Bolivian students return to class, both in person and remotely
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Loading... - Alicia Davies
- 03 Feb 2022
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Starting early Tuesday morning and despite the cold rain that was falling, schools like the March 23 Educational Unit and the neighboring Alonso de Mendoza school in the city’s Ventilla district once again welcomed hundreds of students and their parents who came to the inaugural events for the new school year.
At the March 23 E.U. there was a greater crowd since it was one of the schools selected by the national government to host special events to kick off the start of classes with the attendance of Vice President David Choquehuanca and Economy Minister Marcelo Montenegro, among other officials.
Children, teens and adults passed one by one through the disinfectant area set up at the door of the school and later they took their places on the large schoolyard to participate in the ceremony.
The smallest kids were wearing traditional outfits for the “moseñada” dance, with multicolored weavings by indigenous Bolivians and “lluch’us,” the Andean gloves made of wool, while the teens wore their uniforms with the blue and gray colors of the school.
Some of the students wore small bottles of alcohol or sanitizing gel on cords around their necks to disinfect their hands periodically.
The official ceremony was one of speeches, dances and enthusiasm, above all from the parents and teachers who presented the authorities with ponchos and garlands of flowers and bread.
When it was his turn to speak, Choquehuanca alternated between Spanish and Aymara in addressing the attendees, noting that three educational methods are used in Bolivia: in-person, semi-present and virtual learning.
“We have to get into this virtual education and protect ourselves against the coronavirus, protect ourselves with pharmacological medicine and ancestral medicine, natural (and) traditional medicine,” he said.
Bolivian President Luis Arce participated in the inauguration of the school year from Sucre, the country’s constitutional capital, and his other cabinet ministers spread out to the country’s other regions to represent the government.
A few blocks away from the March 23 E.U. school is the Alonso de Mendoza Educational Unit, where more than 400 students were already in their classrooms, all of them wearing facemasks. Read More…
