The DREAM Caraballo Montessori Preschool

 

Location: Caraballo Education Center, Batey Caraballo, Dominican Republic
Number of children participating: 95 children ages 3-6
DREAM Staff: 1 director, 1 DREAM volunteer, 4 Montessori teachers, 1 cook
Important Donors: Add Your Light Foundation, Dominican Crossroads, Dunn Family Foundation, Elizabeth Ann Clune Montessori School, Lawrence Academy School, Oportunidades Para Niños Foundation, Ron Slack, Rotary Club, St. Lattingtown ECW and the US Embassy.

The DREAM Project - Batey Caraballo from Tammy Camp.

 

Program Summary

The Caraballo Montessori Preschool introduces disadvantaged young children to Montessori education while offering a daily food program to combat malnutrition. The program offers morning and afternoon classes and is run by 4 fulltime local Montessori trained teachers, a DREAM Volunteer, and is overseen by the Montessori Program Director. These local teachers will continue to learn new methodologies and techniques guided by a certified Montessori trainer throughout the year, who will work side by side with them in the classroom and offer workshops to expand their skill.

The families of enrolled students donate 2 weeks of volunteer hours per year to assist in the preschool, giving parents a chance to see firsthand how their children are benefiting from the program, while offsetting staffing costs for DREAM. Through their participation in the model preschool, they become actively involved in the education of their children. To combat malnutrition, the preschool also offers a nutritious meal program to improve general health, which in turn allows for educational improvement. The Montessori Preschool is free to all members of Caraballo and they have embraced it as their own. This historic initiative has provided one of the poorest communities in the North Coast the opportunity to pull itself out of extreme poverty and create a higher quality life for its children.

Our major goal at this site is to create an assessment system to document students’ social and academic growth and the effectiveness of our pre-school programs. This includes creating a comparative performance assessment between former DREAM Montessori students who are now attending public schools in Caraballo, and students who did not attend our program

The Nutritious Meals Program

Apart from the academic benefits of this model preschool program, a nutritious meal program was established for both morning and afternoon sessions. The first step to quality education is general health. The majority of the children enrolled in the Montessori program live in poverty or extreme poverty and do not have access to a healthy daily diet. Without the proper nourishment, they are not able to focus and participate in the education system. If the student’s health is not functional, the education process becomes irrelevant. According to a recent UNICEF Report, an estimated 11% of all Dominican children under the age of five suffer from chronic malnutrition: among rural children, this number rises to 16.5%. Through the Model Montessori program, DREAM has initiated numerous public health classes to ensure the practice of healthy habits at home. During preschool classes, children are provided basic hygiene lessons such as hand washing and tooth brushing. Parents are then invited into the classrooms to learn alongside their children in addition to health programs offered outside of school.

Batey Caraballo

In the Dominican Republic, the word "batey" (bah - tay) denotes the living quarters or "neighborhood" of resident cane cutters on land belonging to a large sugar company. Batey Caraballo lies among the sugar cane fields of Montellano in the province of Puerto Plata. The town of Caraballo is made up of Dominican, Haitian Dominican and Haitian residents living in varying conditions of poverty on low-lying, overcrowded land that is prone to flooding. The town is isolated geographically from the surrounding communities by extensive cane fields. The physical isolation in combination with cultural barriers have further strengthened the racial conflicts between the Dominican community and Haitian Dominicans in the area. The first step to eliminating these conditions of extreme poverty and racial divide is to bring the community together through its most critical need: quality education for its children.

With the help of The DREAM Project and several other nonprofits, Caraballo has seen remarkable development over the past five years. This has been accomplished through extensive work in education, human services, volunteer projects, and a sustainable system of community participation. We have seen a small, modestly supplied and staffed school transform into a beacon of hope for the people of Caraballo. In a community where many children simply do not attend school, the Montessori Preschool introduces disadvantaged children to quality education and leads them into the public school system.

The Montessori Method

The Montessori method is an educational approach created by Maria Montessori in the late 19th century that is primarly used for children in preschool and elementary grades. This methodology focuses on self-directed activity on the part of the child and observation on the part of the teacher. One of the pillars of Montessori methodology is adapting the child’s learning environment to his or her developmental level. This specific methodology is particularly effective in environments of poverty and extreme poverty, where many children simply fall through the cracks because of an inflexible and less individually focused education system. The Montessori method tailors lessons to individual strengths and emphasizes the role of physical activity in absorbing academic concepts and practical skills, highly effective for children living in poverty and the Dominican/Haitian cultures in general.

History

In September 2003, Dominican Crossroads donated a parcel of land with a clear title to The DREAM Project. Soon after, the DREAM Project received a generous grant from the Dunn Family Charitable Foundation that covered the cost of building the educational center. Later, efforts from an NGO from the Netherlands, Oportunidades Para Niños, enabled us to expand the community center project.

In January 2004, the Canadian NGO Add Your Light donated two buildings to our site that would be later used as a library and boutique. Peace Corps, DREAM and community volunteers help maintain the two buildings, which house books and donations brought in by DREAM donors. Funds collected from items sold at the boutique go towards paying the operating costs of the school.

In March 2004, a group of students and faculty from Lawrence Academy in Groton, Massachusetts worked hand-in-hand with members of the Caraballo community to build the Caraballo community center and preschool. Each year through 2009, Lawrence Academy has continued to bring a service learning student group to help develop further projects. Besides constructing the preschool, they have helped furnish the community center, construct a garden, organize the library and construct a baseball field, volleyball court and soccer field.

The preschool officially opened in April of 2005 as a half-day school for 27 young children ages 3 – 6, but soon expanded into a full day program to enroll another 30 children on the waiting list. In December 2006, Padres, Amigos, y Maestras (PAM) Association was established at the Montessori School with the help of the Peace Corps Volunteer to increase parental involvement in the school and to provide assistance to the teachers. In 2006-2007, the Montessori Preschool introduced a new school menu providing varied and balanced meals. From 2007-2008, a fence was installed around the Center and an outdoor bathhouse was later completed to supply fresh water to the school.

Now in 2009, the school boasts 4 full-time local Montessori school trained teachers, a director, and a total of 95 students. The staff comes from Haiti, the Dominican Republic and the United States.

Important Updates: