Gecko in the Bathroom

This was a month or so ago... there is one in our living room now.  (Maybe the same one - I scared this little guy pretty badly!)

When discouragement hits... encouragement!

A small snippet from one of my school reports.
Guess I'll stick around a bit longer.... ;)

But for the times when I don't get the encouragement and I don't feel like I'm making a difference in this world, I remember this quote.  It's my encouragement:

"I suspect I’m not the only one who forgets that the assignment is faithfulness—not winning, not fixing, not changing other people, not changing the world."  Rachel Held Evans

The sunset in our backyard last week! (No photo editing was even done!)

Writing with Phonics Workshop

I did this workshop with my schools back in October and November (2014) and never wrote about them.  I found this workshop to be my most boring one so far: no games!  But I thought it was important to wrap up the year of phonics literacy I’d been doing so far.

We started off by very briefly discussing 

the importance for students in understanding the connections between reading, writing and oral.  I keep stressing to teachers that you cannot read and write and understand if you cannot speak in that language.  A big challenge of learners here in Zambia is that they speak a local language at home but are required to write (in Grade 7 and 9) a National Exam in English. I think many students get left behind because of not knowing English.  It’s my hope that the next teacher mentor will be really good at ESL or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and can help the schools with this reality.

Phonics Review

The logistics of writing with phonics in your classroom (I brought examples of cheap exercise books, including just paper stapled together).  We discussed how often children write in these books.  The difference between just copying off the board and independent writing. How to keep the books safe so they don’t get lost.

Then the main part of the workshop: I gave the teachers a large handout with multiple examples of the stages of writing with phonics.  Here are the stages of writing I presented with examples:
(taken from : http://www.ece.gov.nt.ca/files/K-12/Curriculum/english-language-arts/Feb-2010/Kindergarten-Writing-Samples.pdf)

Drawing to express ideas and information

Drawing and having someone write down what you say (scribe)

Experimenting with letters you know, perhaps your name or other familiar words

Writing the phonemes that you hear, no spaces between words needed!

With help from teacher modelling, sight words (word wall)
and with practice, your writing improves

With teacher modelling you can even write information you've learned

After my first workshop I went a bit off my agenda here as I saw a need for it.  I had included a Quickscale (see below: B.C. Performance Standards: Grade 1 Writing) in the handout for the teachers to look at.  On chart paper we divided up into our grade groups and I gave the teachers the assignment to do a simple quickscale for their grade.  What do you expect of your students in regards to writing by the end of your grade?  What does it look like if a student is not meeting expectations?  What does it look like if a student is exceeding expectations?  This was a really challenging activity for some of the teachers.  At one school we had the same expectation (be able to write 3 letter words) show up both at the Grade 1 level as well as the Grade 4 level. 

Quickscale that I handed out

A head teacher (what we would call a principal) stood up afterwards and gave a little parallel story. A relay race is happening.  If the first runner is off the mark and does well then the next runners have a good chance at winning. If the first runner is lazy, the next runners could make up for a win but it will be a lot of work and effort.  Each runner needs to do his/her part in order to be successful. Then the parallel - each of you teachers Grade 1-4 are a runner in a relay race.  You have students and if you do your job well they will proceed through each grade well and can be handed over to the Grade 5 teacher all ready to go. If even one of the teachers gives up and puts in minimal effort, the other teachers have to scramble to catch the student up (still possible though difficult). 

During questions time at the end of the workshop I often get asked: “What about proper pencil grasp and posture?”  (Since I didn’t even mention these!)  These are very highly stressed between teachers and students in Zambia, as it proper printing.  They have the printing (copying from the board) teaching down.  They know how to teach it better than I do!  So I ask them a question back, “which student would you rather have in your class? Student A who sits properly, holds a pencil properly but is constantly asking you how to spell simple words and does not want to write independently incase s/he spells a word wrong OR Student B who might slouch (pencil grasp is important to a point) but tries to sound out words phonemically and makes some mistakes but can write a short story independently?” (Often silence after this - or one teacher who calls out “Student B”). I tell them that I see them doing a great job at posture, pencil grip and printing so I didn’t need to talk about it.  I feel that this writing with phonics might be a huge stretch for them and I’m not sure that any of the teachers in my workshop will try it but there’s always the hope that maybe one teacher will step outside the box and try something new.  Or in a few years they might remember this workshop and it might help them in some way.

Mr. Gandula, the head teacher who spoke about the relay race, is in pink.

*all photos taken at Sikalongo basic school with teachers from Sikalongo,
Mboole, and Batoka

In Zambia, today is the first day of term 1.  The new school year has started.  My plan for this year is workshops only by request (and EdCamps, of course!) but I am going to go out to schools (Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays) and just be there for the teachers. I have a feeling this plan will either be super rewarding or very boring! I’m going to be available to help teachers out in the classroom with all these literacy workshops ideas I’ve given to them. I often forget what I learn at Pro-D in Canada, and I’d love for the presenter to come to my school and work alongside me so I can practice what I learned.  Or to at least be sitting in the library or staff room so if I need a quick refresher or I need her to make up some of the resources needed (since I don’t have any extra time as a teacher).  Well, that’s my great plan for the year!  Prayers are gratefully welcomed!

EdCamp Again!

Teachers from Nahumba Primary School listening to a presenter during EdCamp

Yesterday I did another EdCamp.  I think that's number 3 or 4 now. This one had a few bumps but overall went well.

I arrived at the school where I had rented out the hall only to realize that something was up.  The benches were arranged in rows and someone was dusting them off.  There was a nice table with a white cloth set up in the front with chairs behind it.  They'd never done anything in the way of cleaning for any of the other times I'd rented the hall.  A text message came back to me - one I had received at 5am that morning from a head teacher saying that teachers were called to the same school I was hosting EdCamp at for election training.  Hmmm.

The cleaning lady called the head teacher and he told me to wait for the accountant.  EdCamp was set to start at 9:00 with tea, coffee, rolls, sign-in, and getting ideas for our sessions.  It was approximately 8:45 by the time the accountant came in.  My stress level was much lower than if this had been the same thing a year ago!  I liked to come just after 8:00 so I could get the big electric kettle (I don't know what else to call it) heating up!

After talking to the accountant, who suggested we just use classrooms and not the hall (luckily I was expecting a smaller group this time because of the elections training), and me asking for a refund, and him suggesting they just use the money for the next EdCamp rental.  We worked things out and off I went with Memory (who works cleaning our house and does piece work - small jobs like cleaning classrooms for EdCamp, washing dishes when teachers are done tea, etc. for a bit of extra money).  She started madly sweeping a classroom (they are FILTHY after just sitting all term - usually the teachers get the students to clean them on opening day - I should have taken a photo, tons of flying ant wings all over the floor - but I had other things on my mind!)  I started unloading the car and the first teachers started to arrive.  I attempted to plug in the kettle in the first classroom, that was now halfway clean.  The outlet wasn't working.  The second classroom just had wires sticking out of the wall.  Finally the last classroom worked!  So we moved over and Memory left the other one and started sweeping out the room with the working outlet.  I started up the kettle.  Another teacher volunteered to help - so I set her the task of making up a poster saying EdCamp was in Room 7 (I didn't want the teachers to accidentally end up in the hall doing elections training!)  

Believe it or not we started our first session at the originally scheduled time of 10am!  We only had about 7 teachers at this point (Most of the teachers were at the elections training as Zambia is having elections on January 20th.  The schools are the voting sites as there are schools all over the country even in rural areas.  They pay some of the teachers and train them for how to do the polling sites.  Pray for peace for this month leading up to the elections and peace during and after as well!  Zambia is a peaceful country but these things always have potential to go badly).

We started the first session "Beyond ABC Phonics."  A couple teachers shared how they teach past phonics - syllables, words, sentences, etc.  When the discussion slowed I shared some English phonics sayings that help with some of the irregular rules.  I had brought three Letterland books I picked up in South Africa.  The first "ABC" is one I used regularly in my Kindergarten class in Canada.  The other two I'd never seen before, "Beyond ABC" and "Far Beyond ABC" and I thought they were great!  They covered blends and digraphs (sh, wh, ch, st, etc), plus double vowels, r controlled vowels and a few other things.  I always tell Kate and my Grade 1 kids to remember "When two vowels go walking (ex: ai in rain) the first one does the talking and says its own name (long a sound)."  We also talk about "magic e" too. The teachers seemed to enjoy the session.  I left them looking at the books and discussing phonics and went out to order lunch (I've learned to order after I get numbers!) We had 14 people at the final count (not too off from the 25 I had been told by head teachers).  

Kajungu Mturi, MCC peace worker
looking "smart" as it was his
 9th anniversary!

I was back in time for session 2.  I had invited Kajungu Mturi, the MCC peace worker who also lives in Choma, to present on Corporal Punishment and Positive Discipline.  It's really great as he grew up in Tanzania and has first hand experience, so teachers listen to him more than they would me about this subject.  There was a really great moment when teachers thought about a teacher they respected and shared why. None of them respected teachers who just beat them.  They respected the ones who listened and cared and helped them.  A teacher respected one of her teachers who was on time and not absent (believe it or not this is a problem among many teachers: showing up late for class or not coming at all).  We ended with some good discussions of alternatives, though we were running short on time at this point (only about 10 minute).  

A couple teachers listening to the corporal
punishment session

The teachers enjoyed chicken and chips (fries) for lunch (only 15 minutes late mostly due to driving time to pick it up - I promised to tip well if it was on time as last time I waited an hour for it)!  We discussed what we should do for session 3. The ideas left (they were few) were handwriting, the 5 core principals of literacy (I have no idea what those are sorry!), the new syllabus, and I added Classroom Management as a continuing discussion from number 2.  Handwriting won.  (We ended up only using one room - there were only about 2 people who didn't want certain topics but they weren't willing to go into another room to discuss other things.  Partly because one session it was a male and a female and that would have not been acceptable).  A grade 2 teacher demonstrated one of her handwriting (printing) lessons.  After a Grade 1 teachers filled in more for how to start from the beginning - finger exercises, drawing in the air or in sand, writing on the board and paper.  Practicing  writing vertical lines (llllll) and then curves (c c c)  before putting them together to practice q q q.  

The handwriting topic dwindled after about 20 minutes.  With almost an hour left they decided to go into Classroom Management.  Another great moment as each teacher shared one thing that worked to manage their classroom (that wasn't corporal punishment).

We closed off in prayer and called it a day.

I'm always exhausted after these!  (Stress level maybe?!)

Teachers listening to a presentation about handwriting.