By Chris and Francelia McReynolds

We began this New Year back in Puebla. School director, Sara Chavez, invited us back to respond to a growing number of people concerned about their children’s education. Poor education and destructive cultural influences are taking their toll on families. The biblical mandate, taught in AMO, for parents to be actively in charge of their children’s education is motivating some to seek new solutions.

With official validation in Mexico available through testing for children who are outside the traditional public school setting, some parents and church leaders are venturing out to form their own schools.  As mentioned in a previous post, Liliana Rojas founded a school based on the biblical principles she learned in AMO, last summer.  That school needed to relocate and, so, fused with the school that Sara Chavez directs. Liliana has, since, founded a second school.  Leaders from two other Christian schools attended last week’s AMO training and a few other participants were considering schools at their churches.

These schools are typically very small, from 10 to 200 students. Several are using a biblically focused, online platform, by Educazion.net. Curriculum is available for math, science, language, and more. “We are using AMO Program to train and guide our teachers for student’s Christian character formation, Bible, Christian history, and classic literature classes. We use Educazion.net as a tool for learning different subject matter” said Liliana.

We’ve seen schools that have very scant resources and facilities to schools that are very well equipped and inviting. Many teachers and helpers volunteer their time or take a very minimal wage. Some teach at public schools, or other jobs, part of the day and at their church school the rest of the day. One school is charging about $90 US per student per month.

“Parents are very pleased” says AMO teacher, Erika Trujillo. She added, “when we moved our school from one side of the city to the other, we thought we would lose some students. The parents told us ‘it doesn’t matter where you move to, we want our children in your school!” The children we met expressed satisfaction, as well.

One young boy recounted (for ten minutes!) about the classic Heidi that he and his classmates are studying in AMO’s literature class. Others said they like their school because it is “tranquilo” (peaceful, i.e. safe).

Your prayers and support helps us train parents and teachers for these children…the future of Mexico. Thank you!

Young artists sharing what they learned in the AMO training

Those we trained in Puebla

Erika’s artwork

Teachers at El Shadai Christian School in Puebla