Challenges, Successes and Best Practices

Tuesday July 29^th

We arrived at school by 8:30 as usual and listened as Ernest delivered his talk about the curriculum and how it is developed. After snack break Barb and I led the discussion about Challenges, Successes and Best Practices. It was interesting that all three weeks the discussion went different directions. The first week the teachers talked about the big challenges: no school, no toilets, no resources, etc, the second week they talked about successes, what they have done to overcome some of the infrastructure challenges and this time they talked about best practices in the classroom.

After lunch Angela and I had a great talk with two high school teachers who are here for the workshops but not with us. They were asking why we were here and what we were teaching. They also wanted to know about our union and Canadian teacher’s involvement in it. They told us about the challenges of their classes. They told us about classes of up to 70 or more students in regular sized rooms, no air circulation, and few resources.

After lunch Lyle had me lead the bum spelling energizer where the students have to spell their name using only their bottom. They loved this activity and we had two female winners in the spell off and gave them a prize of stickers.

Cindy and Barb did their lessons after that before we packed up and left. On the way back in the van I lead a discussion about Canada Night and how we could include everyone. In hindsight we should have had all six of us do all three nights, because they were for three different audiences. Barb and I had a short swim in the pool to cool down and then we had dinner. We continued the Canada Night discussion and settled the issues. Unfortunately the HIV/AIDS workshop was canceled again. After dinner the usual four went to the bar for a nightcap.