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

A brilliant morning of fun and games at Baho Neza Mwana

The weekend has arrived but there is no rest for the team. After a little lie in we all set off en masse to Baho Neza Mwana (the street children project).

As usual, we had a very enthusiastic welcome and some of our team, who have been out to Rwanda before, were delighted to see some familiar faces, including brother and sisters Zidane, Samaia and Medina. 

We quickly split into three groups to run a variety of activities, including making animal spoons and face painting take two and a Justin Timberlake inspired dance class run by Ruby.

Claudette, who runs Baho Neza Mwana, with Steph P

Face painting took on a more  professional twist today with the standard considerably raised from our earlier session with the nursery children at Nkombo. The fact that there were fewer children may have had something to do with it.  Maddie, Jenny, Noelia, Andrea, Charlotte and Stephan held fort with this activity. The demand for blue bats, safari animals, Spiderman, crocodiles and robots came swift and fast and pushed us to our artistic limits. The sea of colourful faces and arms brought forth many smiles.

Ruby, Mara, Steph D, Beth and Alex danced the morning away. We were blown away by the boys' natural rhythm and impressive catalogue of moves, then everyone got involved in learning Devonshire House Junior School flash mob to 'Can't Stop the Feeling'. The enthusiasm and energy was infectious!

The craft session creating animal faces on wooden spoons was very successful for all ages, even the 17 and 18 year old boys in particular took it very seriously. Mark from King's House did a fabulous job as Chief Scotch tape dispenser (a much more important role than his headteacher job back home)! We ended up with some beautiful pigs, chickens, frogs, lions, goats and cows and even a fantastic frog/lion hybrid which Miranda and Emily named frion. 

The Muzungu band were in full force, playing the Cups Song and making castanets from folded cardboard and bottle tops.

Dave, Mark, Maddie and Emily played music teachers to a group of the children, trying to teach them the Beatles 'All you need is love', which it turns out has some rather tricky lines with a few too many words in them to sing easily in English! Although the boys didn't manage quite so well with the verses, they definitely got the hang of the chorus. Alysé, who was in charge of the kids today, did a grand job of translating the song into Kinyarawanda.

After the great variety of activities in the morning, everybody headed down to the big field for lots of races - the space hoppers were a huge hit, though some people were more successful with them than others!

Once everybody was exhausted from games and football, the boys headed up for lunch, though made sure to remove all their face paint first - the older ones all helped the younger ones. We were also treated to lunch, before a team photo and big goodbyes. It was a brilliant day which we will all remember very fondly.

Different directions for the three teams

The King's House team headed to Ngwino Nawe, the disabled children's village, to deliver some teacher training to the founder, Thérèse, and seven members of staff. Building on last year's training, the Ngwino Nawe staff had requested guidance on understanding specific disabilities, developing prewriting skills and handwriting and other creative teaching methods. 

Jane, Mara and Mark with the Rwanda Aid Toyota

Mark, Mara and Thérèse pointing at the dorm named King's House

Jane opened by explaining the importance of considering individual children's needs and how different approaches enable them to access their learning. She discussed the benefits of using multi-sensory resources for children with disabilities, for example a sensory blanket made from household materials -an easily-produced teaching tool. 

Charlotte demonstrated practical and interactive ways to improve gross and fine motor skills, which need to be in place to enable writing. 

Mara led a workshop to show teachers ways in which they can help the children to develop their social communication skills and emotional understanding. 

To round it off, Mark provided strategies for language teaching which he delivered in French. However, the rest of us must say a huge thank you to Patrick, our Rwanda Aid driver, for his fantastic translating into Kinyarwanda. It was lovely to have such a warm reception from our friends at Ngwino Nawe.

Mara and Sife with the sensory blanket

The teachers from Devonshire House spent the morning at St Matthew's School, where our teacher training course will be held next week. We prepared the classrooms; creating displays from the resources we brought and arranging the classrooms into grouped tables. All the Rwandan classrooms we have seen favour long lines of desks, and so next week we hope to show how different table formations can create a positive classroom environment and support group work. 

The Devonshire House team (plus Jenny) planning for the teacher training course next week

As a group, we then planned our lessons for next week and thought of strategies we can all use to support the 48 Rwandan teachers we will be training. 

Our day was slightly interrupted by a traumatic moment for Stephanie P, whose phone made a dramatic bid for freedom...falling down the (very rudimentary) long drop toilet! This was much to the amusement of the Rwandan teachers and cleaners on site, and after a few minutes of hysteria the decision was made that attempting to fish it out was not an option. 

The arrival of Andrea, fresh off the plane from Kigali, took away all thoughts of the perished phone and we happily walked down the valley to Lake Kivu. It was amazing to have lunch just metres away from The Congo, and see the border crossing. After catching up with the King's House teachers, we all took motos up to the indoor market in Kamembe where we enjoyed perusing the vibrant fabric stalls. The bustling market echoed with the ever familiar whispers of 'abazungu' as we approached, and ladies rushed out to present us with their wares.

Stephan with a rice sack poster

One of the classrooms all ready for Monday

Organising resources to set up the classrooms for next week

Walking selfie

Andrea from Devonshire House arrived today!

LEH staff went on an INSET trip with the Munyove staff today.  We met at the Kamembe bus station. Olive and the Munyove staff were really pleased to have the LEH staff join them. The beginning of the journey was manic with renditions of the Munyove chant ('Change we need? Yes we can!'), the Beatles 'all you need is love', and a Rwandan gospel song.  

The first stop was at a rice factory, where we learnt about the different types of rice from irri to Basmati, and the process of taking it from the paddy field to the shop, as well as learning to recognise the different aromas of the rice types. 

From there the trip took us on to the hot springs where some of the Munyove staff decided to embrace the springs fully by going for a swim. The whole day was a chance for the LEH teachers to get to know the Munyove staff much better.  By the time of the journey back to Kamembe, there were some tired but happy people, feeling like a united team. 

The selfie stick came out at the back of the bus, much to the teachers' delight

Sylvie, Dave and Pascal at the rice factory

The manager showing us two different types of rice

The rice in its highest grade

Filling a 25kg bag of rice with the finished product

Maddie, Emily, Xavier and Dave outside the factory

Dave tests the hot spring to see how hot it actually is

Dave and Maddie as far in the hot spring as they were going to get

Alyse, Olive, Xavier and Janvier in the hot spring

View of the hot spring