Model School

            This week marks the third and final week of model school for the Crane Group (we have animal names for our teaching groups). I have been working with a group of four other trainees since we arrived in Rwanda. We have been lesson, trimester, and classroom management planning for the last 8 weeks and have finally struck a rhythm in our teaching methodology. Though I did teach a little bit at my site, it has been completely different writing lesson plans every night and successfully implementing creative teaching methodologies that are focused around the students and not me. It is easy to stand in front of a group of forty students for fifty minutes and talk, but it is a whole different ball game to get all the students, despite their English proficiency, engaged and involved in contextualized activities.

            Model school has been extremely exciting and a lot of fun, but I will be excited to not have to write lesson plans this weekend or hear “Teacha, Teacha” yelled at me in class for a few weeks. Yes, I know I will be teaching for the next two years, but it will be so different. I will have the same students everyday (at model school different students seem to show up every day) and will be able to establish solid routines, transitions, and expectations. Rwandan students do this snapping hand raise that is more annoying than anything I’ve ever experienced in a classroom, except for when they start yelling “Teacha, please Teacha” on top of the snapping when trying to get me to call on them. I have put an end to it in most of my model school classes and will definitely let my students in Rango know that snapping and yelling “Teacha” will not go over well with me. Not only is it annoying, but it also disrupts the other students who are still thinking through their answers. As most of the volunteers have said, waiting a solid 5-10 seconds before calling on a student is great because it gives as many students as possible time to reach a conclusion and participate without the background noise of snapping and yelling from the stronger students..

            During model school, I have been teaching S1 and S2, which is the equivalent of 7^th and 8^th grade in the U.S. I am shocked every day by their intelligent thoughts that with a little more English could be perfected into some very strong and moving thoughts about social issues and life in Rwanda. I am also amazed by their ability to recite grammatical rules like it’s nobody’s business; half the time I have no idea what they are talking about (I know I need to brush up on my English grammar). The age range is pretty big in my classes (students are anywhere between 13 and 17), which is typical for Rwanda. The government has expanded from 6 years of free basic education, to nine, and starting next year to twelve years of free basic education, so people who were not able to pay school fees in the past are registering to go back to school and receive the free education that they now have a right to.

            Model school has been great for practicing some teaching techniques and activities that I wasn’t sure were possible in a Rwandan classroom with so many students. I have successfully done community mapping by having students draw in chalk on the classroom floor (they thought it was pretty cool), information gardens outside, small group work, a lot of pair work, and some successful individual writing assignments. Some of the classes are stronger than others, but it has been exciting to see the changes that have taken place over the last three weeks. The more interesting the topic, the more engaged the students and the more exciting and fun it is for me to teach. The challenge will be to maintain a high level of engagement everyday, but that’s all part of the fun. I’m looking forward to getting a head start on lesson planning for the year after seeing so many great lessons during model school. I can’t wait to have my own students to work with and be able to see the progress they make throughout each trimester and each year as a whole.

Trimming Grass with Hoes - The Umuganda Experience

Umuganda is a monthly mandatory day of service for every resident of Rwanda over the age of 18. Seeing as we all fit the requirements, one Saturday every month we all go out into the community and work with them on a designated project. We have experienced two umugandas so far and our third will be this Saturday. Both times, we have worked on digging drainage ditches on the side of the main road by our training center and using the dirt to fill in the holes that washout during the rain storms. The community provides us with the necessary tools: hoes, shovels, and machete-like weed-whacker things. My tool of choice is the hoe; I have tried them all, but have settled on the hoe as a good stress-reliever and a much better upper body workout. The downside – BLISTERS. The machete weed-whacker thing is a lot of fun cause you just swing it back and forth across your body (like a golf club) and it cuts the grass, but I’m really worried that one day I will accidentally let go and cause some serious damage to someone or something, so until I perfect the technique, I’m sticking with the hoe. The shovel is just boring, so I’m not even going to explain why I don’t like it.

            So umuganda round two was the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Thinking that we were going to do a new and exciting project, we were a little disappointed when we were sent back to the same ditches we had dug the previous month to maintain them and continue further down the road to the dairy factory. After successfully hoeing our way down the road and making some high quality ditches, we were sent up to our old ditches to trim the grass with hoes. How do you do that you might ask? Well, it is a technique that requires a light touch and precision or else you will dig up the dirt and make the ditch deeper than it needs to be. So yes, I spent about an hour lightly scraping the ditch with my hoe in order to trim the grass. It was certainly a let down after throwing the hoe up over my head and doing some serious damage when it came down, such a short while before.

            But in all seriousness, umuganda is an inspiring day. Everyone in the community, rich and poor, comes out to work for about four hours one Saturday morning a month. The government offices decide what project each umudugudu will work on so that all of the community needs are met. Again, all people over the age of 18 are required to serve and I have heard that community members will come looking for you if you do not show up. But really, who would want to miss it? You get to spend time socializing with community members and working hard on something that will benefit the whole community. Granted, we haven’t been building schools or houses for the poor like a lot of Rwandans do as projects, but if we didn’t maintain those ditches, our main dirt road would flood and washout, affecting many of the houses in the area. I will definitely continue with umuganda once I get to my site; I believe that it is hugely important for integration and getting to know my fellow community members, but come this Saturday, I sincerely hope I am not digging anymore ditches – my hands need a break.

Thanksgiving Rwandan Style

After much harassment from my mother, I have written one very long blog post, which I will post under separate titles that address all the different things I’ve been up to. Thanksgiving was a great success. The turkeys went in the pit around 8 am and were covered in charcoal and banana leaves. Team stuffing pulled through with me as the “chemist”, mixing all of the ingredients until it was just right. We started peeling and cutting around 12:30 with a team of five, which gradually increased until we were a well oiled machine of about 10. We had peelers, bread dryers, fire starters, broth makers and mixers. We cooked on three small charcoal stoves, which made the process a bit more tedious than if we had a nice gas stove and oven, but we managed. A great highlight from team stuffing: A Peace Corps car was supposed to come pickup the huge vat of stuffing at 6 and we were going to get a glass of wine before dinner, but it was never sent, so Joel got fed up and with a sudden burst of testosterone and adrenaline through the pot of stuffing for 100 people on his shoulder and went flying up the road to center. Meanwhile, Nelson, the only other man there was already to help, so he went running off after Joel. Us girls just stood on the side of the road watching Joel disappear up the hill with Nelson hovering around him in case he dropped the pot. It was pretty priceless.

Around 6 pm all the food was ready and we sat down to an amazing meal of turkey, mashed potato, mashed sweet potato, stuffing, green been casserole (with fried onions of course), substitute cranberry sauce (artificial plum jam), apple cider, apple crisp, and cookies. It was amazing to sit down to a meal with sixty-eight other Americans who had spent the entire day working tirelessly together in order to guarantee that our first Thanksgiving was a success. Before dessert, two trainees presented the history of Thanksgiving in English and Kinyarwanda to our Rwandan teachers, since it was the first Thanksgiving for many of them. To show them how thankful we are, we presented them with a huge banner that we all wrote personal notes on. Peace Corps was kind enough to extend our curfew until 11 (crazy, huh?) so we could go out and relax. We had a brief dancer party, complete with Miley Cyrus’ Party in the USA, and then headed into town. Friday morning was not pleasant for anyone – too much turkey and that extra hour of socializing did us all in.