New Life Christian Academy: Days 1-3

PRACTICUM TIME! For class, we must keep a daily journal with what we do for the day. I am trying mine and then relaying it to all of you. Read as you please...There are tons of details for the sake of my own journal so sorry if it gets a little long! I miss all of you back home. I get asked about America at least 75 times a day and I think of you all. You are in my prayers! MUCH LOVE!

February 20, 2012: Practicum Day 1

Practicum has begun! Before heading off to Kayonza, I had to pack, exchange some money, and buy cell phone minutes. As we said our goodbyes to the 4 people staying in Kigali, it was a weird/sad realization because it meant we are already 1/3 of the way done with our time in Africa. Before the 8 Rwamagana people, Kelli and I got in the Matatu to head off, we shared some time in prayer and then had a cinnamon roll hug (never heard of that until today). We drove 45 minutes to drop of the students who would be interning at Center for Champions and the Hospital and then we continued on 7km to Africa New Life Christian School in Kayonza, where Kelli and I are spending the next month. The school is located in the very East part of Rwanda, 65km outside of Kiagli. Right outside the school is a road that runs toward Tanzania if you turn right and Uganda if you turn left. The Academy is absolutely incredible and it is ranked number one in Rwanda. The campus has 6 dormitories that house 300 students and during the day the school educates nearly 800 students; many of the children are sponsored.

When we arrived, everything was very disorganized. We did not have a planned place to say, and we quickly learned that “improvise” was their favorite word. We are staying in the dormitory named Grace and we live with 18 boys between the ages of 12 and 15. We have 18 Africa brothers and they all seem like awesome young gentlemen. Every student at the school speaks English; however, we have quickly realized that many of the younger children do not have very strong English. The older kids have very strong English and we can carry on a normal conversation. We still must speak more slowly because they do not understand our accents, but overall, it is great! I was not expecting to be in a school where everyone had such good English.

The first person we met was Charles, head of the Child Sponsorship at the school. He took care of organizing our housing and helped us understand more about what being here would entail. Next, we met Moses who is responsible for academic affairs. He is the DOS (Department of Studies). Lastly we met the headmaster, John Africa. All of these men were extremely welcoming. After meeting everyone, we moved into our room. The room in which we are staying actually belongs to the “Auntie” of the Grace Dorm. There is an Auntie that lives in each dormitory with the students who helps with cleaning and overlooking the children. The Auntie of Grace is on Holiday until March 2^nd so they removed her belongings from the room and we will live here until she returns. When she returns, we will be moved to another location. I cannot wait to get to know the boys in our house.

After moving in, we went to headmaster’s office to meet with him. He explained to us some of the things we may come across, such as children asking: “Will you sponsor me?” Or,” Can you buy me….?” If asked these things, we should respond by saying, we will talk to headmaster. They may also ask, “Are you staying?” or “How is America?” If asked these things, we have freedom to respond as we wish. He requested that we dress in long skirts and remove our wristbands, having a professional appearance. He is from Uganda and has been with Africa New Life for about 3 years now.  After talking to him, he paired us up with two students, Daniel and Belis, who are taking us under their wing. Belis is 14 years old and she is in Secondary 1. Daniel is 18 and he is in Secondary 2. They have only been studying English for 4 years, but both are fluent. They have some of the top marks at the school and in Rwanda. Daniel walked around the campus with us. Meeting Belis and David is a blessing because we will have kids to hang out with and help us get involved while we are here.   The campus has a basketball/volleyball court that is currently being redone, and a soccer field that is less than a kilometer off campus. The school has sports teams that compete against other schools in the area as well as a dance team, choir, karate, worship team, debate teams, and several other activities. Some other evening events include “prep” which is a time when students go into the classroom and can do homework, or get help from teachers. There are at least 3 teachers that stay late into the night for “Prep” time. It is refreshing to see the dedication of these teachers and staff. Their commitment to their students appears as though it has allowed them to build close relationships, which in my opinion, is why they have had the ability to reach the highest marks in Rwanda. As far as discipline goes, they used to punish children by spanking them; however, it is now a government law that teachers may not punish children in that way. If children are bad, their punishment is to pick weeds for “x” amount of time and come back to class when they are done.

We ate supper in the dining hall with some of the teachers, headmaster, Daniel, and Belis. We had rice and beans, along with African tea. I assume that will be a common food while I am here.

Kelli and I are having a hard time learning the names of the children. It is very difficult when their names consist of unfamiliar syllable clusters. In addition to long African names, there are also some names such as, Innocent, Patience, Flower, etc. I have only been here a short while, but the school reminds me of Milton Hershey School (on an African scale).

The children have worship/bible study in the mornings. Depending on their grade level depends on what day of the week they attend. Then on Friday afternoons, we will have staff devotions. I am truly very excited for this experience. There is no doubt that it is going to be one of the hardest things I have had to do, but I know it will be very rewarding. I pray that I will be able to rely on God to find my strength. This whole experience requires flexibility. Chances are, every day will be a “show up and see” basis. I expectations for what he will do.

It makes me nervous to think about actually teaching English. Headmaster expressed several times that he is excited to have us teach their classes so that we can teach them like we do in America. I have a feeling that the teaching aspect of this experience will be completely trial and error. I pray that I can embrace that and not allow myself to get frustrated. When I get anxious, I pray that I can put that on God and that he can make me calm.

Tomorrow morning, Belis will meet us and we will go to Moses’ office. Hopefully he will tell us what he expects of us for the day. I am not expecting to have any sort of routine, but just go with the flow.

As I am sitting in my bed, the boys are having their best time prayers. They are singing together in English and then they break off and pray as individuals in Kinyarwanda. Even though I can’t understand them, it is incredible to feel the Holy Spirit here. They are awesome young boys.

February 21, 2012: Practicum Day 2

Last night, we went to bed by 9:45 and I am glad we did, because the boys were up around 5:00am. Around 6:15, Kelli and I got up to go for a run around town. As we ran, we didn’t realize we had been running downhill for about a mile and a half so when we turned around to run back, we had a rude awakening. We are definitely living a more Africa life than in Kigali. We came back from our run, took showers, which consist of freezing cold water, and got ready to go to work. Despite the cold water, I am very thankful that I have running water that is easily accessible to me. At 8am, we went down to meet with Moses, the DOS (Director of Studies). Whine in his office, we looked at the curriculum for P3 and P4 English, term 1, 2012. In Rwanda, they have three terms and teachers rewrite the curriculum each year. The curriculum is handwritten by each teacher and then kept with the DOS when they are finished with it. The term that I am here for goes from January to March 30^th, and then the students have 3 weeks off for holy time.  The P3 and P4 English curriculum consists of “a” or “an”, plural nouns, months, and other basic information of the sort. After meeting with Moses, he went to tend to some visitors who had come to evaluate the school. While Moses was gone, we met Rita who teaches P3 and P4 English and we helped her collate and staple her exams. Her classes consist of nearly 50+ kids. This Thursday and Friday, students have midterm exams so this week is focused on revision. As I paged through the curriculum and exams, I tried to brainstorm some ideas for how to teach the information. It is going to be very challenging to apply my hands on philosophy of teaching because these schools do not have the resources that we have in the United States. I hope that I can be effective in expressing the “American education system” with the materials I have available to me.  When Moses came back, he expressed that the evaluators were very pleased with the school; I couldn’t agree more!

I have been paired with Rita to teach P3 and P4 English. When Rita and I walked into the classroom, the children started to chatter. Teacher Rita said, “Good Morning” and the class stood and repeated, “Good Morning Teacher Rita.” After greeting Teacher Rita, they recited some phrases to welcome me.  Rita explained that I would be here to teach them English starting Monday and the class erupted with cheering and excitement. I couldn’t help but smile. Today and tomorrow I will be observing the class and they make it sound like I will be taking over on Monday. They expect us to be full blown teacher, so we will see how that works out for us!

In the classroom, there are bench/desks that students sit at. They are arranged in 3 rows with about 5 or 6 benches in each row; 3 children sit on each bench. The desks all face a chalk board in the front of the room. The 2 side walls have windows and then the back wall is cement with 3 posters that contain the months, the days of the week and some nouns with their plural forms. To being class, Teacher Rita went over the months. She 1^st asked the whole class to state them, then just the girls, then just the boys. She would also ask questions such as, “What is the 3^rd month? 6^th? 9^th? First? Last?” After going through a lot of oral instruction, she had the students’ complete exercises in their notebooks. When they were finished with the exercises, they would take their book to Teacher Rita and she would check their work. All of the work that they completed in class today was in preparation for the exam that they will have on Thursday.  It will be interesting to teach with his class because in the US, children are very stimulated by TV, media and so forth, so the teaching must be very stimulating, but that is not the case here.  I am very nervous, but very excited to work with these children and see what this experience has in store for me. I pray that I can rely on God for my strength. I hope that I can be successful here and enjoy the experience.

The class is 90 minutes and then Rita is done until after lunch when she will have her second stream of P3 English and a stream of P4 English. After our English class from 9:30-11, the Kinyarwanda teacher comes in to teach. Here, the teachers rotate from class to class. I have noticed that the schedule seems rather random from day to day. It will be hard to learn the schedule.

I honestly have no idea what to expect, but it is my prayer that I can rely on God in every moment. This semester, it has been my prayer to expect without specific expectations. I know that despite how hard this experience will be, it will be rewarding. All of the staff members have been very welcoming which is comforting. Rita seems like a great woman to work with which helps to ease some of the nervousness. Most of the staff members are from Uganda, including Rita. This is because the Rwandan government has recently changed from French to English. Because of that, all of the French speaking teachers are out of work because they do not know English.

For lunch, we had rice, matoke and meat. After lunch, we had 30 minutes of free time before we needed to report back to Moses. When we reported back, we had a meeting in his office for a while. They did not really have a plan for us and when they did have a plan, they wouldn’t really tell us. God is using that to teach me. I believe that He is responding to my firs blog post about “time.” I put too much importance on time and as we run on “African time” here, I must learn to go with the flow and be ready for anything. Time is irrelevant. God is teaching me how to be okay with the unknown and find peace in Him.

After this meeting, we went back to our house and took a short rest. We then spent time in our living room talking with the boys we live with and getting to know them. In the evening, we got to play some soccer with the boys. I took my soccer ball out and we went down to a grass patch with Daniel. We broke up into 2 teams and played for an hour or so. The grass area had huge holes so we had to try very hard not to kill ourselves in the process. It is fun to see the boys get competitive.

Right before we went to bed, our boys did some performances for us in the living room. They brought out their African drums and played some beats while others did traditional dances from the Congo, hip hop, acrobatics and singing of original music. It was so cute and living with these boys is going to be a very rewarding experience.

What do I hope to get out of this experience?

-Become less concerned with “time”

-Understand the African teaching system…how teachers teach compared to us

-Develop relationships with students and have an impact both in and out of the classroom

-Further develop my personal teaching theory

-Be like Abraham…Never lose faith even when things seem far beyond my capability level.

February 22, 2012: Practicum Day 3

This morning, we woke up and went for a run. This time, we took a right out of Africa New Life (ANL), which takes us back toward Rwamagana. Rwamagana is located approximately 7km away, so it will be easy to go visit the 8 others that are working at Center for Champions and the Hospital. After our run, we showered and reported to Moses at 8. I went to P3 English class with Rita where the class had their last day of revision (review) before their midterm exams tomorrow. During class, we played a review game; boys against girls. The teacher would take turns asking the different teams questions to students at random. Some of the topics included: a/an, has/have, who/what/when/where/why, baby words (i.e. puppy, kitten, and so forth), or fill in the missing letter (c_w). The students enjoyed the competitive aspect of this game and they took pride in answering a question correctly.

After class, Teacher Rita and I had a short break in our schedule. We went to the teacher break room and enjoyed a cup of tea and some conversation.  All of the teachers have been very welcoming and hospitable. As we sat and talked, they spent much of the time asking me about America. They asked me questions ranging anywhere from living expenses, to how much a house/car/college costs, if jobs are hard to get as a teacher, and about my family. This tea time intrigued me because in America, teachers do not spend their breaks in fellowship. American teachers will spend their breaks in their individual rooms taking care of personal needs. Here, teachers do not have their own rooms, so that could be part of the reason they spend it together, but they sit and enjoy conversation with one another during that time.

After the short break, we went to P3 orange and taught the same review lesson we had prior to our break. This class had a “double,” which is a longer class period. With the extra time, the students did review exercises in their notebooks. I walked around as the students completed this work and when they were done, I would check their work. At this point, teacher Rita had left the room, so I was not sure how to go about correcting the students work. I decided to correct their work with a black pen (because I didn’t have a red one like she uses) and try to explain to them their mistakes if they made any. It is hard to interact with the students because I do not know what they are used to when it comes to being corrected. Also, because of their age, I do not know how much English they really understand. It will be a challenge.

I began to brainstorm other ways for students to effectively participate in the game. I think that one effective way of playing the game would be to have all students write their answers in their books, then call on someone and have them show their answer or write it on the board. By completing this activity in such a way, all students are participating and actively engaged in the class.

Of what I have seen thus far, teacher Rita does a very good job at obtaining the attention of all students in the class. When there are 50+ students, it can be very, very hard. But I can tell she has their respect. She teaches with such joy and she truly looks as though she loves her job. I believe that the joy and excitement the teachers bring to their classrooms are what helps this school be so successful. They teach with a smile and it has a huge impact on the children. Another aspect of Teacher Rita’s control within the classroom is in regards to the children’s appearance and the appearance of the classroom. If a child stands up to answer a question and his or her shirt is not tucked in, she will ask them to fix their uniform before they respond. Also, when she enters the classroom, she may request that the students pick up all of the trash on the ground and put the rows of desks in order so that the classroom looks presentable.

After P3 orange, we had lunch. What did we eat for lunch? Rice and beans yet again. So far, I do not mind it, but I know I will look forward to Aidah’s cooking when we return to Kigali. At 1:15, we had another class, P4 English. We were also reviewing with this class for their midterm tomorrow. They are doing much of the same information as P3, with the addition of plurals and animal sounds. This section also had a “double” so after the game they competed exercises in their workbooks. During this time, Teacher Rita left to go to the teacher room and trusted that the students would finish their work. She told me to also leave, but I stuck around and corrected the students work as they completed it.

So far, I have taken note of some of the differences in the Rwandan Primary School System and that of the United States. Apart from the lack of resources here, the school system reminds me of a much older system that was found in the US. When students wish to answer questions, they raise their hands and snap their fingers. If they are called on, they stand up to answer. There is also a large amount of calling out and cheering during class. This may be because they are doing a review game, but it is something that would be seen as unacceptable in a US classroom. I have developed a deep respect for the way these classroom function and teachers teach with so few resources and so many students in each class.

After classes were finished for the day, Kelli and I went back to our room and got ready to head to Lake Muhazi with Headmaster, John Africa and Belis. When we arrived at the lake, we walked down and found a table to sit at that looked over the lake. It was such a beautiful place and a wondergul time of fellowship. As we drank a Fanta and shared some conversation (which is a normal outing here in Rwanda). Much of what we talked about was comparing the Rwandan and American cultures. We talked a lot about Christianity and how it differs. While Africa is very charismatic as a whole, in the United States you will find religions on both ends of the spectrum. We discussed how corrupt teens in America are and about how much of America runs off of self-satisfaction which causes much trouble and pain in the lives of people. It was enjoyable to talk to our boss on a more personable level. When we returned, we ate dinner with headmaster and some of the upper level students. Headmaster informed us that on Friday, Richard, the man we met in Kigali who started an SAT prep school, would be coming to meet with these students. I am so thankful that these students will have this opportunity to work side by side with an American through the college process. They are incredible, very smart individuals.

In an email I recently received from Mike, he posed some very deep questions to think through. As he prepares to go to Big Break and evangelize on the beaches, he may be asked some of these questions. I was challenged to think through them not just on a “this is the Christian answer” basis, but to answer them based on what I truly believe. He asked:

-Where do we come from? How were we born?

-What gives life meaning?

-What determines right from wrong? Why is being moral important?

-What is the end result? What happens to us after everything is over?

My initial reaction to the first question is to think through the two separate accounts of creation. As for the second one, I believe that live is given meaning when we are walking through life with God. Everything that is placed in our lives is a gift from God. Whether we learn a lesson from a particular situation or are blessed with a long lasting friendship, God has placed those events in our lives to shape us and help us become the best people we can be. God wants us to further his kingdom, so when we are walking with Him and abiding to his call for us, our life has meaning. I am continuing to think about these questions and develop my opinions on what I truly believe.