Docentes por la Paz

Docentes por la Paz (“Educators for Peace”, in Spanish) is an empowering and innovative five-module professional development program for public school teachers in Honduras that increases their capacity to provide quality education in contexts of crisis and conflict, and fosters safe learning environments within the education system. This participatory program responds to the need to support teachers as they navigate contexts marked by generalized conflict, violence, and irregular migration and displacement. While the program was originally developed for use in Grades 4 to 9, many schools have expanded it to include teachers from Grades 1 to 3 and Grades 10-12 as well. The program is part of the USAID- and UNICEF-funded Asegurando la Educación project and is based on INEE’s TiCC Framework. Modules are workshop-based, delivered through a cascading method that begins with pedagogical experts from the Ministry of Education’s Directorate General of Professional Development (DGDP) and the district principals, and eventually reaches teachers. While the program has been codeveloped and is co-implemented with the DGDP, the project is still working with the Ministry of Education to offer curricular value for teachers in the form of a certification. The project expects this to happen in 2020, which would be an important milestone to mainstream the program. Further, the Pedagogical University has expressed interest in the program as part of their pre-service curriculum. Under Module II, the program delivers workshops on rights, violence, and gender: "competencies to identify and categorize the types of violence that can affect education, based in a framework of human rights, child protection, and gender-based violence prevention".