Abstract
In Guatemala City, most of the High school institutions whose purpose is to prepare students for College or to perform a job, face serious difficulties when the young teenagers try to get admitted to study for their High school diploma. Most of the teenagers show poor work habits, deficient communication skills and a low academic math achievement, amongst other problems. These deficiencies are more evident in students from lower income families. Instituto Guillermo Putzeys Álvarez (IGPA), a private school, located at Guatemala’s city ‘‘Centro Histórico’’, offers those students an opportunity to develop the expected abilities and to learn the contents that the public university requires for admission. Applying humanistic principles and active classroom learning activities, the High school helps the students, even before admission, a welcoming environment, specialized teachers and a special Project known as ‘‘Proyecto Integración’’. The project is offered to students soon to be graduated from Middle school who wish to attend medical school. The project integrates disciplines and presents a formative approach to help students improve as persons and to propose a life plan. It has improved since 2015 and has reached its many valuable goals. In 2020, due to the quarantine because of the pandemic, the project becomes virtual keeping its purposes and adapting its learning activities and educational humanistic principles. This essay shares the experience that IGPA had before the pandemic, the challenge during the quarantine and the learned lessons to pursue the project to help the students in need.