Monday, July 29, 2013

Day 1 of Training...



Day one of our first round of teacher training: Complete!

After weeks of prep and planning, we launched our training today with the first group of 36 teachers. We started out walking to the wrong building in our village – turns out they had found a better location “up above the parish” (where we thought we were!) but eventually we found our way and got started.

It was a slow beginning with most teachers unused to being taught by native English speakers (and in our participatory style) but the day ended up being really great. There were the usual first day issues but also a lot of laughter and fun and they really enjoyed the activities we designed. We have some real characters in our class who made us laugh a lot today. In particular, we did a group project where they presented posters they had drawn that represented Rwanda. One teacher was explaining the items on her group’s poster and pointed to some banana trees they had drawn, saying: “In Rwanda, we grow bananas. If you eat a lot of bananas, you will get fat!” which was punctuated by giving her hips a little shake and pointing her finger at the class. We all cracked up laughing and clapping for her.

They also really enjoyed another activity we did which was basically a form of musical chairs; there was a lot of competition and good times were had by all. We had a delicious lunch and ended up teaching a few more words over lunch (toothpick, earrings). We finished up the day and walked home to throw ourselves down for a few minutes before we started taking care of our business for the following day. Speaking of which, I really need to sign off and go over my sections for teaching tomorrow!

Love, as always, from Rwanda.
PS – I will try to post some pics later on!

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