On the Buenos Aires Coffee Plantation in Nicaragua, a Sign Points the Way to the “School Zone.”

On the Buenos Aires coffee plantation in Nicaragua, a sign points the way to the “school zone.”

40 MAY | JUNE 2013 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Seedsof a one evening in October 2010, Late Duilio Baltodano W’70 sat on the patio at Vista Hermosa, his house in the Barrio Altamira section of Managua. Baltodano, a prince of Nicaraguan coffee, was in good spirits. It was the start of the Quiet harvest, or cosecha, and that year’s was Revolution expected to be the largest yet. With com- modity prices high, it was also likely to be the most profitable in the nation’s history. Dinner was to be a celebration of sorts for Baltodano, his son Ernesto C’05, and their partners from the US, Sharon Ravitch GrEd’00, senior lecturer in the Graduate School of Education, and Matthew Tarditi GEd’10 GrEd’14. They had just completed the first year of an experiment in rural education called Lots of aid projects in the developing world provide materials— Semillas Digitales (Digital Seeds) that had started in the small primary school at from latrines to laptops—but little in the way of involvement Baltodano’s rainforest-certified coffee or input for the people they are supposed to benefit. plantation, Buenos Aires, in Nicaragua’s In Nicaragua a group of Penn alumni, faculty, and students highlands, outside the small city of are trying a different approach in a rural education effort that Jinotega. The initial results were promis- ing—students had made statistically sig- emphasizes sustainability and collaboration over technology. nificant gains in most subject areas—and By Nathaniel Popkin that morning Baltodano had briefed the national media. During the press conference he wanted to make it clear that implementing the project, even at this modest scale, had heightened his expectations. These are the seeds of a quiet revolution, he said. “Together, yes, we can change the system of rural education in Nicaragua.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATHANIEL POPKIN, MATTHEW TARDITI, AND ADRIANA CHAMORRO THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE MAY | JUNE 2013 41 Everyone at dinner agreed that the a powerful group of businessmen known ation” government, led by the conserva- press conference had been a success. as the “gang of twelve”—openly support- tive Doña Violeta Chamorro, loosened the Although they had never been to the ed the growing Sandinista opposition. market. The Baltodanos sought to revive capital before, the children of Buenos Nevertheless, after the Revolution in their coffee-growing business. Aires had presented themselves with 1979, the government nationalized The highlands, particularly near poise and clarity. It was impossible not imports and exports. And that left Duilio Jinotega, were still under the control of to feel inspired. But as dinner was “naked, broken, with nothing.” various violent militia, remnants of brought out, the conversation shifted to This was the third blow to the family’s Sandinista and Contra fighting groups, the project’s next phase. Starting in business interests in less than a decade. who continued assaulting each other well February 2012, Semillas Digitales would In 1972 an earthquake had destroyed after the war had ended, and who terror- enter a school named Abisinia, in a much much of the firm’s infrastructure; then, ized and even murdered small farmers larger and more urban community about during the Revolution, Samoza’s bombs trying to get on with their lives. To survive, 45 minutes drive on dirt roads from had decimated the main office. Now, most coffee producers sought high yield, Buenos Aires. From Abisinia, it would Baltodano knew he would have to adapt achieved by growing their coffee trees in spread to another school at the planta- to survive. He sent his wife Indiana and full sun. But just then Illy, Starbucks, and tion Los Potrerillos and four more their newborn son Duilio to Miami. other high-end coffee roasters began look- schools in the region by the end of 2013. The prospect seemed to trouble Duilio. Were they moving too quickly, or not quickly enough? Certainly, philanthro- pists had already donated hundreds of thousands of laptop computers to schools in poor countries. “I could give away some laptops, take a picture, and go home. That would be impressive. But really,” he won- dered, “what is our goal as a family? What do we want to accomplish?” Born in 1948 the scion of one of Nicara- gua’s wealthiest families, Baltodano was not always so reflective. After he graduated from Penn in 1970, his father sent him to work as a trader in the coffee exchanges in Hamburg and Geneva. He convinced his father’s friend Don Alfredo Pellas Chamorro to send cases of the famous rum that Pellas made, Flor de Caña—ostensibly so that he could market the product in Europe. But the gregarious and fun-loving Baltodano threw parties instead. When he returned to Nicaragua, his Coffee-grower—and rural-education reformer—Duilio Baltodano W’70. father sent him to INCAE, the Central American business school set up by Harvard University in the 1960s. “I said to myself, ‘I’m going to continue ing for better quality, and as a result grow- Baltodano studied sales and marketing, in Nicaragua, remain as long as I can,’” ing philosophies shifted toward the use not trade. He lived large and gave little he recalls. “And so I had to decide what of shade and other natural methods. thought to questions of poverty and jus- am I, a politician or a businessman. As a These clients also required improvements tice. He went to work managing CISA, businessman I had to be quiet, never get in housing, health, and education for the the family’s agro business, importing mad with anyone. Once I get impatient workers and their families. farm supplies and equipment and export- or mad or aggressive, they will throw me In 1992, the Baltodanos purchased ing coffee and other commodities. At out. The directors of the state companies: Buenos Aires. Almost immediately, Duilio that time, only the Samozas, who had now we are friends, but then I was trying fell in love with the lustrous hills. He pre- kept Nicaragua under dictatorial control to reach common ground. It wasn’t ideol- ferred to sleep in the casa técnica at the for four decades, exported more coffee ogy, but pragmatism. I would always say, center of the farm, where the farm manag- than the Baltodanos. ‘Let’s talk about business.’” ers took their meals. And he noticed the But as the dictatorship grew more The Sandinistas were badly weakened sorry state of the Buenos Aires school, a oppressive, Baltodano’s awareness began by the US-backed Contra war, and in 1990, pitiful one-story wooden shack with a tin to grow. Many among the elite—including they lost the first election held under a roof. The school kept no records, had no his uncle Emilio, who was a member of new, democratic constitution. A “concili- books, and no regular teachers.

42 MAY | JUNE 2013 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE “My grandfather said, ‘If you get a good build the necessary classrooms, and value of the inputs—wind, soil, sunlight, education, then that’s the best inheri- teacher pay is the lowest in Central pruning schedule, and worker incentives— tance, no one can steal it from you,’” says America. So private-sector firms like CISA on the number and quality of the outputs, Baltodano. “My sense was that by giving are expected to step in to fill the gap. called “cherries” (ripe, pre-milled coffee opportunity to members of the commu- The Baltodanos fixed up the Buenos beans are a shiny, dark red). Baltodano nity, we could not only increase efficien- Aires school, and eventually, with the also wanted to precisely manage the com- cy and production among workers, but help of a 2003 World Bank loan, built a plicated process of coffee harvesting, wet also bring hope.” new campus adjacent to the barracks and dry milling, and distribution, and to Education reform has long been a crit- used for cortadores (seasonal coffee pick- do so he had software designed that ical lever of economic advancement in ers). For each grade cohort, a separate required farm managers and foremen to Nicaragua. In 1980, the Sandinista “lit- brick structure—albeit without electric- use handheld devices in the field. Historically, the Nicaraguan coffee harvest had been the least productive in the region, but with a technologically literate workforce, it could surpass its rivals. At around the same time, MIT Media Lab founder and chairman emeritus Nicholas Negroponte was designing a small, durable laptop computer, which

A technologically literate workforce is becoming more important as growers seek to measure the impact of inputs—wind, soil, sunlight, pruning schedules, and worker incentives—on the number and quality of outputs—ripe, pre-milled coffee beans, known as “cherries.”

he believed—if widely distributed and connected to the Internet—could trans- form the lives of the world’s poor. eracy crusade” reduced analfabetismo ity or running water—was constructed. Children would guide their own learning, from 50 percent to around 10 percent. At Volunteers painted the buildings blue instilling in them a sense of ownership that time, only 38 percent of children were and white, the national colors. The new and limitless possibility. The project was enrolled in primary school. By 2006, when buildings were designed to maximize named One Laptop Per Child. In 2008, the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was both light and shade and to provide a the first of Negroponte’s XO laptops reelected President, the rate of enrollment safe, contained play area. appeared in schools in Nicaragua. had doubled. He declared primary educa- But a modern school, in Baltodano’s That year, the girlfriend (and now wife) tion a basic right and set the goal of 100 mind, was synonymous with the use of of Baltodano’s son Ernesto, Adriana percent matriculation by 2012. But gov- technology. This made sense for even Chamorro GEd’12, was working as a vol- ernment investment in schools, at 3.7 more pragmatic reasons. On a sustainable unteer at Nicaragua’s only psychiatric percent of GDP, isn’t nearly enough to coffee farm it is necessary to measure the hospital. Chamorro was helping the

THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE MAY | JUNE 2013 43 Baltodano mentioned his desire to bring “I’m an education professor at an Ivy One Laptop Per Child into the classroom. League university in a large city. We can’t He was certain that if the children of Buenos Aires were exposed to computers, even get our own school system together,” “they will be the ones telling us what to do.” He asked Ravitch to run the project. Ravitch says. “So what makes me an “It will fail,” she told him, explaining that implementing OLPC alone would expert? Who am I to bring something to a repeat the same colonialist pattern that has dominated the field of international community without engaging with them.” applied-development for decades and which proceeds with the assumption that Western outsiders bring expertise to under-resourced hospital staff devise Ministry of Education and assigned, post- infantile and incompetent (and even systems of care. One of her colleagues earthquake, to guide the rebuilding of the disinterested) locals. told her about a researcher from the US nation’s system of education. “I’m an education professor at an Ivy who had been developing new standards She and Tarditi took Chamorro up on League university in a large city. We can’t for training and professional develop- her offer. At Buenos Aires, they accom- even get our own school system together,” ment of family therapists and school panied Duilio and Ernesto Baltodano to Ravitch says. “So what makes me an counselors in Ecuador and was an expert the school. The children gathered around expert? Who am I to bring something to in applied international development at Penn’s Graduate School of Education (GSE). Chamorro tracked down the professor—Sharon Ravitch—who, in addition to running the project in Ecuador, had initi- ated a participatory study on women’s access to justice in war-torn countries and was working on teacher professional development in post-tsunami Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Ravitch agreed to conduct a workshop at the psychiatric hospital. In Nicaragua, Chamorro told Ravitch and Matthew Tarditi, a GSE student who had come along as a research assistant, about the Buenos Aires school. Would they like to drive five hours north to see it? Ravitch, 41, has wild brown curly hair and a wide, persuasive smile. She talks with her hands, curses joyfully, and laughs like a knowing accomplice. She was raised with a strong social con- science. When she was young, her mother stopped celebrating Thanksgiving because it marked the beginning of the Two children try out the XO laptops. persecution of Native Americans. Her father, who grew up in a tough Philadel- phia neighborhood, started out as a while Ernesto and Duilio demonstrated a community without engaging with them salesman, and her parents struggled on a sample XO laptop they had acquired in figuring out if they even want this kind financially. When Ravitch graduated in anticipation of bringing technology of ‘innovation’ for themselves and their from Temple University in 1993, she to Buenos Aires. That night Duilio children? And so I said absolutely not.” asked how she could ever repay them. brought Ravitch out to the porch of the If the intention was to hand out com- Tikun olum (Hebrew for healing the family house, which sits at the highest puters with a few brief workshops for world), her parents told her: just do good. point of the farm. From there, in the dim- teachers, it wouldn’t build capacity, she Since earning her doctorate at GSE in ming light, the mountains seem to dis- explained, and ultimately it would be a 2000, Ravitch has taken on applied edu- solve into the clouds and every few min- waste of money and time. cational-development projects around the utes a monkey howls, which has the “My argument was not to say, ‘If you world. In October 2011 she was named the effect of marking points in the unseen build it they will come,’ but ‘If we co- senior international advisor to Haiti’s forest as stars do in the night sky. construct it, it might be sustainable.’”

44 MAY | JUNE 2013 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Give me a chance to study and engage 15 schools sponsored by the Baltodanos’ nations with the resources and digital with the community, she countered, to firm—and eventually, they concurred, and educational infrastructure to absorb learn from and partner with the teachers, their aspirations feeding off each other, them. In Nicaragua, with a primary- parents, and farm workers. Only then to the entire nation. school population of some 835,000, can adequate interventions be devised. Since OLPC’s introduction in 2005 and about 27,000 XOs have been distributed But, she insisted, this can only work if after several redesigns of the XO, the to about 90 schools, most of them by the it’s done rigorously and systematically. bright green and white laptops have Zamora-Téran Foundation, OLPC’s pro- “I am a methodological purist,” she says. become a symbol of international devel- prietary distributor in Central America. Perhaps because she was raised on the opment. Negroponte’s vision was to place The relatively short reach makes sense, aggressive streets of Philadelphia and them in locales of deep poverty, where according to Mark Warschauer, a profes- Tel Aviv, where her family spent its sum- few children attend school and many sor of Education and Infomatics at the mers, Ravitch is assertive, demanding, teachers are illiterate, if they ever show University of California-Irvine and one and sometimes severe in her judgment. up at all. (In Nicaragua a great many of the most careful observers of OLPC. She is also deeply compassionate. The rural teachers travel to their remote Very poor nations such as Nicaragua combination of these qualities seemed schools on Monday, teach Tuesday, can’t afford to provide a computer for each to move Baltodano, who could have just Wednesday, and Thursday, and go home primary-school student, Warschauer as easily told her to get lost. on Friday.) The computers, under these explains. The money spent on OLPC, he As it turned out, he wanted someone harshest of circumstances, are meant to argues, would be more effectively invest- like her—someone persistent and confi- be everything: curriculum, school, and ed in classrooms and teachers. dent who wouldn’t be intimidated by the teacher. They are certainly powerful “OLPC represents the latest in a long nearly overwhelming obstacles. And then enough. Negroponte often notes that line of technologically utopian develop- there was chemistry, a kind of shared each XO can hold 100 books. It’s impos- ment schemes that have unsuccessfully irreverence, and on that warm night on sible to imagine, he says, being able to attempted to solve complex social prob- the farm, they shook hands and cement- afford sending thousands of books to lems with overly simplistic solutions,” ed a future of collaboration and hard thousands of villages in Africa, South he wrote in a paper coauthored with work. Ravitch would head the project to Asia, and Latin America. Stanford doctoral student Morgan Ames build the curriculum and pedagogical The reality has never quite matched in the Journal of International Affairs. framework of the Buenos Aires school, Negroponte’s vision. The vast majority To help me understand Warschauer’s with the goal being to develop and of the two-million-plus laptops sold so point, Ravitch describes the ubiquitous advance a model approach to the other far have gone to relatively wealthy case of a Nicaraguan school without a toilet or running water. USAID, which carries out a great deal of development in Nicaragua, would respond to the unhealthy conditions by installing latrines. “The latrines were an answer to a question, but it wasn’t a question Nicaraguans themselves were asking,” she says. “The latrines didn’t do away with health haz- ards, they increased them. And you will see there are latrines spread all over the rural landscape and upwards of 50 percent are already unusable. All too often in the development world, it’s not about partner- ing to see what the local resources or the needs are, it’s about buying latrines.” The lesson, Ravitch argues, is that international development projects have to be co-constructed—meaning that local people work directly to identify problems and to design and implement solutions—and they have to be porous, meaning all constituents learn from each other and help the project evolve in ways that may not be immediately apparent. The overall approach is called participatory emergent design. “Everyone agrees that capacity build- Sharon Ravitch GrEd’00 and Matthew Tarditi GEd’10 GrEd’14 and students. The banner ing is critical,” she says. “Yet what is behind them reads: “Creating access to technology in coffee communities.” required to develop and sustain a truly

THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE MAY | JUNE 2013 45 bi-lateral process is an incredible amount of interpersonal, psychological, and institutional consideration that goes well beyond clean research design.” Ravitch agreed to build the project around the use of technology as a tool of innovation in the classroom. In exchange, Baltodano put aside his desire for immediate impact. He approved Ravitch’s pro- posed eight-month process of comprehen- sive ethnographic study of the farm community, which Ravitch calls the “gold standard” in applied development. The study would come to reveal the local knowledge, skills, and resources that could be brought to bear on the school. But by far the greatest focus of the project and perhaps its most significant ideological break with OLPC is to con- centrate resources on teacher professional development. “Teachers around the world are depro- fessionalized,” says Tarditi. In Semillas Digitales, despite the terrible government salary of $190 per month, teachers are positioned as partners. “It’s a dream,” says Baltodano. “But Ernesto Baltodano C’05 and Adriana Chamorro GEd’12 with students at the Buenos Aires school. Adriana, who is now married to Ernesto, first introduced Ravitch to the Baltodanos. what we’re doing is training teachers. They’re the ones doing it and they’re anxious to be better at it.” “It became my desire to see a more And yet the very distances—from digi- Ravitch and Tarditi, who had agreed to prosperous, stable country, where the tal seed to economic harvest, from aca- run Semillas Digitales in its first year standard of living for the majority of the demic idealism and kind-hearted pater- and then hand it off to local managers, population is far above the extreme pov- nalism to full-throttle reform, from a found a powerful and receptive ally in erty line,” he says. “But it was clear that walled garden to endless fields of intrac- Duilio’s dark-haired 30-year-old son would never be achieved if everyone who table poverty—seem incalculable. Ernesto, whom Ravitch calls “deeply and had the opportunity to receive a quality Nicaragua is the second poorest nation abidingly committed to Nicaragua, the education stayed abroad.” in the Americas and very nearly its most legacy of a family who has suffered In 2007, Ernesto returned to Managua corrupt. Can it really be possible to affect greatly despite their wealth.” to enter the family business. He is CISA’s the national agenda? Exactly how far can Like many children of the elite, Ernesto patient but ambitious visionary, says love go? grew up in exile, in Key Biscayne, Florida. Ravitch, a quality he brought to Semillas In 1992, with most political violence over Digitales. “He inspires me,” she says. “He uilio, Tarditi, and I arrived in Jinotega and a friendly government in power, may live in a version of the master’s Don a Saturday afternoon. The tem- Duilio decided it was time for the family house, but every day he’s assembling the perature was falling, and just above the to reassemble in Nicaragua. Ernesto, tools to dismantle it. He will make him- tips of the hills a perfect line of pearles- who was 10, couldn’t believe it. Why leave self far less comfortable to shift this cent clouds had formed. Jinotega is a tidy an idyllic life in an American suburb for country’s educational reality.” city of colorful one-story buildings that the beaten and fragmented landscape of When his father asked on the night stretch out, like the telephone wires Managua? “But within six months I real- of the press presentation if the family above them, between the hills. At the ized I was wrong,” he says now. ought to reconsider its goals, Ernesto edges, as the city falls into forest and Ernesto returned to the US in 2001 to answered. “Our goal should be to change the bright wind carries away the mud attend Penn. After graduation, he spent two the national education system beyond and smoke, the smell of sewage and years in Boston, working for the interactive the coffee region. If we stick to the cof- exhaust, the long lines of buildings dis- marketing agency, Digitas. The experience fee region,” he continued in his deep, sipate into a clutter of concrete ware- only fed his desires. What if Nicaragua grounded voice, with his hands resting houses, beneficios (coffee mills), and finally capitalized on its immense natural behind his head, “it won’t be enough, offices of the various coffee exporters. resources? What if Managua became a cen- and if it doesn’t get into the national Tarditi, born in 1979, is tall, introspec- ter for innovation and commerce? agenda, we fail.” tive, and deeply self-aware. He speaks

46 MAY | JUNE 2013 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE slowly, and then as he gets going the in the community. “The people were so It was twilight as we climbed the swampy, words beat forth in hot little riffs. For 16 welcoming, endearing, hospitable, and rutted road to the farm. Vapid 1970s pop years, his father was the mayor of appreciative of what I was doing,” he says. music played on the radio. The road was Haddonfield, New Jersey, a wealthy town “On one of the first visits to their house, full of people: mostly farm workers with across the Delaware River from a grandmother of one of the kids, Doña their ubiquitous machetes, but otherwise Philadelphia. His father would take him Isabel [Castro Lopez], said, ‘To think that families and girls arm in arm on their way to fundraising events for Senator Frank you came all this distance to help us, the out for Saturday night. They emerged in Lautenberg and former Governor Jim least we can do is treat you as a member the haze of the headlights like blots of Florio. “Politicians have a way of making of our family’.” watercolor paint. Tarditi’s heart was in the you feel valid and comfortable and impor- Tarditi’s ability to ingratiate himself pit of his stomach. This would be his first tant, and I didn’t care if it was genuine on the farm was invaluable, says Ernesto time back to the farm since he had left the or not,” Tarditi says. Baltodano. “He established his leader- summer before. Duilio in front was quiet. When Tarditi was 28, his sister Sarah, ship, won the support of the CISA team, Together, they seemed an unlikely pair: then 31, died of leukemia. They had been the farm staff, and most importantly the Don Duilio, as the Sandinistas say, an “oli- close growing up and Tarditi had taken school and community. He was the heart garch,” and Mateo the “radical.” care of Sarah’s toddler-age son while she of the project, he made sure to take every- These sorts of paradigms make Ravitch acutely aware of the complexities of her role. “I know I’m walking into a fraught history,” she says. “And there are ten- sions. We need to understand these ten- sions, not judge or hide from them.” Early on Ravitch and Tarditi learned that there was enormous value in developing personal bonds with the Baltodanos, just as they were doing with the farm community. “I know how much the Baltodanos want to do this for the country,” Tarditi says. “I wanted to support them, learn from them, help them learn. I thought I could be a bridge between two worlds,” meaning the elite and the rural peasant. “The differences can be very shocking, and I wanted to help each of them understand the other.” Daylight at Buenos Aires is coaxed by the pounding of corn masa into tortillas. On coffee-picking days, when there might be 500 or 1,000 people to feed, it starts at four. The kitchen is a vast wood and concrete building nestled into the lush hillside, with a long window where the workers line Tarditi, who Ernesto Baltodano calls “the heart of the project,” with a student. up to claim their meals. Inside, it feels labyrinthine, like a far section of a North was in the hospital for treatment and one into consideration in order for peo- African medina, and no less elemental: her husband was at work. He emerged ple to believe in it.” there are two wood stoves, recently repaired from the trauma as the family’s thera- The experience radicalized him politi- to reduce smoke ash; great pots of bubbling pist, the one most interested in observ- cally (on Facebook, he describes his polit- coffee; and fat balls of masa, mounded like ing the emotional roller-coaster and ical views as “Radical Liberal Marxist the heads of snowmen. most capable of helping his parents and Democrat with a penchant for rebellion On a busy day, five women prepare the other siblings heal. and civil disobedience”). At Buenos Aires, tortillas, beans, and coffee, but this was After Sarah’s death, he finished his mas- he acquired the revolutionary’s beard, Sunday and the kitchen staff was reduced ter’s thesis and, in July 2009, returned to which gave him the look of a Kibbutz pio- to two. I had been wandering around the Nicaragua to start Semillas Digitales. “I neer as much as a Marxist soldier. farm—it was the first I had seen it in day- am adaptable,” he says, describing the “I don’t think I did as much for them light—when a four-year-old boy named rough conditions of the farm, “but it was as they did for me,” Tarditi says. “As a Jason, with a runny nose and a florid cough, not pleasant. I was lonely, unhappy, sad, young adult, as an activist, they inspired came running up to me. “Mateo! Mateo!” frustrated, stressed out, and I felt like an me. I want to get their story out. I want he called, delighted that his great friend outsider.” But he soon immersed himself to battle in the trenches with them.” had returned. “Mateo, Mateo!” he shouted

THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE MAY | JUNE 2013 47 to me—another gringo with a beard, yet and was expected to care for the child. so welcoming to Tarditi at the start, took not at all sure what to think of the chele Each first- through sixth-grader at note of the impact of this approach, which before him—and gave me a big hug. “Mateo! Buenos Aires has a laptop (Baltodano was unprecedented since the early years Mateo!” he called back to me as he ran installed a solar panel so that the XO lap- of the Sandinista regime. “Now,” she told down the dirt path and into the kitchen. top batteries could charge each night). me, “the school is the heart of the com- Last school year, which ended in Decem- Nearly everyone I spoke with was careful munity. It wasn’t that way before.” ber, there were about 95 students enrolled to qualify the XO as an enhancement, and Late on Sunday morning, a reserved, in the Buenos Aires school, including not a replacement for the traditional role wiry man called Don Gonzalo arrived at Jason’s older sister Marjeris and a few of teachers; nothing, they told me, replac- the farm to escort Tarditi and me to mass other children of permanent farmworkers. es the learning dynamic of a classroom. at the Immaculada Concepción de María “Es máquina, no es mágico,” cautions church. He wore a perfectly pressed pair Martha Alicia Moreno, who is project of navy chinos, a crisp white polo shirt, manager of the CISA Corporate Social and a Haddonfield little-league baseball Responsibility division. cap (Tarditi’s parents have contributed a But if there was magic in the XO, it was great deal to the community, including a in its power—as an emblem of progress— MacBook, which the teachers use for les- to attract both children and adults to the son plans and to assess student perfor- school. Tarditi’s first job was to involve mance). Don Gonzalo and his wife Rosa community members in every aspect of de Montenegro had 21 children, eight of the project. “I come in with a certain set whom survived. The youngest, Otoniel, of skills and knowledge,” he says, “and was in the fifth grade at Buenos Aires. Don Gonzalo has been a cortador at a small coffee plantation for nine years. “I am a poor man,” he said. “It’s easy to imagine changes, but harder to do them. If I want to build something I need wood, but how to get it? It’s expensive, and concrete—forget about it. Patrones don’t even have enough to pay their workers.” But Semillas Digitales had given them hope, in part because it had given the students so much confidence. The day was warm and humid, and the church, which was a wooden box with a tin roof and a dirt floor, had the claustropho- The rest of the students live in the small bic air of a stable. Bed sheets and dollar- wooden houses (most of which have plots store figurines took the place of stained for growing corn and beans) scattered glass and statuary. After the service, Don across the rolling remains of the rain for- Gonzalo and Doña Rosa took us to see the est. In rural communities, fundamental progress of a new, much larger church with obstacles to schooling remain. “In my On coffee-picking days, as many as cinderblock walls and a concrete floor that town,” said Michele Aquino, a Peace Corps 1,000 workers may be fed from Buenos the community was building just up the volunteer on a nearby farm, “a young Aires’ kitchen. hill, a project that had already taken five mother who cannot read tends not to care years (a roof had recently been added). if her young children go to school. She they come to the table with a certain set Doña Rosa had the civic activist’s soft didn’t do it, so why should they?” of skills and knowledge and experience. intensity, grounded in a belief in human In picking season, despite vague rules What this project does is create the condi- goodness and a blunt willingness to ask against child labor, children become cor- tions for people to empower themselves.” for more. Oto, she said, was getting a fine tadores or watch their younger siblings The project was unlike anything else education at Buenos Aires. “But past sixth while their parents go off to work. Heavy the school parents, teachers, and CISA grade, what happens then? There are rains and frequent holidays interrupt les- facilitators had seen before; the mere fact many intelligent kids in the community son plans. Teachers often don’t show. of being involved was energizing and for who should be in high school. If there was Nicaragua’s fertility rate is two points the first time they began to imagine a a secundaria a lot of kids would go.” higher than the Latin American average, better future. Parents participated in joint The idea of bringing a secondary in part because of profound child sexual- class sessions and collaborative class- school to Buenos Aires was voiced fre- ity. One of Buenos Aires’ top sixth-grade room projects, and received regular home quently by the community members I students told Tarditi he was leaving school visits from Tarditi, CISA school-facilitator spoke to and strongly endorsed by to go to the “escuela de papas,” and indeed Nayibe Montenegro, and the teachers. Ravitch and Tarditi. They have begun to he had gotten an older woman pregnant Castro Lopéz, the grandparent who was assess the possibility with the Fabretto

48 MAY | JUNE 2013 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Children’s Foundation, which operates a grader, “To me, the presentation was indicating they were completing the math mobile, agrarian-based curriculum in lovely because I got to meet different equations correctly—scored the air. remote areas of Central America. At lunch, kinds of people from other places.” And Moreno, meanwhile, explained how the Tarditi raised the idea with Baltodano, that was it, precisely: the computers were computers were integrated with the who didn’t see the immediate imperative. a writing tool that simultaneously taught Ministry of Education’s curriculum. After all, only slightly more than 40 per- these remote children how to communi- “The kids are playing,” she noted, “but at cent of Nicaraguan children complete cate in the language of the wider world. the same time they are learning.” And then sixth grade. Baltodano wanted to keep she leaned forward and smiled. Of course, the focus on K-6. “Better to load up the After lunch at Buenos Aires, the children she reminded them, the skill of the teacher pipeline in primary school,” he said. were dismissed. Tarditi, Moreno, and is what’s important. “The computer is real- “Clearly, you’d like to do that initially,” Montenegro got in a pick-up truck to ly no more than a complementary tool.” responded Tarditi, “but at some point you drive to the school at Abisinia. In the have to open the valve.” Eventually, he narrative of capacity building and sus- mid-2011, management of the project believes, Duilio will support a secondary tainability, this was the rubber meeting Inwas handed over to Moreno and school. But what if, in the co-constructed the road. Moreno and Montenegro are Montenegro of CISA. They are the lynchpin model, co-constructors disagree? both 40. Moreno has short hair and a of the capacity building and professional- sharp wit and Montenegro long hair and ization strategy. Initially the transition a knowing smile. As they drove across was bumpy—fraught± with cultural miscues, the valley, Moreno described the chal- miscommunication, and the blurring of lenge before them. Abisinia was a former roles—but during the 2012 school year, the Sandinista military encampment that second full year of Semillas Digitales, the had become a loose and somewhat law- Nicaraguan school coordinators began to less community. It was isolated, and assert control. Montenegro took over the unlike Buenos Aires, unprotected. There role of lead facilitator, integrating teachers were few jobs and as a result the com- into the program, and Moreno assumed munity was beset by alcoholism, delin- the position of overall program coordina- quency, child sexual abuse, extreme tor, in charge of methodology and the rela- violence, and rape. “Everything out there tionships with the Penn researchers and finds its way into the school,” she said. the national Ministry of Education. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about As expected, the expansion to the school the transition from Buenos Aires,” said in Abisinia was challenging. They faced Montenegro, a former school principal. a climate of mistrust among the teachers “Abisinia is another world.” and a severe lack of collaboration. The The school, which was freshly painted, school’s assistant director was accused is the size of a small, 1960s era American of stealing four XOs from the school, and elementary school. It sits at the edge of a though they were later found over an hour Doña Rosa de Montenegro, with a photograph wide field, where horses and donkeys away in her hometown, she remains in of her mother. Her youngest son, Otoniel, is graze. There are vegetable gardens and a her position, probably due to political ties. a fifth grader at Buenos Aires school. large library, improvements that have Yet, a core group of dedicated faculty resulted from a partnership with the has emerged and students’ digital lit- In class on Monday, the third through French bank Société Générale, set up by eracy has grown substantially. Last April, sixth graders were asked to write an essay Dania Baltodano, the former CEO of CISA’s Abisinia students and teachers came to describing their trip to Managua using the export division. More than 500 children Managua to present to stakeholders. The XO’s draw function, which would enable attend the school, but because the facility progress was enough that Duilio them to present their experience simulta- can only accommodate about half that, Baltodano agreed to extend the project neously in text and video, with photo- high-school students come in a second to the Flor de Maria Rizo school at the graphs and original drawings. Work began shift, after lunch and on the weekends. Los Potrerillos farm this spring, the first slowly, and at first it seemed that the lap- During the meeting in the school’s time Semillas Digitales will spread to a tops were a distraction. Couldn’t they learn library, Tarditi sat quietly, taking notes. school outside the CISA network.◆ as effectively with pencil and paper? Moreno and Montenegro asked questions I wandered outside. Cortadores in single about the electrical capacity, Internet con- Nathaniel Popkin C’91 GCP’95 is the co-editor of file walked into the arbor. It began to rain. nection, and the plumbing (it was con- Hidden City Daily and co-producer and senior script- When I returned to the classroom, Tarditi stantly out of order). Montenegro pulled writer of the documentary film series “Philadelphia: was demonstrating something to the an XO out of her bag and Moreno demon- The Great Experiment.” He is author of Song of the teachers on the MacBook and the kids strated the laptop’s math game, “Tuxmilla,” City: An Intimate Portrait of the American Urban were writing, placing their essays into a takeoff on the old pinball arcade game, Landscape, The Possible City: Exercises in bubbles as if they were to be part of a Venn “Asteroids.” The teachers gathered around Dreaming Philadelphia, and the forthcoming novel diagram. Wrote Hector Uriel, a sixth to give it a try. Electronic explosions— The Book of Masters.

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