Final Day of Teacher Training

Yesterday was the final day of the teacher training course - but it was the teachers' turn to do the teaching! They worked in groups to prepare micro lessons to deliver in front of the entire group. They were encouraged to put into practise the teaching strategies we had been exploring throughout the week. It was rewarding to see that many of the teachers had taken on board what they had learnt and delivered their lessons with enthusiasm. 

The team enjoying the sunshine

Teachers taking part in the final warm up session

A warm up game involving getting into groups

Excited to see the teachers' lessons

Taking part in the group work of one micro lesson

The teacher asks Miranda to put the potatoes in the correct place

Beth works out if it is how many stones or how much stones

Alex comes up to the board as a student

John-Paul took us outside for his lesson

Felicien, the Rwanda Aid Manager, gave a speech of thanks

The teachers were all presented with certificates and goodie-bags

Lots of teaching supplies for the teachers to take back to their schools!

Steph D filling the bags

Teachers discovering what they were given

Last night we had goodbye drinks with the Rwanda Aid team at Munezero House. It has been the most wonderful couple of weeks - and all the teams from LEH, Devonshire House and King's House have so enjoyed visiting all the Rwanda Aid projects and getting to know the Rwanda Aid team here in Kamembe. We will all be going home with very fond memories of our time in this beautiful country - and I know that many will be returning again in the future. Murakoze cyane, Rwanda Aid.

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.

Charlotte and Jane in front of the land the school would like to turn into a playground

Mark and the headmaster

Spotted on the journey back to Kamembe - a man peddling his banana wares

Ngwino Nawe and a walk to the farm

We were all ready for a day packed full of fun activities to do with the disabled children at Ngwino Nawe but on our arrival (slightly delayed by the minibus breaking down en route), we discovered that the end of term was yesterday and a lot of the children had been collected by their parents! A little disappointed not to see as many faces, we carried on nevertheless with the face-painting (which was more arm-painting), dancing and mask-making we had planned. We were delighted to see Christophe, one of the familiar faces, who couldn't wait to get to stuck into all the activities. There was a wonderful moment when his father arrived to pick him up and he rushed up to greet him, then ran around to everyone else to tell us. Sife, one of the children who was found in the forest by a truck driver and has generally in the past found it difficult to interact with others, spent a very happy time with Emily and Dave and enjoyed the new sensory play cloth provided by King's House. Philippe loved learning the colours when colouring in pirate masks and having pictures painted on his arms. Once Samuel got the hang of the space hopper there was no stopping him bouncing around. Raphael, who has cerebral palsy, loved the bubbles and dancing with the team. We also popped in to see the pigs' new piglets. Although it wasn't quite what we expected, we had a wonderful morning and the King's House team will be back tomorrow to do some teacher training.

Samuel and the space hopper

Ruby showing her artistic skill

Lots of dancing

Philippe and Maddie in pirate masks

Raphael enjoying the bubbles

Sife and Emily with the sensory play cloth

Christophe also loved the bubbles

Jenny and Christophe

Jane with Philippe

Stephan with one of the piglets

This afternoon we walked to the farm which used to be a farming training centre run by Rwanda Aid. It was a great opportunity to stretch our legs and see a lot of the local countryside. Unfortunately the farm is no longer used for training, but we enjoyed seeing the pigs, piglets and cows.

Walking to the farm

Hanging out at the farm

The walk back from the farm