Teaching in Rwanda: First Day of Teacher Training

Today saw the beginning of the teacher training course the Devonshire House and LEH teachers are running at St Matthew's School. The teachers have come from lots of different schools, some as far as 3 hours away. After a round of introductions, the teachers were split into groups of seven straight away to solve 3 problems - with the aim of showing the teachers that over the next three days there will be lots of problems to work through and with teamwork they can solve them.

Dave works with a group on the frogs on lily pads problem

Sarah and Maddie bind their group's hands to prevent them bending their elbows to eat the sweets in their hands - they had to work out that feeding each other was the solution!

Ruby and Miranda had the teachers thinking outside the box and outside the classroom for a session on problem solving and using the outdoor environment. There were a lot of laughs as the teachers worked together to complete a “magic carpet” challenge and they enjoyed using bottle tops and card to solve open-ended Maths problems. They linked this approach to the Rwandan skills based curriculum, focusing on the process of solving a difficult problem collaboratively and understanding that there is often more than one correct answer. The enjoyment factor of the tasks even led to a few “Aha!” moments on the concept of lifelong learning.

Classroom management was the subject for Andrea and Noelia’s teacher training session. They focused on how to work collaboratively with the children to create a positive learning environment with shared classroom rules and creating ‘helpful hands’ to show the teachers how to encourage children to take responsibility for their classroom, their learning and their behaviour. The teachers particularly enjoyed sharing their ideas of positive praise, and learning some of ours, such as ‘a pat on the back’ and ‘kiss your brain’ and found the ways in which we praise children who don’t always get everything right useful to take back to their classrooms. There were lots of smiles all round when they showed the teachers how to promote positive behaviour with smiley face rewards made of bottle tops and ‘sunshine of the week’ pom-poms!

Dave and Steph P did a session on the idea of full sensory learning. The Rwandan teachers explored the idea of how learning does not just happen through hearing and listening, and how different situations might require different types of learning. All the senses were explored with games of "Marco Polo", tasting of chilli oil, and optical illusions.

Meanwhile Stephan, Alex and Beth had a great morning teaching the art of debating to the Rwandan teachers. They discussed the argument 'football is better than volley ball', and delved into the details of the structure of debating.

A very productive day culminated in the whole group coming together for the first debate of the week. Today it was our turn to model how to run a debate for the Rwandan teachers.

The proposal was a rather controversial statement: 'Women are more important to society than men'. To spice things up a bit we decided to have the boys proposing the statement and the girls opposing it (a concept which the Rwandan teachers found very confusing!) Dave and Stephan supported the proposition and Emily and Miranda bravely opposed it.

The debate was masterfully chaired by Alex from Rwanda Aid and began with some very convincing arguments from both sides, including Dave and Stephan putting themselves forward as evidence of men's incapability and Miranda and Emily very emphatically insisting that women were too emotional to be successful leaders!

However, despite the Chair's direction, once questions were taken from the floor the debate very quickly became rather chaotic due to the highly competitive nature of the participants! After a vote from the floor the opposition very narrowly lost out with 22 votes to the proposition's 23.

However, all was not lost as the Rwandan teachers very much got into the spirit of the debate with some highly interesting and thoughtful points. They were certainly entertained and hopefully learnt a number of useful tips for tomorrow's debate between Groups 1 and 2: 'Education is more important than politics'.

Whilst the teacher training was in full swing, the King's House team visited King's House Cyato and were given a personal tour from the headmaster, the local Pastor and other staff members. We were thrilled to see students utilising the new classrooms to revise for their exams during the school holidays. We then sat down with the staff to discuss future developments for the school. We are now looking forward to returning home to help fundraise for new projects - a new playground being a priority.