Since 1987, Friends United has provided a variety of teacher seminars with themes varying from teaching literacy skills to strategies for teaching students with disabilities. Our primary focus has been on helping teachers in Honduras with strategies for teaching literacy and math skills. We send a small group of teachers from the United States to give 4 hour seminars on those teaching strategies. Our first seminar was in June,1987, when we spent a week in Zambrano, Honduras, and taught students a little English and gave a dental lesson. Following that first visit, we realized teachers needed help with creative teaching strategies to help their students succeed. In recent years, we have given seminars on strategies for teaching various reading and comprehension skills, math standards such as understanding and using fractions, and strategies for teaching the writing process to students.

Seminars have been given in larger cities such as the capital city of Tegucigalpa and nearby rural areas, cities along the northern coast, villages in the central part of the country, and even on the Bay Island of Roatan off the coast of Honduras. We usually give seminars to 20-50 teachers in a location. Teachers who we call “exbecarias” have received training from our Honduras President/Director, Bessy Morales, and from special training in the U.S. They are expected to attend our seminars and present the strategies learned to other teachers in their area who could not attend our seminars. Some of the exbecarias are also our resource office managers in Tegucigalpa, Orica, San Marcos, Juticalpa, La Ceiba, and Tela. From their resource offices and at area elementary schools, these exbecarias give various teacher training opportunities to teachers throughout the year.