Even More Workshops



Mary preparing for the next day

The last main post was when we rushed home and left our Guyana volunteer friend, Helen, in the capable hands of Camilla, our closest neighbour in Rwamagana. But that's history. We knew that we could get the call at any time and this time our placement would have to end so we decided to try to have the maximum impact in the shortest time. This meant getting out on the road and visiting as many schools as possible delivering Mary's workshop on Methodology and Resource Making and my one on Lesson Planning. In addition, we wanted to do a workshop for Deputy Headteachers to try to give them an identity. We got round as many schools as we could, doing 2 or 3 workshops a day.

It involved lots of preparation. We wanted the workshops to be delivered in the schools and suitable for any environment. No electricity involved. We prepared dozens of examples of materials that could be used with the help of our friend Camilla. All were made out of everyday materials with the star of the show being bottle tops! We made posters out of rice sacks which would be displayed in the classrooms were we would be working. In each school we hoped for about 20 teachers. Sometimes more and sometimes less. Often it involved the school children just getting on with their work without teachers and staff taking turns in supervising them. This concept could not happen in most English schools. In Rwanda, on the whole, the children cooperated when they were left to their own devices.

We would be up just after the "call to prayer" around 5am and then on a moto to wherever we were going. We tried to do one long distance in a day and one short one. Everything had to fit in our backpacks and had to be used over and over again. We would be in the school by 7-30am for an 8-00am start and then off to the next school at 12-30pm and home by around 6pm and then the preparation for the next day. Despite the intensity of it all, we really enjoyed it and certainly slept well at night. The feedbacks were good and we hope that some of it rubbed off on the teachers.

In the final days of our placement, Mary made a booklet with pictures and descriptions  of all of the resources and we were told that it would distributed to all schools in the District. I've already described the workshops when we first started them in June. If you want to go to that post, just click on the link below.

More about the workshops

Here are a few examples of the materials we were using:-

Living room turned into workshop

Bottle tops galore

Clocks from Laughing Cow Cartons and washing powder tops

 All made from rice sacks - very durable and practical!!!