Photo: Moises Castillo | AP Photo
Since mid-March, when schools closed in Guatemala due to the pandemic, Gerardo Ixcoy has been pedaling his mobile classroom to students. He bought a secondhand adult tricycle, which he has equipped with a whiteboard and a solar panel to power an audio player for select lessons. The 27-year-old -- known fondly as "Lalito 10" -- pedals through the cornfields of rural, impoverished Santa Cruz Del Quiche to teach his sixth graders, most of whom don't have access to cell phones or the internet. Eleven year-old Oscar Rojas, one of Ixcoy's students told the Associated Press, "Teacher Lalito only comes for a little while to teach me, but I learn a lot." Many of the families of his students are staving off hunger. “One day the mother of a student told me they didn’t have food,” Ixcoy said. “When class ended and I began to ride away on my tricycle, she calls me and with a look of gratefulness says, ‘Teacher, they gave me some food, I want to share half with you.' I arrived home crying," he told the AP.
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