I’m continuing my series of posts written while observing Rwandan elementary teachers and their trainers in our recently completed summer program. 

I had asked to observe this half hour lesson. In bad form, I came in late. I don’t like that, that is no way to start. I’m on my heels, I’m having to type fast, I’m trying to think fast, what has happened before I arrived? It is only a few minutes but it matters. 

Breathe, I tell myself, just as Briza, the teacher, says, “We are going to start by working on classroom management, in a calm way.” Calm, yes, okay. She’s getting them into small groups, asking them to come up with four vegetables as a group, and then to report back. I’m betting she isn’t really working with vegetables, she’s just using that for sample content. She’s going to help these elementary teachers in Rwanda practice making groups. Practice managing a class in a bit more progressive style. 

She asks the groups of teachers she is working with to give examples. “Cabbage, eggplant, carrots.” Then she asks them to come up with cities or countries. Five per group. She tells them they’ll have very little time. Go go go!

Next she asks what the groups came up with. Kenya, Nairobi, Uganda, and … Nairobi again. Briza asks if they want to give another city or country instead, one of the teachers from the third group says “London!” 

I was right that she wasn’t too worried about vegetables. Nor cities and countries. That was just an activity so that she could set up a debrief. “Now,” she says. “How can you use this method to organize your own class? How can small groups be quick and efficient?”

I love this. I had a chance on the weekend to read the Year 1 textbook for teacher education here in Rwanda. The teachers in this class, here for English training during their summer vacation, have presumably been taught according to the guidelines I encountered in the book. I found it really interesting that there were pros and cons listed for each teaching strategy. For example, for group work, while there were a number of pros, the textbook mentioned that often the teacher loses a lot of time because you have to create the groups, get everyone sorted out, re-explain directions, and so on. And of course, one member of the group might do the majority of the work. Every teacher can relate! Direct instruction, the textbook tells us, can often be much more efficient, with the con, however, that direct instruction tends to be less student centered. Exactly.

Briza and her teaching partner, Brian, ask the teachers to sit for the next activity: story telling. They have hung posters with examples of the beginning, middle, and end of a good story. As the teachers start working on their own stories I check the time: half of the available class time is still available. Not bad, dedicating half the class to independent work, during which everyone is busy writing stories. They are thinking and planning, they are writing in English. Everyone but one, actually. The teacher nearest me cannot find his story. It seems these teachers had already started their stories in a previous class meeting and are now continuing. Briza helps him sort through the papers of all three sections of the class, but they have no luck. The teacher decides to work on a different story.  Because the other teachers were working independently, the search for the one story was not disuptive.

In fact, the co-teacher, Brian, has been circulating this whole time, encouraging the teachers. His positive comments, quietly delivered, make for a comfortable and supportive classroom atmosphere. The teachers are all heads down, writing. Occasionally one of them checks in with Briza, who nods encouragingly. 

It makes me want to write a story, which makes me chuckle, since here I am writing a story of sorts already. The story of teachers improving their English, giving up part of their vacation to reflect on their teaching practices, the way they manage their classes, how they can get their students writing stories, practicing by writing and illustrating their own stories, learning English. Preparing the next generation of Rwandans. 

We trainers are very lucky to be part of this, for the brief amount of time we are able to be here. All of us are getting better together, trainers and teachers, here in East Africa. It feels so good. 

I need to stop writing and just enjoy it for the last minutes of class.