More time with the teachers

Feb 24

Up early and off to the Centre St Charles for the final part of Cathie’s training course. Feels quite nice to be up and working properly, and even better that I’m just a helper with no responsibility.

We get off to a slow start; more nursery rhymes, then we talk about tactics for class control when doing active learning. (You’ll appreciate that you can’t treat a Rwandan class of 54+ in the same way as an English class of 30 or less)! We then split them in groups and plan a lesson, concentrating on how they’re going to introduce a new topic and how they’ll evaluate whether each child has absorbed the material. After an hour or so we role play the lessons. Great hilarity when I start behaving like a Rwandan child, flicking my fingers to get attention and calling out “teacher, teacher” or “corrige, corrige” when someone else has got the answer wrong. After a couple of minutes they all take the hint and join in. Suddenly everything really comes to life and we really are in the middle of a primary school lesson introducing objects in the classroom – furniture, materials, parts of the building itself etc. I’ve primed my group to get beyond the lists of “what ees zees? – eet ees a chair”, and Phillipe who’s their spokesman does me proud. He does the unthinkable and uses materials from previous lessons – colour, size, possessive pronouns – and it’s streets better than some of what we’ve seen going on in classrooms.

The girl teacher who I’ve though must be about 25 or so disappears for a while and returns with not only her baby on her back but also a young child at her side. Might be a younger sister but could well be a first-born if she started at 18 or so! We end up with about three staff babies distracting us. And Theodora (Teddy) is a good seven months pregnant with her eighth child. Her husband’s a moto driver. “He’s very strong” she says, by way of explanation. We tell her to tie a knot in him after this one!

All too soon its time for a nice lunch and goodbyes; one contingent has come up from the far south and will need all afternoon to get home. They’re very taken with our nursery rhymes and children’s songs and we all end up with “We’re going on a Lion hunt” before we finally disperse.

Back to the flat and flake out to catch up on myself.

Best thing about today – clowning around with the primary teachers where I’m NOT, for once, the scary inspector man!
Worst thing – nothing at all. It’s been a good day.