Rwanda is a remarkably ambitious nation. All parts of government and civil life are rowing in one direction to align with Rwanda Vision 2020, a government development program with the goal of transforming Rwanda into a knowledge-based middle-income country. In education, that means improving the quality of English.
In 2008, Rwanda announced that it was switching the language of business, diplomacy, and education from French to English. As most of the population, including teachers, were educated in French, switching to English was no small task. This is a particular problem in primary schools around the country, as many of the teachers in the country only completed secondary school in French. Most teachers don’t have a strong proficiency in English reading and writing because they were simply not educated in the language. Additionally, primary school teachers are not required to complete university so they have had less time to hone their language skills. As a primary education teacher trainer, my job is to help teachers and the school administrators close the English proficiency gap.
Just as Rwanda has goals, all Peace Corps Rwanda Volunteers have goals for their sites. These goals are developed with the volunteer and school leaders. Ultimately site goals align with the Peace Corps mission and the Rwandan government’s goal of improving English proficiency. My Dean of Studies and I set the goal of training three teachers to receive a Certificate in Classroom Practice (CICP). The purpose of the CICP program is to give Rwandan teachers a foundation in child-centered, data-driven teaching skills necessary to make learning meaningful, effective and fun. In addition to the CICP, I run supplemental training sessions during our community of practice (a time of the week where schools work on teaching techniques).
The center of any Peace Corps volunteer’s job is capacity building. Historically, volunteers completed projects for the community. When the volunteer left the community work was finished. Today, volunteers are helping people develop the capacity to improve their communities. When volunteers return to America their counterparts continue to work on projects. This means that your coworkers and community must select and have a passion for anything that you do. As a teacher and teacher trainer, this can take several forms. Sometimes my Dean of Studies or a department leader selects a topic that they would like me to present, while other times, teachers approach me and ask for assistance on a topic.
For my last training series of the school year, we decided to work on handwriting and writing conventions. During a visit, a Rwanda Education Board official visited and noticed that in many classrooms teachers could not adequately assess students because they could not read their writing. We selected this topic not only because it came from a district official, but because after a communal dialogue we decided that it could improve our overall learning community. Discussion is an extremely important part of local culture that also fit into the Peace Corps’ approach to community development. When all parties can freely analyze and develop a training topic they are controlling their own development.
After a topic is selected, the next task is research. As a person with a teaching background, I leverage my experience in preparing training sessions. The first place I often start is using past training sessions I have attended. As a kindergarten teacher, I was trained in Handwriting Without Tears. This previous training gave me multisensory strategies to teach pencil grip, letter formation, and the literacy skills.
While my experience is where I get some of my ideas from, it is just the start. The Peace Corps community is often one of the best places to look when planning training. The education cohorts WhatsApp groups are vibrant spaces where collective knowledge is stored and shared. As a person who is not musically inclined, another member of my cohort reminded me to use song and dance as a way to reinforce concepts for younger students. My fellow volunteer’s suggestion made my training stronger as I would have never included songs about letter formation.
While most strong teaching practices are universal, implementation is not. This means that once I know what I am training teachers on I must find out how to best implement it within the context of Rwanda and my school. Some problems I can solve myself. For example, Rwanda schools use different writing paper. Americans use lines, while Rwandans use grids. Teaching about how to write using gridded paper can be researched using the internet. Other problems need more local expertise. In the United States, it is reasonable to expect parents to help with homework, in Rwanda most parents do not help with homework. This can be due to factors such as illiteracy, or parents simply not having the time due to the long farming days and no electricity after sunset. I felt that students needed to get extra practice in writing but could not figure out how. After talking to the school-based mentor we decided that hosting after school practice would be more culturally appropriate and effective than homework for students that were struggling with writing.
After researching, I prepare and present on the selected topic. While many aspects of life in the Peace Corps are different from life in the United States, teacher training looks just like a teacher training the states. We have a snack, and we read, watch and practice techniques as a team. The one key difference is language. Due to the low level of English, the trainings are held in English and Kinyarwanda. This ensures that everyone can fully understand the content, which can contain technical and difficult vocabulary words. It also allows me to continually improve my Kinyarwanda language skills. I have learned interesting tidbits like the word for spacing between words, "akanya," is not the same word as the word for space, "umwanya." In Kinyarwanda, space is represented as time because of the oral tradition of the language. Bilingual training has helped me become a better speaker, who is better able to support teachers and students because I understand their thought processes.
The last part of teacher training is the follow-up and feedback. Sometimes I do lesson observation, other times we have discussions about what is working or not working. This is my favorite part of training teachers not only because you get to see your hard work pay off, but also because teachers put their own spin on what they were trained on. I have learned so many things from my Rwandan colleagues that I will take back to the United States. I love this because it represents so much of the spirit of global friendship that the Peace Corps embodies.
Training teachers is truly a collaborative process, and by extension mutually beneficial. Every day I get the privilege to relentlessly navigate challenges. When I am helping teachers, I engage in deep, cross-cultural critical thinking that is making me a better teacher, professional and citizen.
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