In the trenches.

Part of my job is to rectify what has been going wrong between the Western Volunteers and the teachers who are nationals. In the past, the relationships have been so awkward and strained that the volunteers given to every teacher, have been simply sidelined to do menial work. They paint pictures of the alphabet again and again and become incredibly bored doing so, while the class teacher tears down these amazing paintings every 3 months and puts them in the trash and requests another set of paintings to go with the alphabet.

I also was discouraged by bad use of young people who clearly had a lot more talent to offer. I also was one of these volunteers for some time and dealt with the menial task because I was also observing and taking notes.

At the beginning of the term, I began by revealing to the teachers how classroom delivery would be changed and how the use of volunteers would be changed. We did descriptions and demonstrations and even set up a trial classroom. Some of the teachers were catching on. Some were 50 miles behind and had no interest in catching up. Some complained endlessly about how this or that couldn’t work. But ultimately, it had to happen. Nursery children were spending their entire day being lectured to and trying to sit quietly and write in their notebook. The situation was begging for a more child friendly environment.

On the first day of class, I peeked into the classrooms to see what was happening. I was shocked to find that a number of teachers were doing the exact same thing they had been doing before the training. Not to worry, I simply pulled them aside quickly and said, “We are not doing it like that anymore, now we will do it like this…”

Now just recently we have been reviewing how things have changed and I’ve asked the teachers to tell me their success stories. One teacher got up and shared that she had turned over a lesson to the volunteer to teach. She expressed reservations about doing so because she thought the children would not do well with the accent of the volunteer. But she gave it a try. But this teacher was absolutely delighted by the results. The volunteer was understood and delivered the lesson well and the teacher expressed so much delight in how much she learned by turning things over to someone else and simply sitting back and watching.

I too was overjoyed at receiving this news. I had never expected this kind of speed of success, because it was success on so many levels.

Below are children playing with learning materials.