Teacher Training

At the request of Pastor William and Eunice, I started the process of training local Nagishot teachers.

While I was in school, training to be a teacher, I dreamed about someday teaching in a small bush Christian school, while also training national teachers. This year, God has been quite generous with me, opening doors and presenting opportunities to both teach in the classroom and train local teachers.

In June, after church one Sunday, I held my first Nagishot teacher training. In the beginning, I was a bit reluctant to hold the trainings on my Sabbath, as I was keen on reserving them for church, long walks with my Lord and working in my garden. However, Eunice believed that Sunday was the only appropriate choice, as the teachers would be busy in their gardens and/or classrooms the rest of the week.

To claim that the first training was a great success, would be a down right lie! Only three teachers showed up and one of them had well, how should I say this, sampled a bit too much of the local speciality and proceeded to sleep through the majority of the training.

The second training was no better. Only two teachers (though a different two from the previous three) showed up, both 45 minutes late. After hours of preparation and waiting, I ended up cancelling the lesson.

At this point, I felt it might be best to forgo the whole thing, but Pastor William and Eunice remained adamant that I train the local teachers. Rather than bi-monthly Sunday trainings, as was originally planned, Pastor William suggested that I use a week during the August school break for the trainings.

So, on the second Monday of the month, we held our third teacher training. Thirteen teachers showed up that Monday morning and almost all of them were on time!

I started this training in the same way that I had started that first Sunday training. I began by asking the gathered teachers what they hoped to get out of these teacher trainings, what they wanted to learn and the issues that they struggled with in their own classrooms?

At the initial training in June, I had been met with blank stares when I asked these same. However, this time I made up my mind and let the group gathered know, that if they could not answer any of these questions or if they were only in attendance because they felt a certain unsaid pressure from either Pastor William, Eunice or myself to do so, I assured them we should all go home, have a cup of chai and call it a day. And the truth is, I really meant it.

Why did I say these things?

Most people on the mission field can literally think of 131 examples of foreigners coming into an area, doing this or that project for the people, and finding that once they have left a community their great ideas, life changing practices and nifty development projects are pushed to the wayside for lack of National ownership.

I had just finished reading, When Helping Hurts, a great book for those of us working with the poor both overseas and locally. This year I have been struggling with my understanding of poverty and our Christian responsibility and response - What does it mean to be poor? Are the Didinga really poor? When is relief work appropriate? What about development? Though my understanding of these concepts is still incomplete, this book defiantly opened some different avenues of thought on the subject (future book report blog? - maybe.)

Anyways, the book also talks a great deal about Nationals participating - ie. planning - in their development. With this in mind, I knew that I could not lead this teacher training, if the 13 men gathered were unwilling to play a role in the event.

Thankfully, after I explained these concepts to the men gathered, giving specific examples from their own community, I began to see a change in the group's mood. The teachers proceeded to speak for at least 45 minutes about their personal struggles in the classroom, almost every man suggested a topic for the upcoming trainings and most of them spoke honestly about why they WANTED to have these teacher trainings. And it was then, and only then, that I knew we were ready to start.

This is what we studied:
Monday - Lesson Planning (Day, Week and Term Planning)
Tuesday - Assessments (When, Why, How of Testing)
Wednesday - Classroom Management (How to teach WITHOUT a big stick!)

By the end of the week, there were about 17 teachers in attendance. Everyone was awake, most were enthusiastic participants and I dare say, they might have even learned a helpful thing or two about teaching!