if you don't teach, what Do you do?

After almost 6 months at site, we were all gathered together again for IST (In-Service Training). Peace Corps booked us our own hotel at the north border of Lake Kivu in Giterama. Those of you on Facebook have seen the beautiful pics of us chilling and swimming. Those of you who aren’t, check out my photobucket album ***HERE***
http://s844.photobucket.com/albums/ab8/ctknighton/Rwanda/
In fact, everyone should check it out because it is pics of All my life here. Anyway, in honor of being with Americans again, I shaved my legs. There seem to be 2 paths of personal care for girls here – some are Way more girly here than they ever were in the states to compensate for the lack of other life delicacies. Some of us don’t really see a point in trying too hard. Because we’re in AFRICA.
This hotel was an architect’s manifestation of that MC Escher painting of discombobulated stairways. It was beautiful, but very tricky to get around. We were fed 3 meals and 2 tea times a day. Best part – there was so much cheese…

The training had good parts and useless parts. I am truly grateful for the transfers we have because they bring so much perspective to everything. Being a new program, everyone is eager to get things up and running – jump-start programs and get ‘Peace Corps Rwanda’ off the ground. This ends up putting a lot of pressure on us as we are all still fairly new volunteers. There’s no database of funding. There’s no contact list. Many of us are truly reinventing the wheel here. Heck, we’re Inventing the wheel. It was nice to hear that in most PC programs, volunteers aren’t expected to do anything for the first 6 months. We’re acclimating. We’re integrating and adapting to new environments and trying to stabilize emotions with wildly fluctuating digestive issues and stark living conditions. It’s ok if you haven’t changed the world yet. First 6 months is learning to live here, second 6 months is focusing on your primary goal (for us, that’s our teaching jobs and working at school). Second year is when you begin to push into extra projects and getting the ball rolling for the volunteer who will replace you.
It was nice to hear that I’m doing ok, instead of worrying that I’m not getting anything accomplished.

Returning to “the dark ages” (as Jenn calls it) was a bit trying. After so much food, amenities, and contact with culture we could understand, it was a little rough to get back into the groove. Especially because up North we had district exams and therefore we only had 2 days of school. Slowest week ever. Ever. I used the free time to adapt textbooks from our BFA shipment for ESL lessons and Rwanda appropriate content. (I’ll get to this more later) Ok, I used most of the time to hang out with Jenn. But I did get a surprising amount of work done. The more I think about it, it really was 2 weeks of nothing. I only had one day of class the following week, and then went to the middle of the lake for Mark’s birthday.

This celebration coincided with the beginning of the World Cup. My Rwandan counterparts are having a little trouble grasping the idea that I don’t actually care about soccer. I did manage to sit down and watch one game – US v UK. Somehow, there were 2 British girls at the hotel where we watched. When they didn’t seem to take any interest in their national anthem, many of us started singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” over it. When USA was presented, all 14 of us stood with our hands over our hearts (I did have to explain to a few that they couldn’t really salute if they weren’t in uniform) and belted the Star Spangled Banner at the top of our lungs complete with a cheering finale. I fell asleep during the second half of the game, but it was kinda fun to cheer for something for a while.
I also got 5 sips of ice cold Dr Pepper that weekend to wash down the pizza we made.
Please take a moment to consider all of the wonderful things in that sentence. Truly.
I was a happy camper.

On the way home, I met one of the most amazing people I think I will ever know. Rita is a Canadian ex-nun in her 70s who started working for the church because she wanted to be in service around the world, and left so she could have more freedom to do so. During her years working for the Church, she spent ~12 years as a tour guide in Israel – during the 60’s and 70’s (including both wars). She can tell you more about the Holy Land and make you care about it than any book on the area. She also worked for the government building relations in the Arab section. She has taught ESL in countries around the world and works with the indigenous tribes near her home in Saskatchewan. She is in Rwanda for 3 months helping with a small ESL class here, but travels around on the weekends looking for other NGOs she can support (even if just verbally, emotionally, and by making contacts with people around the world). We rode the bus back to Kigali together and she let me stay in her room at the guest house for the night. I felt so rejuvenated after talking to her – I wish I had written down some of her stories, but I think maybe she’s the kind of person that God gives as a small gift when you need her the most and is difficult to share without meeting her. About a week later, she came to visit me at my site so she could see a village and we walked all over (no, seriously – probably walked for about 8 hours with her).
We went into Byumba where she introduced me to a VSO volunteer who lives and teaches there until the end of the year. Another blessing – Shala has a keyboard. I have always maintained that playing a keyboard is not nearly as satisfactory as playing a Real piano, but it’s amazing what you can get excited over when you’ve been deprived long enough. Shala uses music to help teach English and composes little ditties to reinforce her lessons. I’m also excited to have another contact in the area to bounce ideas off of – and another native English speaker to have conversations with.
Shala lives at the Anglican guest house next to Florian. I met Florian in the middle of May when Michele and I saw 2 white boys walking around town and followed them until we could make fools of ourselves and get their attention. (it’s amazing how possessive we PCVs can get of our areas – other white people never come out this far, and when they do, they’re either passing through like the “End The Cycle – Bike Through Africa” chick, or the missionaries who come and perform services, drop money, and then bus back to Kigali) Florian is a German kid who is taking a working “vacation semester” and creating his own study abroad program here to supplement his studies in psychology. He is how Rwanda is using group therapy to help overcome the trauma of the Genocide. We’ve met up a few times in the last month and I really enjoy talking to him. Unfortunately, his program doesn’t last very long and he’s going home soon.

The only person I can remember meeting that Wasn’t enjoyable is recorded ***HERE*** http://twoformativeyears.blogspot.com/2010/06/jennifer-and-charissa-confront.html.
This is Jenn’s new blog, but this particular entry has a lot to do with me, and she tells the story better than I do, so go read it. =)

Current Projects
I was always a little annoyed with the amount of hype that “critical thinking skills” received in the American education world. It felt so natural and intrinsic to me that I didn’t understand why it had to be pushed so much.
Shameless plug – thank you SO MUCH mom and dad for teaching me how to think and instilling a value for education and thought in me. Thank you for doing everything you had to make sure I had the best education possible. Thanks for wearing out 2 dictionaries at the dinner table and for never Actually answering my questions but making me figure it out myself (correction – y’all pulled off a nice balance – mom answered, dad did the puzzle thing until we all groaned and threw our heads on the table).
I am now aware that my personal family culture made the public education push for critical thinking skills unnecessary. Rwanda education has had (historically) NO understanding of, education of, or use for critical thinking skills in schools. Now they are entering the global community, this includes being exposed to all sorts of crazy education philosophy. Some things like “there is no such thing as a stupid student” are not exceptionally helpful, but CTS are CRUCIAL. And still mostly non-existent.
This has become my number one goal in my minimal teaching hours.

S1 –
There was 1 student book and 1 teacher book of Scholastic’s “POWERFUL VOCABULARY FOR READING SUCCESS – Grade 4”. This is not only not enough to share with 2 classes, but the book is (naturally) designed for American students and very ethno-centric. Some vocabulary like “apartment” is really not urgent to teach out of a list of 15 words. Also, the lessons are written expecting that all the students will have the workbook sitting in front of them that they can write in. I am adapting the content and lesson styles to be appropriate and useful for Rwanda. When I am finished I will post all my work for the other PCVRWs to utilize, including an introductory explanatory page.
The following is excerpts from this intro and can give you an idea of what my work looks like.

These lessons are designed to build critical thinking skills and focus on learning vocabulary in and through context.

The structure is as follows:
• List of Vocabulary words and definitions
• Lesson Objective
• Introduction – including grammar rules and examples to prepare the students for what they will be focusing on.
• Detailed instruction including suggested teacher activities, modeling the critical thinking skill, and student activities.
• Practice using new vocabulary and employing test-taking skills. Also includes verbatim teacher modeling of these skills
• Application requiring students to produce language and involving graphic organizers and expanding into higher levels of Blooms Taxonomy.
• Alternative Learning Styles Activities employing art, physical interaction, and group interaction.
• Highlighted grammar application (like sentence structure), composition practice, and cross-curricular application that can be drawn out of the general lesson
• Assessment / review that focuses on test taking skills.


S2 –
We also received ~40 student textbooks on spelling and word parts.
Building lessons off a textbook requires creativity when you’re not changing the main purpose alongside it.
The fine Education program at NCC taught me that students learn better when they understand Why they are studying what they are. So my first lesson was simply based on explaining the pieces of the book, why I chose it, and how it would benefit the students. We talked about Critical Thinking Skills; Improving Vocabulary, Spelling, and Pronunciation; Writing Skills – form and punctuation; and Test-Taking Skills. I employed Total Physical Response to designate what we were doing with each activity. I had all the students point to the eyes, mouth, head, jazz hands, and spread arms to represent ‘look / speak / think / write / expand’.

But, studying the pieces of the words won’t do you any good when you don’t know how the words work. Our first step was to create a simple, clear table outlining the parts of speech and their functions.

Each unit has its own theme:
• Unit 1 – Silent / Sounded Consonants
• Unit 2 – Greek Roots pt 1
• Unit 3 – Number Prefixes
• Unit 4 – Words from Names
• Unit 5 – Homophones
• Unit 7 – Consonant Changes (verbs to nouns)
• Unit 8 – Greek Roots pt2
• Unit 9 – Noun Suffixes
• Unit 10 – Words from Spanish
• Unit 11 – Confusing Words

Each lesson uses the same pieces:
• Key vocabulary – words they need to understand instructions - ex. Have in common / similar / related / Match / Rhyming / Context / Compare / Contrast / Replace etc…
• Look – focus on the theme
• Speak – read the words aloud – 2 or 3 times
• Think – analyze the words by theme
• Write – give basic idea of the word without exact definition – copy into notebooks
• Practice – word clues / analogies / rhyming / context / classifying / synonyms / appositives / riddles / phonetics
• Expand – using and producing language in a more realistic setting
o use in curriculum – journalism / music / astronomy – mythology / biology / word capitals / geometry / deserts
o pictionary / hangman / code breakers / dictionary usage / thesaurus usage / analyzing a text / using dialogue in narrative / write a narrative / subject-verb agreement / paragraph analysis / punctuation proof reading


PC – There is a Content Based Curriculum project that I will write about in the next blog. I think y’all have enough technical info for now..


THANK YOU!!!! Gena and Ryan Camire – peanut butter is always useful and I’m excited to try and crochet with plastic bags!
John and Joy Hosier – the magazines have been a great breath of levity in my reading collection. I think I also fell in love with Mental Floss…
Brad and Kristen Ediger – another new favorite – Relevant will definitely be something I look up when I get home. And the treats were perfect.

Ok, we’re getting to that point of saturation again.
Happy July 4 everybody!! Enjoy some fireworks for me!