only 25% of the students entering to elementary school obtain a place in higher education (ANUIES, 2009). Data from UNESCO (2000) shows that Mexico is far from  the recommended read-ing standard; which is 47 books per year. Instead, the country’s average is 2.8 books read per year. A National Survey conducted by The National Council for Culture and Arts (CONACULTA, 2005) found that the highest reading rate occurs between the 12-22 year age group with a good economic status and belonging to families living in urban environ-

4 “Reading is the great supplier of arguments, the key that makes others listen to you.”José Miguel Monzón

ments. Children below 12 years-old have hard times with reading and comprehension. 

In the long term, the participants of Letters to Fly expect to model among teachers and parents how to develop new cohorts of inde-pendent readers (using the Freirean model of consciousness raising). In this way, Mexi-can youth can be better prepared to resist media manipulation, irrational consumption and acritical acceptance to violence; all of them being products of economic neoliber-alism and globalization.

The tree philosophical

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The three philosophical guidelines for the program are: 

• To encourage love for scientific thinking.

• To rescue the Mexican ancient traditions associated withlove for nature, care for the environment, sense of friend-ship, and colorful art.

• To raise social consciousness and solidarity.   

Philosophy

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The project contemplates the following stages: a) the initial phase in which pro-fessors and doctoral students from FGU, will train students and professors from the Master in Learning Technologies (MTA) program, so that they can repli-cate the teaching of these strategies to third and fourth grade teachers and stu-dents at schools in the Guadalajara Met-ropolitan Area; b) evaluating the impact of the first stage, so that based on the formative evaluated experience, changes will take place to adjust the program, so that subsequently, the revised ex-perience could be replicated at other schools and grades at the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area; and/or expanded to State level; c) evaluating the impact of the second stage, to adjust the program in order to start training public Higher

Program

Education Institutions (HEI) to continue the program a national level.

In the first phase faculty and students from Fielding Graduate University (FGU) would visit Guadalajara from november 19 through the 28. The group would be composed of six members of the School Educational Leadership & Change (ELC), two from the school of Human & Orga-nizational Development (HOD) and two from the school of Psychology (PSY) and a Fielding representative, as the leader of the delegation. Preferably, the par-ticipants should be fluent in spanish and participate in the design, development, delivery and evaluation of the program. They would have the responsibilities of seeking grants, to BUY BOOKS FOR CHILDREN IN SPANISH LANGUAGE, se-lect books to fulfill the objectives of the program, train Mexican faculty graduate students and school teachers on reading strategies for children, present a paper on the topic, have a dialogue with gradu-ate students of the Master in Learning Technologies, read and model the read-ing to children in local communities, schools and plazas, and evaluate the re-sults of this intervention.

On the side of Universidad de Guadalaja-ra, there is the intention to host students and faculty in local homes, develop a

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“Reading is to the mind what exercising is to the body.”Richard Steele

Web portal,  with free electronic books for children, organize a local radio pro-gram for children without Internet, orga-nize the conference, the local visits and on site reading activities.

In order to increase the immersion of Fielding participants, Letters to Fly would be launched the third week of no-vember, between three events of great historical and cultural significance in the country. Regarding history, the 200 an-niversary of the Mexican Independence and the 100 anniversary of the Mexican Revolution will be commemorated in the city on november 20. In relation to culture, the International Book Fair, (FIL 2010), the second most important book fair in the world, with 13 international conferences associated to the event, will opens its doors on november 28.

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“The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, and

of elevated opinions”.Christopher Dawson

January - October2010

November2010

December 2010February 2011

March - April2011

May2011

Preparation:Methodology and book selection

Training and launching Guadalajara’s Metropolitan Area

Training for social service professional practice students

The program will be extended from 1st to 6th grade and to the State of Jalisco

Training in other HEI in Mexico

Phases of the training program

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November 19, 2010

• Arrival of FGU students and Faculty to Guadalajara´s International Airport. (The host family members will pick them up).

• Each student and faculty member will spend some time with their host family.

November 20, 2010

• Breakfast at host’s home.

• Morning: attendance to the Historical 100 year’s commemorative parade to celebrate the Mexican Revolution (Downtown).

• Mini tour to Historical Buildings Downtown and the Instituto Cultural Cabañas (UNES-CO’s World Heritage Site).

• Evening: Eat at a Traditional Mexican res-taurant.

November 21, 2010

• Breakfast at host’s home.

• An experience with the past of Western Mexico: visit to the Guachimontones ar-chaeological site.

• Visit Teuchitlán Downtown and the house of culture.

• Trip to the town of Tequila. (Tequila’s land-scape is UNESCO’s World Heritage Site)

• Visit the town of Tequila and have lunch at a mexican restaurant

• Trip back to Guadalajara.

November 22, 2010

• Breakfast at the Tourism School Restau-rant.

• Letters to fly official opening ceremony at CUCEA´s Governance Hall (Sala de Gobierno y Toma de Decisiones).

• Inauguration of Letters to Fly by Guadala-jara County Major.

• Screening of Letters to fly video.

• Presentation of Letters to Fly Website.

• Overview of Letters to Fly project

• Training workshop held by FGU faculty.

• Official picture.

• Typical Mexican Food will be served at the Tourism´s school Restaurant at CUCEA campus.

• Departure to visit underprivileged areas of Guadalajara.

• Reading to the children in Plaza de la Lib-eración.

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November 23, 2010

• Breakfast at the Tourism School Restaurant.

• Honoris Causa Award to the fathers of distance education, at the Paraninfo of the University of Guadalajara (activity to be confirmed).

• Typical Mexican Food will be served at the Tourism´s school Restaurant at CUCEA campus.

• Reading to children’s in public Plaza de las Américas.

• Zapopan County Chamber orchestra´s perfor-mance (to be confirmed).

November 24, 2010

• Breakfast at CUCEA Tourism’s School restaurant.

• Reading to children in a public school.

• Presentation of the Letters to Fly Website to the teachers of the Public School.

• Typical Mexican Food will be served at the Tourism´s school Restaurant at CUCEA campus.

• FGU presentations at CUCEA campus at Gover-nance Hall.

November 25, 2010

• Breakfast at CUCEA Tourism’s School restaurant.

• Reading to the children in other Public School.

• Presentation of the Web Portal to teachers at this school.

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There is more treasure in

books than in all the pirate’s

loot on Treasure Island.

Walt Disney

• Typical Mexican Food will be served at the Tourism´s school Restaurant at CUCEA campus.

• Free afternoon to prepare next day’s evaluation and feedback.

November 26, 2010

• Breakfast at CUCEA Tourism’s School restaurant.

• Evaluation of the experience (focus group) and next steps.

• Take a meal at “Bachelor Restaurant” CUCEA.

• Visit Tlaquepaque.

November 27, 2010

• Breakfast at host families home and take them to:

• Attendance to the International Book Fair Open-ing Ceremony.

• Visit the Internarional Book Fair

• Take the official Group Picture.

November 28, 2010

• Departure to the airport with your host.