Alianza Lagar: UC Education promotes territorial work with the SLEP Gabriela Mistral that brings together three communes of the RM

The agreement was signed this Monday, October 18, at the Innovation Center. The alliance will benefit more than 15 students and will work closely with the educational communities of the communes of Macul, La Granja and San Joaquín.

In the commune of Macul, in the middle of the San Joaquín campus of the Catholic University, is the Faculty of Education, one of the most important in Chile and Latin America, according to international rankings. A unit that has almost 50 academics who investigate what they teach and with a complete and innovative apparatus that also trains hundreds of future professors every year.

In the same commune and in its surroundings, there is the Local Public Education Service Gabriela Mistral, which houses 49 schools and more than 15 students from Macul, San Joaquín and La Granja.

Both institutions share the same territory and as of October 18 they share a mission: to promote learning and deliver the best tools and opportunities to the children and young people of said communes through the signing of the agreement between the organizations.

This is the Lagar Alliance, agreement signed by the rector of the UC, Ignacio Sánchez, and the executive director of SLEP, Pablo Araya. A union that comes to consolidate more than a decade of work that began with small gestures in some of the campuses surrounding the UC campus, many of which are currently part of the Faculty's internship system. The activity was also attended by the national director of Public education, Alexandra Grebe.

“Working with these establishments is an opportunity, an enormous wealth to be able to jointly carry out comprehensive teaching training, contact with families, contact with students, the creation of new knowledge and its transfer. (...) The management of students with special educational needs, inclusive education, interculturality, are all topics that perhaps 15 or 20 years ago we did not have so much in mind, but that today are an essential part of our teacher training ”, Rector Sánchez explained at the signing of the agreement held at the Innovation Center.

This union of forces between the teaching practice and the academy will allow joint work between the academics of the Faculty and the educational communities of the 49 educational campuses in the area, which will also allow the transfer of all the equipment, multiple capacities and evidence produced from the unit.

“The purpose of this Alliance is to reinforce existing initiatives, and from there, create, expand, amplify other new initiatives. Giving synergy, ensuring sustainability and coherence of purpose to the initiatives. We have multiple capacities in the areas of research, intervention and training. For example, we have several dozen researchers who develop projects supported by a variety of financing instruments, in areas such as school inclusion, reading promotion, teaching development, among others. In addition to the three highly capable centers: CENTER UC (continuing training), CEPPE UC (applied research) and ECJ (advanced research). We want to put all these capacities at the service of our local public education”, explained the dean of the Faculty of Education of the UC, Alejandro Carrasco.

An offer that only takes shape when working with the community, with this living practice installed in schools and a co-construction that challenges both institutions. The director of the Local Education Service, Pablo Araya, pointed out that he is proud to sign this agreement with one of the most prestigious universities in the country. “This is undoubtedly good news for this service, although it also gives us a task, because it challenges us to be a better SLEP. For us it is essential to link the implementation of the local service with research, with evidence. I believe that it is one of the important things that we have to do in education: that what we do has a good livelihood. What we are going to do now is ask ourselves questions and build the answers together, but with a solid base in research”.

The Alianza Lagar operation will be led by the director of CEPPE UC, Magdalena Claro, who said that "in this role that I am beginning to fulfill, of coordination of this alliance, I leave you invited to bring your ideas, to bring your experience, your perspectives to be able to promote this work and start to do an education in a different way , from this perspective more than co-construction to be able to contribute to the education of the boys and girls of our country”.

New Public Education

The New Public Education stipulates demunicipalization of schools nationwide, through the creation of 70 local public education services (SLEP). To date there are already 11 operating, and among them the SLEP Gabriela Mistral that houses the precincts of the communes of San Joaquín, La Granja and Macul. The area brings together 1223 teachers, more than 15 students, 28 schools, 6 high schools and 15 kindergartens.