Inspiration
Mexican Teacher Creates a 3-Wheel Classroom to Help Students During Pandemic
A teacher in Mexico bought a tricycle and converted it into a classroom for his students of the farming community to fight educational divide
To teach his students at their homes while the schools are closed, a teacher named Gerardo Ixcoy from Guatemala, Mexico, bought a tricycle from his life savings and converted it into a classroom.
He covered it with plastic sheets to maintain a barrier against virus transmission and installed a whiteboard and a small solar panel to power the audio player that he uses to take lessons.
Daily, the 27-year-old teacher rides along the cornfields of Santa Cruz del Quiché to give individual lessons to his sixth graders. On a random day, children wait for their teacher to set up just outside the doors of their homes. The teacher and his pupil then greet each other followed by the day’s lesson. Ixcoy deploys a long handle mop that measures the distance between him and his students in order to abide by the social-distancing norms to keep everybody safe.
Salute to his efforts, he tries to visit each of his students at least twice a week.
Ixcoy took this step after realizing there were many challenges while teaching online in this farming community of Guatemala. “I tried to get the kids their worksheets sending instructions via WhatsApp, but they didn’t respond,” Ixcoy told NEWS18.
According to him, either the parents don’t have the kind of money to afford high-speed internet or they themselves aren’t very educated to help their wards study at home while the lockdown lasts. “The cellphones they have at home are very basic. They can’t download apps like Zoom that would allow you to give a virtual class,” he said while explaining how this classroom-on-a-trike was born of necessity.