Relational Education

Bringing forth from within.

What is the problem that you are committed to solving? If we can name one of the many problems of current education systems, it is human capital preparedness. What employers are seeking the most today is “higher-level cognitive skills in areas such as collaboration, problem-solving, critical thinking, and creativity,” as revealed by a recent McKinsey study. Moreover, the same study concludes that students “want greater choice and control over how they learn, so they can solve social and global challenges not yet imagined, and be ready to thrive in their personal and professional lives.” Research also says that one can be an expert on anything through practicing for 10,000 hours. K-12 students practice passivity for 13,200 hours: they wait for someone to tell them what to do. How can we expect them to become creative, proactive and prepared for this ever-changing world? The more they take an active role in their education now, the better they will be prepared for life. Introducing technology in regular classrooms or using a new app are not initiatives for a system change: transforming education requires a personalized learning system approach, where educators become catalyzers while students own the learning process.

What is the solution you are proposing? The above mentioned studies discuss the “what” and Relational Education provides the “how” to address these findings with a proven framework to fulfill the promise of a quality education. We propose an innovative pedagogy model allowing students to be self-directed with the support of their educators, while fulfilling the requirements of any education system. It puts in practice what the word education means from Latin: “to bring forth from within.” We provide the tools, expertise and professional development for educators to share the learning responsibility with their students. Our framework helps educators and students to develop social-emotional, personal, and intellectual skills, fostering intrinsic motivation and resilience. Thus, students are able to design their own future. Learning One to One (L1to1) provides the step by step “how-to’s” for a successful transformation, with:

(1) Continuous professional development for educators, administrators, and parents. This approach ensures that each school enters into a transformational path that involves the entire community.

(2) An on-line app called SER+, for students to manage their learning process. SER+ focuses on the learning process rather than on content management.

(3) Continuous academic and app support. L1to1 provides ongoing services to monitor and guide the implementation process.

How will this solution change the world? Each one of us has a unique talent to contribute to the world in our lifetime. What Olympic gold medalists, Nobel Prize winners, and innovator entrepreneurs have in common is an internal force, an intrinsic motivation, a grit that keeps them going regardless of what other people say or the circumstances they live, because they love what they do. L1to1 aims at providing all human beings a proven pathway to become authors of their own lives, decision-makers, and productive social actors through developing their intrinsic motivation while fulfilling school systems’ requirements. 

Our unique methodology transforms the way students learn. Relational Education combines SER+ and continuous professional development, allowing educators to easily create personalized learning paths for different learners, respecting each student’s abilities and interests. Our methodology pushes students to relate everything they learn to their own lives, and with the support of educators, reach their individual potential and achieve excellence autonomously. To do so, Relational Education focuses on developing soft skills required by employers today, such as problem solving, decision making, critical thinking, creativity, leadership, collaboration, responsibility, goal setting, and learning autonomy, among many others. 

The Platform SER+ is the only app in the market focused on personalizing the learning process, rather than personalizing content. SER+ provides indicators about personal skill development and pace, tools for personal goal setting and management, and spaces for interactions and teamwork. It gathers all the information students need to own their learning process. Information is also accessible for parents, educators and administrators, ensuring that they all have the means to support students individually.  Along with the training provided for educators, this technological solution ensures that schools can seamlessly shift from traditional to a personalized education. 

L1to1 provides real-time monitoring and support to its implementations in Chile, Mexico and Colombia. We are also expanding our operations in Colombia and Brazil, and develop online continuous education programs. SER+, the third generation technological platform, will be launched in 2018. A self-managed implementation process is also being developed with two main components: (1) A Roadmap for schools to self-assess their current situation and tailor their professional development needs and path to personalized education; (2) A specific framework supported by our team of experts and by technology, to enable schools and school systems to lead their own transformation process.

Our vision is to continuously work on what we call “corporate self-awareness.” It means that our processes and procedures are in constant improvement to better serve schools while increasing efficiency, effectiveness, and quality. The upcoming self-managed implementation process for schools, as well as the continuous improvement of our technological platform centered in the learning process, are both key to keep scaling Relational Education at the worldwide level.

To access and retain customers, L1to1 reaches out to leaders of the public education system and key education stakeholders. Backed by our experience in different countries and contexts, we offer a combination of professional development opportunities, our app SER+, and continuous support for a successful implementation. Preferably, we work along with local organizations in the field, to allow capacity-building and sustainability. Once the project’s effectiveness and efficiency is established, we work with decision-makers to update public education policies.

We have worked with more than 100 schools in four countries with over 30,000 students, and provided continuous development to 1,200+ educators. We work with the existing staff in schools, never requesting any staff changes. With our intervention, among other significant improvements in academics, skill development and intrinsic motivation, underserved schools have experienced an average increase of 40% in reading-comprehension, and an academic performance ratio of 1.039 compared to 0.36 of traditional education.

We are currently reaching out to underserved communities, since our solution has been proven very cost-effective. In 12 months, we aim to reach 20,000 more students, and another 100,000 in three years. We design the best approach for each school, respecting its culture and requirements. Results are perceived in as little as 12 months, and the shift from traditional to personalized education can be completed in two years, in average. As we do for students, we aim to prepare institutions to lead their own process, so our monitoring level decreases progressively, as schools develop institutional skills guaranteeing the model’s sustainability.

L1to1 works with an international team of pedagogical researchers, educators and developers, all experts in their fields and in Relational Education. The team provides support to the schools we work with by facilitating professional development opportunities, monitoring the 21st century practices, and providing pedagogical and technological support and guidance to all local stakeholders involved in the project.

We receive grants from school systems to provide our services. Although we also receive donations to execute projects, we prefer to engage directly with school systems, as they take the ownership of the project. We work at cost, so our local partners receive the monetary amount to cover their costs.

The project costs include project planning, continuous professional development, the SER+ app, and continuous academic and app support. The cost is based on the project dimension set by the number of schools, educators and students, materials, and travel. If we are blessed to be selected as Solvers, L1to1 will be able to expand the outreach efforts to guarantee access to Relational Education to more educators and students worldwide.

Relational Education is a proven solution to the challenges presented by the MIT Solve Challenge for Teachers and Educators. The questions raised in this quest for solutions have been guiding our work for the last six years, and we are glad to have provided successful personalized learning experiences to over 30,000 students and 1200 educators, in more than 100 schools, in four countries. Solve provides an exceptional opportunity to access funds and create partnerships to enable our scalability, bringing better social and economic opportunities specially for the disadvantaged communities that otherwise, have low expectations of life.

At first sight, resistance to change can appear as an obstacle for our solution, but our experience has demonstrated that it is one of the easiest barriers to overcome: since our work proves to be successful in the short-term, it quickly gains the support of the most reluctant leaders. Funding has been proven to be more challenging. Lastly, lack of visibility also slows us down, since our outreach efforts are partially determined by funding. Solve is great platform for us, since it provides access to funds and prizes, and offers a golden opportunity to showcase our solution to the world.