Our Students
Meet Our Incoming High School Class of 2026
Family Income
Approximately: $170/month
House Services
- Running Water
- Electricity
- Internet
House Material
- Block
- Boards
Family Income
Approximately: $180/month
House Services
- Running Water
- Electricity
- Internet
House Material
- Block
- Boards
Meet our College students
Alejandra
Major: Educational Pedagogy and Administration
Alejandra wants to work within the Ministry of Education and help to make much-needed changes in the educational system of Guatemala.
Evelin
Major: Secondary School Education with Specialization in English
Evelin chose to study this career path to take advantage of her self-taught fluency in English and to have better job opportunities. She would like to teach lessons for free to people who cannot afford to pay for private classes in English.
Gabriel
Major: Educational Administration with Focus on Environmental Studies
Gabriel wants to be the kind of teacher who listens to his students and learns together with them. He envisions himself not only teaching in a school, but also teaching and preparing the children, teens and adults in his community to help them to understand what they are learning in schools.
Glendy
Major: Nursing
Glendy feels that nursing is a humanistic profession that contributes greatly to society. She knows that nurses help patients not only physically, but also spiritually and emotionally, as well as their families, during crucial moments of their lives. She wants to be a nurse in a hospital or clinic in vulnerable areas of Guatemala.
Helen
Major: Geology
Helen loves learning about the history of the Earth and how it behaves. She wants to use her education to help her community by assessing geological risks to prevent construction in dangerous areas. She also hopes to identify zones prone to landslides, earthquakes, or flooding in order to create risk maps that protect lives and homes.
Idania
Major: Civil Engineering
Idania has always been fascinated by how imposing buildings can be, and has admired the people who create them. She hopes one day to collaborate on tactical urbanism and universal mobility projects, ensuring that the streets are safe not only for cars but also for children, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
Want to Learn More about the Guatemalan Educational System? It's... Complicated.
The educational system in Guatemala has some similarities and some differences from the one here in the US. Like the American system, education is divided into primary (grades 1-6), middle (grades 7-9), and secondary (grades 10-12). Unlike the US, only primary school is mandatory, and is the only level of education supported by the government.
Despite being mandatory, in reality many Guatemalan children do not complete primary school, much less continue on to middle school. The reasons for this are several: First, despite being government-supported, primary school students must still pay for uniforms, books, school supplies, and transportation to and from school. This is beyond the reach of many Guatemalan families, especially rural, Indigenous families. Second, the primary language of almost 40% of Guatemalans is not Spanish, but rather one of more than 20 Mayan dialects. Despite a law passed in 1996 mandating that classes be taught in both Spanish and the local dialect, this has yet to occur in many schools, requiring Indigenous children to struggle with Spanish in addition to the usual first-year problems. Because of these and other factors, at present Indigenous children average only 2.5 years of education, compared to 5.7 years in non-Indigenous children.
Starting in middle school, families must pay for tuition as well as for the costs mentioned above, such as books, school supplies, etc. After successfully graduating from middle school, students are awarded a diploma called a “Basico”.
In high school, students have two options: they can attend a technical school for 2 years, choosing training in such fields as agriculture, surveying, or accounting, or they can choose a school with a more typical academic curriculum, which they attend for 3 years. At the end of technical school, they are awarded a certificate of competency in their chosen field, while at the end of academic school they are awarded a diploma called a “Diversicado” (I assume meaning a “diversified education”). The importance of the Diversicado is that it is required in order to sit for the college admission exams
Like high school, Guatemalan students accepted into post-secondary school education have several options. First, there are special teacher’s colleges that offer a 3-year degree in elementary education. This allows them to teach at the primary school level only. Second, there are more than a dozen Universities in Guatemala, and in general, they offer several routes to a diploma. The first of these is a 3-year degree in education that is more rigorous than the one offered by a teacher’s college. This allows the graduate to teach at both the primary and secondary levels, and entitles them to the title of “Profesor”. For fields of study other than education, students are given the option of taking classes for 2-3 years, and then graduating with what is called a “technico” degree in their chosen field. Alternatively, they can continue on to a “Licenciatura” degree. This is much more rigorous and prestigious, and requires at least four years of classes followed by another year for the student to research and write a thesis in the student’s major. This is the degree that GSSG student Nancy Ventura will be awarded in April of this year.