Rafael Kopta

Rafael Kopta has created a curriculum for schoolchildren that instills values to abate violence and other social skills, using nature as a workbook and communities as classrooms.

Rafael Koptahas realized that Argentina’s social and environmental ills—ranging from violent crime to mistrust among neighbors to deforestation—all trace to a lack of basic human values. Argentines are never taught the core values that can sustain a society, especially a precarious society such as Argentina’s, which has yet to gain traction since the return to democracy in 1983. Rafael has brought values education to schoolchildren. His pedagogy is unique: Rafael has shown that the values most important to healthy interaction in society can be effectively taught using environmental themes as a vehicle. The centerpiece of Rafael’s pedagogical and ethical model is the tree. As students in Rafael’s Programa Educar Forestando (PEF, Forestry Education Program) learn about trees, cultivate them in collaborative greenhouses, and ultimately plant them in coordination with their communities, they practice the five values that underpin success in the program and in society: Respect for Nature, Civic Participation, Tolerance,Solidarity and Vision. Rafael’s initiative is remarkable for its diligent measurement of how much students learn and internalize the five values during the PEF course, and for its professional investment in teachers as the keys in executing and replicating the model.Rafael has taken PEF to an interesting point in its growth. The model is proven, and Rafael has spread it through four of Argentina’s provinces. He is now endeavoring to spread it more widely, and rapidly. He plans to build up his capacityto train teacher-replicators and other multipliers and link them in powerful networks. Rafael currently trains teachers on PEF’s pedagogy and methodologies. The PEF training course is two years in length, consisting of a mix of workshops and distance-learning. Afterwards, teachers are coordinated into a network for collaboration and sharing of best practices. Rafael is piloting an alternative training regimen that is intensive and shorter-term, to reach teachers who cannot take the two-year course. He is also focusing on training multipliers who can themselves train teacher, amplifying spread.

Argentina is a country plagued by violence, crime and corruption. Behind these is a grim picture of a damaged civil society: 84 percent of Argentines say that they do not trust others, according to a 2002 Gallup poll. Eighty-seven percent say they are unhappy with the functioning of Argentina’s democracy.Schools do not teach young people how to behave in society. They do not cover the relevant skills. Most significantly, they do not infuse in young people the values that underpin healthy, constructive living as part of families, communities, society. Curricula are highly focused on textbook learning,with little exploration of human values or other essentials to social and societal development. At the teacher level, there is great desire to integrate values-based instruction in order to abate violence (violence in schools, as well as in society at large), but teachers lack the tools to do it.A values vacuum translates into the violence and other social ills that afflict Argentine society. It also means a weak environmental ethic to mitigate environmental opportunism. Deforestation is a particularly widespread problem. Deforestation harms localcommunities, and it diminishes Argentines’ long-term capacity to benefit from their natural resources. Although various civil society organizations have tried to raise consciousness about the environment and promote conservation on a case-by-case basis, there have been no previous efforts to create a positive, broad-based environmental ethic by instilling the proper values in young children.

Rafael’s success hinges on the value of the PEF curriculum in transforming how students learn, internalize and actualize values, and the number of teachers who effectively incorporate the curriculum in their classrooms and communities. Rafael strives to integrate the curriculum into primary schools broadly, as well as kindergartens and schools for special-needs students. Rafael has also adapted PEF to serve citizen organizations (such as scouting groups and other youth groups) that request the curriculum.Rafael begins with educating children. The tree is central to Rafael’s curriculum for its pedagogical and ethical value. Using the tree as a centerpiece, Rafael’s curriculum imparts the five values that will make children effective citizens and stewards of their environment: Respect for Nature, Civic Participation, Tolerance, Solidarity and Vision. Trees engender feelings of attachment and respect. They represent longevity, and patient investment. Most of the benefits that they will produce (fruit, shade, stability) are many years off at the time a child plants one: It takes vision to see these future returns. Trees also allow for group activities to cultivate them. In Rafael’s model, classes create and maintain greenhouses, and ultimately plant fledgling trees in community plantings. Children learn to work together collaboratively, and to tolerate—and value—individual differences and contributions to their groups. For the plantings, sites are chosen in accordance with community needs. (For example, a community might be in need of wind curtains, or sidewalk landscaping, or cattle shelters, or soil stabilization in wild areas, or greener public parks.)Plantingsare often in parks or other public spaces, and sometimes in private yards of collaborating neighbors. In all cases, children are encouraged to engage with community members outside the school to make the plantings successful. Community members aid in the construction of greenhouses, and collect waste for use as fertilizer, for example. Participation also leads to community-level discussions on natural resource use. Community support and participation has come easily, as plantations beautify public spaces and neighboring buildings, shelter cattle from the sun, and generate income through the sale of greenhouse plants. In addition to the utility of trees in imparting PEF’s five values, trees are also convenient tools to teach a variety of lessons. For example, trees may be the muses for student expression in literature classes; they may provide raw materials for art classes. Nurseries and greenhouses offer further possibilities, notably for the geometric properties of their plots. The opportunities in biology are obvious. Rafael diligently measures results, especially how successful the PEF curriculum has been at instilling the five core values in students. To measure this, Rafael surveysteachers. For example, in 2000 in
Page 3of 4the state of Jujuy, where PEF is used by twenty-nine teachers and 1,500 students, teachers registered that in the area of solidarity, 83 percent of students showed significant development, 17 percent showed “a little” development, and no students did not show any development. Teachers are asked to substantiate their judgments by giving examples of what constitutes in their eyes the development of values. One teacher explains, for example, that his students demonstrated solidarity when they met up on a weekend outside of class hours to pursue their group project. Teachers are also asked to attribute results to specific activities or aspects of the curriculum. For example, teachers in Jujuy link solidarity growth to group work, creating the greenhouses, caring for the young saplings, and team stewardship of planted trees. Rafael tracks other impact data as well. Through 2000, PEF had taught 95,200 students, and involved 822 schools and other institutions in 492 communities in four provinces. Of the 508,407 trees cultivated by students, they had planted 202,272 in their communities. Students and teachers had involved 97,500 relatives and other community members. As a bonus, Rafael has found that the hands-on cultivation activities successfully engage students whom teachers commonly write off as lost causes for the difficulty they have in following classroom assignments.In the first years of PEF, Rafael would himself travel to communities to implement the curriculum in schools. Soon, Rafael realized that to have wide-scale, sustainable impact, he would have to improve reach and efficiency. He began packaging his curriculum and training teachers. Rafael developed a two-year course for educators that utilizes in-person contact with members of Rafael’s team through workshops and one-on-one coaching sessions, hands-on training, and distance learning components. There is also an annual PEF teachers’ conference. Teachers learn Rafael’s pedagogy, how to implement the PEF curriculum, how to utilize the PEF network, and how to measure and interpret results. Each teacher receives a wide array of printed didactic material, including manuals, textbooks, workbooks, posters, and stickers to use in the classroom. Rafael encourages sustainability of the program, both in classrooms and in the community. He maintains regular contact with the teachers implementing PEF and updates them with new ideas and best practices. Through 2000, Rafael had trained 2,381 teachers.Teacher training is also at the heart of PEF’s replication plans. PEF is now at a critical point in its evolution. (Rafael developed PEF in Córdoba city in 1989, expanded into other parts of Córdoba province in 1990, and into Jujuy province in 1999, and Mendoza and Rio Negro provinces in 2000). Rafael has now proven the model at a large scale, in four provinces representing diverse socio-economic conditions. The key now for PEF is to spread throughout the rest of Argentina and internationally, and accelerate impact. Rafael’s plan to do this involves several components: 1) Diversifying training opportunities for teachers: For teachers for whom it is not feasible to go through the two-year training regimen, Rafael has piloted an intensive training regimen whereby teachers come to Argentina for a one-time workshop, with follow-up at a distance. Participants in the 2003 pilot program came from three areas of Córdoba province, as well as Peru and Paraguay. 2) Training trainers: Rafael is cultivating educators who can act as multipliers by bringing PEF to many more teachers and schools. 3) Compiling a manual: Cascading training will be supported by a how-to guide on replicating PEF. 4) Building out the PEF network: Improving the network will enable better communication among trainers and teachers, and will promote sharing of best practices. 5) Reaching out to new provinces: Rafael is actively seeking potential replicators in new parts of the country; 6) Utilizing the media: Partnerships with SOS País News Agency (already established) and other media networks will allow widespread dissemination of PEF’s principles.Page 3of 4the state of Jujuy, where PEF is used by twenty-nine teachers and 1,500 students, teachers registered that in the area of solidarity, 83 percent of students showed significant development, 17 percent showed “a little” development, and no students did not show any development. Teachers are asked to substantiate their judgments by giving examples of what constitutes in their eyes the development of values. One teacher explains, for example, that his students demonstrated solidarity when they met up on a weekend outside of class hours to pursue their group project. Teachers are also asked to attribute results to specific activities or aspects of the curriculum. For example, teachers in Jujuy link solidarity growth to group work, creating the greenhouses, caring for the young saplings, and team stewardship of planted trees. Rafael tracks other impact data as well. Through 2000, PEF had taught 95,200 students, and involved 822 schools and other institutions in 492 communities in four provinces. Of the 508,407 trees cultivated by students, they had planted 202,272 in their communities. Students and teachers had involved 97,500 relatives and other community members. As a bonus, Rafael has found that the hands-on cultivation activities successfully engage students whom teachers commonly write off as lost causes for the difficulty they have in following classroom assignments.In the first years of PEF, Rafael would himself travel to communities to implement the curriculum in schools. Soon, Rafael realized that to have wide-scale, sustainable impact, he would have to improve reach and efficiency. He began packaging his curriculum and training teachers. Rafael developed a two-year course for educators that utilizes in-person contact with members of Rafael’s team through workshops and one-on-one coaching sessions, hands-on training, and distance learning components. There is also an annual PEF teachers’ conference. Teachers learn Rafael’s pedagogy, how to implement the PEF curriculum, how to utilize the PEF network, and how to measure and interpret results. Each teacher receives a wide array of printed didactic material, including manuals, textbooks, workbooks, posters, and stickers to use in the classroom. Rafael encourages sustainability of the program, both in classrooms and in the community. He maintains regular contact with the teachers implementing PEF and updates them with new ideas and best practices. Through 2000, Rafael had trained 2,381 teachers.Teacher training is also at the heart of PEF’s replication plans. PEF is now at a critical point in its evolution. (Rafael developed PEF in Córdoba city in 1989, expanded into other parts of Córdoba province in 1990, and into Jujuy province in 1999, and Mendoza and Rio Negro provinces in 2000). Rafael has now proven the model at a large scale, in four provinces representing diverse socio-economic conditions. The key now for PEF is to spread throughout the rest of Argentina and internationally, and accelerate impact. Rafael’s plan to do this involves several components: 1) Diversifying training opportunities for teachers: For teachers for whom it is not feasible to go through the two-year training regimen, Rafael has piloted an intensive training regimen whereby teachers come to Argentina for a one-time workshop, with follow-up at a distance. Participants in the 2003 pilot program came from three areas of Córdoba province, as well as Peru and Paraguay. 2) Training trainers: Rafael is cultivating educators who can act as multipliers by bringing PEF to many more teachers and schools. 3) Compiling a manual: Cascading training will be supported by a how-to guide on replicating PEF. 4) Building out the PEF network: Improving the network will enable better communication among trainers and teachers, and will promote sharing of best practices. 5) Reaching out to new provinces: Rafael is actively seeking potential replicators in new parts of the country; 6) Utilizing the media: Partnerships with SOS País News Agency (already established) and other media networks will allow widespread dissemination of PEF’s principles.
Page 4of 4Rafael has garnered support from domestic and international sources, including UNESCO, the World Union for Nature, the European Community, AVINA, the Minetti Foundation, the Arcor Foundation, and the Inter-American Foundation, as well as the embassies of Canada, Netherlands, Australia, and Germany. He has raised more than $1.5 million to cover operations over the years. Institutional support for PEF comes from Rafael’s Environment, Culture and Development Foundation (ACUDE), which he founded in 1995. ACUDE’s staff is small: Rafael is general manager, and there are two educational specialists and one accountant.

While Rafael was studying biology in college, one of his professors introduced him to a natural resources preservation project and made him aware for the first time of the urgent need to fight environmental degradation. To support his studies and growing interest in preservation of natural resources, he sold flowerpots door-to-door and sold plants he raised in his greenhouse at artisan flea markets in Córdoba city. After completing his Bachelors of Science in 1985, Rafael joined the Córdoba Environment Conservation Committee. His first major endeavor was to plant trees in an area affected by dam construction. His team planted at a rate of eight hundred trees per day. None of the trees survived the first year. Rafael realized that his professional failure was a result of his own shortcomings in not evaluating best practices, not educating his team fully, and not gaining the support of the entire community. He brought this learning to his next ventures. In order to alter attitudes about development, conservation, and sustainability, Rafael started Argentina’s first primary school forestry campaign in 1986. In 1989, he created the first educational greenhouse in Córdoba city, in which students and educators learned how to cultivate trees in a simple and low-cost way. He taught 10,600 students and four hundred teachers in that greenhouse, which he had built entirely of discarded materials. The greenhouse program was the seed of what became the PEF. Rafael has been recognized by UNESCO, the Senate, the Ministry of Education, and various institutions for his contributions to education and environment in Argentina.