Fast forward to August 2023, when the same school asked Roció to teach the HDC to the grade four students. “Post-pandemic, students across Paraguay are experiencing increased difficulty with reading and writing.” Due to the program’s popularity, the school gave the HDC a two-hour time slot, from 9-11 am every Tuesday and Thursday. At first, the teachers gave a lot of homework to students to make up for the time lost to the HDC class. However, the HDC class was only for one month, and “the kids were still happy because all they wanted was the HDC, so they didn’t care about other homework.” Still, sometimes the HDC class would run for three hours: “The kids would skip their break and eat in the classroom to keep going. We covered a lot of material quickly!”
When Roció missed a class because she was sick, the following class, the kids were sad and angry with her. “One kid asked me, why, why, weren’t you there? And then the students told me not to miss another one.” The HDC covers a lot of important ideas that kids don’t usually get to talk about in school. “The questions are interesting and deep… so, kids are allowed to show their feelings and be sincere.”
“There is a lot of poverty, and many of these children are living in a situation where both their parents have left the country to look for job opportunities. In these families, the kids are left taking care of their grandparents. Most kids are sensitive to the topic and don’t want to talk about their parents at all.” In the lesson on Heroism, the heroes the fourth-grade students selected were their grandparents, their teachers, and Roció. At the end of the class, one student told Rocio that he now knows he has value thanks to her.
I ask Rocio if the kids are surprised to learn they have human dignity. There is a pause. She is crying. “Yes. Of course. At the end of the curriculum, all of the kids cried that the classes were over. HDC gives them back an identity. Because, in the end, the kids understood what human dignity is and that they were really valued. And it made them so happy.”
Want to share the Human Dignity Curriculum with more students? Click the link to visit the HDC website to learn how.