Sharing Ideas

I had a great week with Jimmy and figured out the buses back to Luanda. It still baffles me that I can figure out public transportation in every city I’ve been to except LA. When I try to take the bus in LA, I almost always get lost or somehow just end up at the library. I’m not sure what this says about the public transportation in LA or about my addiction to books.

I am so impressed with Jimmy and how quickly he has adjusted to life in Isibania. The kids on his walk to work run out to greet him and he goes running with his friend Elias and one or two of the local dogs. Jimmy was even able to order food for us in Kiswahili. All I figured out is how to say mbili (two) after everything Jimmy ordered, point, and hope he chose well.  His roommates are all really fun and I think the Nuru organization is great. People in Luanda keep telling me they want Nuru to come here too. I think mainly they want to meet everyone. I told them they are stuck with me for now, but that maybe Jimmy and his friends will come visit sometime. 

The thing that both Isibania and Luanda have going for them is that people in both places seem hopeful that they have the ability to make changes in their communities. I think this mentality will bring about more improvements than the hope that someone else, e.g. mazungus, will bring money and things to change their communities for them. A few people still think this way, but it does not seem like the majority. When people do ask me to give them things though, I worry about the previous relationships these communities have had with people from the west.

Yesterday, the principal at the school next to where I do my computer work asked me to come teach in one of their classes. I walked in and asked the students what they wanted to learn and they said math and handed me some math problems that they were working on. In primary schools here there are about 10 classes from nursery class to the eighth grade and maybe four or five teachers. At some schools, the students study on their own until a teacher comes in to teach. Anyway, the students were excited that I would teach them math. After about 30 minutes of math, I said that I should probably go and they asked if I would teach them a song before I left. So, I sang a song and explained what it meant. Then, they sang a song for me and I left. I went to find the principal and tell him I was leaving. He thanked me for coming to the school and one of the teachers in the office asked me what I brought back for the school from Isibania. I said I brought some math for the kids and said goodbye. I have mixed feelings about her reaction. I mean, the school really does lack resources, but I don’t think I should give them things that they depend on and then leave them in a year feeling like they have even fewer resources.

When I was in Isibania, I put on a workshop for the teachers Jimmy worked with. They seemed to have an amazing grasp on inquiry and some great teaching methods, but they were having trouble planning lessons that connected to each other and built on what they had previously taught. So, I taught them about learning progressions. I could only find them for science, but with all of Nuru’s great teachers, they were able to make them for several core concepts in language arts. Then, we used the learning progressions to come up with learning goals for different grade levels and used the goals to backward plan lessons. I feel like the workshop worked really well because the teachers had so much experience in the different grade levels that they really had enough evidence as a group to come up with amazing progressions. I don’t have that kind of experience, but I was able to help them pull all their ideas together. Maybe I can do a workshop like this in Luanda too. I feel like leaving people with ideas that they depend on is better than giving limited resources. Ideas, they will have for a long time. I only hope that they realize that there are better ideas out there though and that ideas should evolve so I don’t come back here in a few years to find all of these outdated education theories (like the colonial recitations and rote memorization). 

Sheesh, development work is scary. I think I’ll just keep focusing on sharing ideas. That way they don’t see me as an expert either. We can just learn from each other. Like the five-year-old who sat next to me today at lunch. He showed me how to recognize a bad peanut and the whole time he was speaking Luo. He just kept using the words good peanut, bad peanut over and over again very patiently waiting for me to get it. Then he showed me that he could count in English so we played a guessing game about how many peanuts we thought were in each shell. He counted in English and I counted in Luo. Now, I won’t get sick eating rotten peanuts. Woohoo. Now, that is a good teacher. Hopefully by only sharing ideas, I won’t cause too much damage here.