Abstract:

In the rural community of Isiquí, Nicaragua, the only school is found behind a stone wall at the edge of the highway. Community-planted gardens provide shade and a wall of greenery between six classrooms and the only paved road. A simple water filtration system rests on the inside of the gate, and three latrines sit behind the complex. The school’s preschool education is confined to two brick mixed-use rooms that also serve as a storage room, lunchroom, library, and secondary school classroom on the weekends. The teachers, well-trained educators of the 29 students in their care, recognize the need for creativity in their classrooms but are limited in their pedagogy due to the lack of resources and the rigidity of space. This paper explores the question, what are the most effective methods to unlock and support creativity in preschool education in a community with limited physical resources?

Isiquí is located 15 kilometers east of the nearest city of Estelí, Nicaragua. The community comprises 3,496 people in around 630 dwellings, mostly farm families [1]. Its school also serves other smaller communities nearby. The community is known among educators and administrators of Nicaragua’s Ministry of Education (MINED) for its relatively strong school, active parents, and close-knit population. One of the school’s greatest assets is the land in the back; a boulder-strewn woods immediately behind the buildings that backs up to a school garden. When the authors commenced this project, parents expressed an interest in developing a creative preschool space in the natural environment of the woods. But what is “creative education,” and how does a semi-remote community approach its implementation?

The authors have conducted a series of workshops and qualitative research both in the United States and Nicaragua that resulted in a workshop in 2022 with Isiquí parents, sparking excitement and feasibility of working long-term with the community which is committed to their school and their children—in this meeting with parents, one mother even responded to the question, What does creativity mean? with, “To be a good mother for my children…”
Thus, the subsequent months, filled with workshops, interviews, and spontaneous community engagement, have allowed authors, teachers, professors, and MINED administrators to explore manners of provoking community-driven ideas to create momentum about what a new or reconfigured classroom might look like. The following article shares the steps used and the findings that revealed themselves to be most resonant and supportive of the community’s dreams for preschool education.

Keywords:

Creativity, Preschool education, Community engagement, Classroom structure, Nicaragua.