Quito, June 7, 2018

Drafting FIDAL

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"A teacher is a social actor, he is someone who has change in his hands"

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This is how Jorge Albuja Tutiven, winner of the 10th National Educational Excellence Contest, defines his colleagues.

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This young teacher established himself as the best Ecuadorian teacher thanks to his project Museum of Cultural Diversity (Mudic), which is part of the programs of the American School of the main port, where he teaches classes.

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In this tenth year of the Contest, more than 100 teachers from all the provinces participated and, after a careful evaluation, the Albuja project was considered the best of this edition, for which it was awarded $ 10,000 and a trip to Dubai to participate in the Global Teacher Prize ceremony.

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In the following interview you will learn more about the Mudic and what are Albuja's future plans.

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1. How did your teaching career start?

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It all started because in 2010 I was working as a pedagogical assistant at the Municipal Museum of Guayaquil. For a year I worked creating programs, scripts, managing groups, doing workshops… and in that time I realized that education was an important path in my life.

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Then I managed and looked for a way to learn forms of pedagogy and when I finished my degree in Tourism, I decided to study Education.

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2. What does being a teacher mean to you?

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I think that a teacher is a guide, he is a mediator of reality, of the processes and of the students' abilities, he is the one who finds their potential in them and helps them to exploit it in many ways. A teacher is also a social actor, he is someone who has change in his hands.

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3. What is the Mudic about? How was the idea of ​​this museum born and what is it projected in the future?

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El Mudic is a school museum with a constructivist, holistic and social model that aims to record and disseminate the culture of students, teachers and parents of the American School of Guayaquil.

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In addition, it wants to create a community aware of its cultural reality, promote cultural rights, produce workshops and displays of non-formal knowledge and cultural realities in the port city, etc.

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The project was born as a heritage program, in which formal knowledge came into discussion with non-formal knowledge and, precisely, heritage was the most important element.

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Later, we realized that interculturality was a value that had to be achieved to strengthen the exchange of knowledge and the stories that they wove in this workshop, which is later seen as a school museum that discusses its formal concept, in Guayaquil .

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4. What comment does your experience in the Educational Excellence Contest deserve?

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The experience in Quito with colleagues was very valuable because beyond a competition, it was a group of teachers who shared their knowledge and were going to learn new things. This group was greatly strengthened, we maintain permanent contact and the idea arose of creating together with FIDAL a network of educators to exchange experiences, strengthen methodologies, carry out joint actions, etc.

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Being the best teacher in Ecuador is a very valuable designation not only for me, but for all teachers who want a change in our spaces. I am proud to come from a historically marginalized city and region in many ways and to see that change is being created through its teachers.

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5. What projects will come after the Mudic?

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We are going to create, within the Museum, a laboratory of ideas to produce research and allow students to share and create various actions from an interdisciplinary point of view. We will be a cooperative space with other school clubs to strengthen the identity and skills of students, teachers and parents.

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6. What message would you give to the teachers of the country and Latin America to generate changes in education?

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Teachers from Ecuador and Latin America must integrate more. United and organized we can make a greater change. The networks that exist must be strengthened, the physical and virtual encounters must be real and sustainable; I believe that we have to start writing a new history of our countries with a concept of regional identity to deepen through the experiences of our students what it means to be Ibero-American, to be Ecuadorian in the 21st century.