No internet, no problem: Teachers in Chile take class to students

by Fernando Donoso

In the south of Chile, a rural school is bringing the classroom to students, deploying vans to help teach pupils who might not otherwise have access to education during the coronavirus lockdown.

Students once rode in the vehicles to attend the Dream House School in the small town of Catripulli, located in Araucania, one of the poorest regions in Chile.

In this cold, rainy and rural part of the country, the vans now travel to a handful of students’ homes, after hundreds of children were left adrift when classes were suspended in March.

Approximately 70 percent of Dream House School’s 101 pupils are Mapuche, an indigenous people who live in Chile and Argentina.

Most don’t own computers and even fewer have access to the internet, meaning the students can’t take part in online classes.

The coronavirus has emptied Chile’s schools, forcing millions of children to follow their lessons online, but there are regions where up to 76 percent of pupils don’t have access to the internet, according to a study by the Digital Country Foundation.

And while children may have been supplied with schoolwork on paper, they still don’t have the sort of teaching support that is available online.

Preschool teacher Marcela Cea, 29, and van driver Alexis Araneda, 34, are among those who are traveling to pupils’ homes to give lessons.

“It seems super good to me, because there are tasks that one cannot understand, not even the parents, so the teachers can come and give extra classes,” Katalina Zuniga, an 11-year-old student who receives lessons in front of her home, told AFP.

Her mother, Modesta Caniunir, says the effort helps parents and now the “pupils are not going to get behind on their homework.”

Araucania, around 500 kilometers (300 miles) south of the capital Santiago, is the third-worst affected region in the country from coronavirus.

Chile has recorded more than 254,000 cases and over 4,700 deaths from COVID-19. (AFP)