Teaching Together at the ERRC

For the past week, as six of the team members head to Sanyu for their day, three of us, Corey, Kath and I, have remained at the center for the Teaching Together component of the project. Our intention was to have up to 20 teachers plus administrators come for workshops on Reading Power, a reading program developed by Adrienne Gear in Vancouver, on Monday and Tuesday, and then Math and Science hands-on activities on Wednesday and Thursday. While Kath and I were involved in this part of the project, Corey was going to teach Joomla, a web design program to a group of teachers from various schools.

Sam and Betty sent out letters of invitation to the schools for them to come to the center but they told us that we may have problems getting teachers to come for two reasons: it was the last week of school and teachers were involved in exams and getting reports ready, and many teachers would not be able to pay for transport.

Corey had one student on Monday but Tuesday he had 5 and these men stayed with him for the rest of the week. They really enjoyed learning about the program and were well on their way to designing their own website. On the last day, Corey gave the teacher who had been there everyday the Joomla book so that he could continue to learn and teach the others. Each of the participants were able to keep the laptop that they had been working on. When we had our open house on Friday, another teacher from one of the same schools told us that he was going to learn the computer program from his colleague. This was the goal!

Kath and I had anywhere from 4 to 10 people come to our workshops and while the numbers were not what we had hoped for, the discussions and learning that we did together was perfect. We had two teachers who came from Living Hope in Nateete which amazed us because it is so far and not a school that we expected to be able to afford to come. After the Reading Power workshop, these teachers asked if they could take enough resources to teach the rest of the staff how to implement the program. To me that is a great success because they are sharing the knowledge that they have gained. Professional Development is not something that is done here and teachers don't get time to meet together to talk. It's wonderful that now these teachers will find the time to meet to talk about the program. Maybe this will be the start of professional dialogue between these colleagues.

After we had taught our programs, teachers usually stayed and asked questions about anything to do with education. We spoke about other subjects, especially writing, but we also spoke about the whole education system and philosophy in Canada and Uganda. I particularly enjoyed the discussions about segregated classes depending on ability and how boys and girls learn differently.

The teachers here were very keen to learn new and simple ways to add a bit of variety into their teaching. They all said that learning how to make the student more involved in the classroom was not something that they were ever exposed to in University. All expressed a desire to learn more.

It was a huge success all around. Obviously the transport is a much bigger issue than we had originally thought. Next year, when we do this again, we will try a different approach where we, the Niteo team, travel to the schools and stay there to do pro-d. We would have three or four specific programs that we would offer and they could select what would be most interesting to the staff. That way we are investing more in the school and more teachers are able to participate if they want to. The idea wouldn't be to swoop in and give the workshop and then swoop out but to also spend some time in the school to model the program we have brought. I think this system would be much more effective.

It was great to share with the teachers here again. I really enjoyed having the opportunity and I look forward to doing it again next year!