Mexico takes the battle for gender respect to the classroom

When Carmen Guzmán Orozco first arrived at the Telebachillerato Comunitario San Andrés de Baraña as a teaching fellow in 2016, she was taken aback.

It wasn’t the lack of water or internet connection that surprised her at this school of 140 high school students – it was the whistles.

“I’d walk by the classrooms and boys would openly whistle at me,” says Ms. Guzmán, a 20-something, second-year fellow with Enseña por Mexico (Teach for Mexico), a program modeled after Teach for America that places high-achieving college graduates in public schools here for two years.

Guzmán’s fellowship includes identifying a problem and coming up with a project to address it. The teachers are asked to watch for issues that take kids out of school, but aren't necessarily directly related to education –

Deep thinking in classCreating resourcesRecognizing violence