In partnership with the Soacha Department of Education, we held the Teaching for Equity Workshop for the first time outside of Bogotá. Teachers from various subject areas shared their experiences and developed proposals to address inequalities through their own teaching practices.

From August 21 to September 18, 2026, we conducted the TREES Teaching for Equity Module in Soacha, in partnership with the municipality’s Department of Education. Over the course of five sessions, 23 teachers from various subject areas shared experiences and developed proposals to integrate equity into their daily classroom practices.

The module is part of the TREES Community of Practice, a forum for educators interested in reflecting on equity and transforming their teaching practices. This edition brought together teachers from subjects such as mathematics, social studies, physical education, and English. This diversity made it possible to explore different ways of addressing these topics based on the needs of each educational context.

As Andrés Bautista, coordinator of the TREES Community of Practice, explained, issues related to equity and inequalities “are not limited to a single discipline.” Participants recognize that they can address these issues in their classes, “in addition to developing the disciplinary understandings specific to each of their fields.”.

To achieve this, the module offers a process of training and reflection in which participants develop a plan for their own classrooms. With support from the TREES team and feedback from their colleagues, they define what they want their students to understand, design activities to achieve those goals, and propose strategies for assessing learning. Peer exchange allows participants to review the proposals and learn from the experiences of other teachers.

Check out the Video coverage of the module's closure.

For Gisela Rodríguez, a math teacher at the Paz y Esperanza School, this process meant connecting an idea she perceived as abstract to the situations she faces in her work. “I was able to relate it more closely to my reality as a teacher, to the reality of my students, and also to my teaching practices,” she explained.

That reflection includes everyday decisions such as asking students how they are doing, whether they had breakfast, or how they got to school from home. Recognizing those circumstances, she noted, can change the way teachers approach what happens in the classroom and support their students’ learning.

During the closing session, participants presented posters featuring their teaching designs and their own definitions of equity. According to Bautista, the purpose of the work carried out was “to think about better ways to talk, teach, and discuss equity, inequality, and social justice in the classroom.” The proposals showcased different ways to connect these reflections with their students’ experiences.

Gisela, for example, proposed using chess—a game that sparks interest at her school—to explore the differences and needs of her classmates. By drawing on the various moves and possibilities of the pieces, she aims to help her students reflect on the perspectives from which they participate and the ways they can respond to those differences. The proposal also reflects her interest in promoting the participation of a student with a cognitive disability.

For her part, Vilma del Carmen Salcedo Muñoz, a social studies teacher who works with sixth- and seventh-grade students in District 4 of Soacha, focused her proposal on promoting empathy, solidarity, and recognition of classmates who need support to participate in classroom activities.

Vilma explained that she had already put her proposal into practice with seventh-grade students. For her, the process allowed her to connect her knowledge of equity with a specific need at her school: “In theoretical terms, I understood it very clearly, but I hadn’t adapted it to a real-world situation and an educational need.”.

The work of Diana Solis, a professor of Political Science and Economics, focused on recognizing one’s own rights and those of others. Her approach aims to help students connect these reflections to what happens in the classroom, at home, and in their community. Exchanging ideas with other teachers allowed her to expand the tools she uses to address these topics: “I want to build from a practical perspective, from a teaching perspective, through play, and by putting the child at the center.”.

The shared experiences also sparked reflection on the scope of this training. Ángela Peña Díaz, Improvement Leader in the Educational Quality Division of the Soacha Department of Education, noted that teachers developed their own definitions of equity and devised ways to address these concepts with their students, taking into account the different contexts of their schools.

See more Photos of the Soacha Module.

For Peña, one of the challenges is to ensure that these reflections translate into practices that help reduce inequalities and enable students to recognize the conditions in which they live, grow up, and study, as well as their potential to transform their environment.

The exchange also broadened the TREES team’s perspective. For Bautista, it was an opportunity to rethink equity and educational equity “from the perspective of schools and teachers” pedagogical practices” and from their diverse disciplinary perspectives.

This first experience with the Module outside of Bogotá allowed us to continue developing an approach to teaching for equity together with the teachers. Their proposals show how this reflection can take shape in a math class, an inclusion activity, or a conversation about rights, based on what each teacher knows about their students and learns from their colleagues.

If you're interested in sharing experiences and continuing to explore these questions with other teachers, we invite you to join the TREES Community of Practice and stay tuned for upcoming announcements about our training opportunities.

Teaching for equity is not just about incorporating new content into the classroom. It also involves reviewing one’s own teaching practices, learning from others’ experiences, and collaborating with fellow teachers to, new ways of understanding and addressing inequalities. It was under this premise that the TREE Teaching ModuleS, a training program certified by the Office of Continuing Education at the Universidad de los Andes that brings together teachers from different educational levels to rethink how equity can become a guiding principle throughout education.

Rather than simply providing educational tools, the module offers a peer-learning experience. Through a Community of Practice, teachers from schools, universities, and other educational settings exchange experiences, reflect on their own methodologies, and design curriculum proposals aimed at strengthening a critical and ethical approach to teaching about equity.

Inspired by the approach of Teaching for Understanding From Harvard University's Project Zero, the module invites you to to view teaching as a process of transformation. This is reflected in the module’s structure: the first session addresses teaching for equity; the second focuses on comprehension goals and performance; the third is dedicated to designing instructional sequences with an equity perspective; the fourth explores strategies for assessing learning from an equity perspective; and the fifth focuses on the presentation and evaluation of curriculum designs. However, the main learning does not arise solely from the content, but rather from the conversations that develop among teachers with different backgrounds, disciplines, and contexts.

The first edition brought together 21 teachers from various educational institutions. Over the course of five sessions, dialogue and feedback helped broaden the perspectives through which each participant understood their own teaching practice. To Lorena Suárez, a professor of Government and Public Policy at Los Nogales School, said that one of the module’s greatest benefits was precisely the opportunity to learn from other educational contexts.

“This space offered me multiple perspectives on education. It was very enriching to receive feedback from colleagues in other contexts. It helped me see the challenges involved in teaching to overcome inequalities and the importance of doing so among peers, with openness and dialogue.”

Her experience reflects one of the guiding principles of the module: equity is also fostered when teachers find opportunities to listen, discuss, and collectively enrich their practices. As she put it, Johanna Gómez, a professor at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana,

“Stepping away from the university environment for a bit allowed me to see other ways of teaching and other areas of knowledge. Meeting high school teachers helped me broaden my perspective, recognize other voices, and enrich my own practice through diversity.”

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This diversity of perspectives was further strengthened during the second edition, held in 2026, in which the following participated: 43 teachers from different educational levels and contexts. The presence of teachers from elementary, middle, and higher education turned the workshop into a space where diverse experiences were discussed and complemented one another, allowing the questions and challenges of some to enrich the reflections of others.

The module’s conclusion highlighted this collective effort. Each participant presented, in poster format, a pedagogical proposal developed throughout the process and received feedback from the other teachers to strengthen it. More than just a presentation of results, this exercise became a space for dialogue where each proposal received feedback thanks to this community.

Check out the highlight reel from the last session of the module:

The activities carried out demonstrated how equity can be addressed from multiple disciplines and contexts. Hyca – Diana Apolá López Bojacá, an arts educator at Menstrure, designed Biodiversity and Cycles, a project that uses medicinal plants to reflect on care” ”It's precisely about how we can use plants and how this can also enable us to propagate them so that we can gain greater autonomy when it comes to our health and the use of medicinal plants."

From another perspective, Sebastián García, a historian and social sciences professor, presented Pork Rinds in Colombia, an activity designed to encourage reflection on agricultural inequalities and the historical challenges of land distribution in the country.

Although the topics were different, both proposals shared the same goal: to translate equity into concrete learning experiences in the classroom. As Sebastián García pointed out, the module demonstrated that “Through collective efforts, we can develop solutions to transform common problems.”.

Beyond the educational resources it produced, the TREES Teaching Module fostered a community of teachers committed to transforming education through reflection, active listening, and collaborative work. By bringing together voices from different regions, disciplines, and educational levels, the module demonstrated that Teaching for equity is not an individual task, but a practice that is strengthened when it is built collectively.