William Porter returned to Ecuador with an unconventional plan: to turn an abandoned school in the Napo jungle into a home for his entire family.
There, together with his wife and six children, he established a routine that mixes school desks with machetes.
Four days a week, there are formal classes in one of the old school’s classrooms: reading, science, projects.
The rest of the time, the entire farm becomes the classroom: the older children already have set tasks involving the crops and animals, while the younger ones gradually join in, as Ecuadorian creators Josué and Elie have been showing on their YouTube channel.
What gives the story a particular twist is who is behind the blackboard. The paternal grandmother spent 26 years teaching mathematics and science in schools in the United States, and now applies that expertise in a different way: helping her daughter-in-law educate her grandchildren, but with the Amazon rainforest as the only landscape outside the window.