Sunday 6 May 2012

Primarily a teacher again – Hoorah!

The weeks are flashing by now. So much to do, and so little time! However this project is so much bigger than any individual connected with it and even if I got on a plane this afternoon and gave no more thought to hand over, and continuity for the children, it would go on and flourish, be good for the children and continue to influence lives for the better. This week I have really enjoyed going back towards being more or less a full time teacher. It's such a relief to hand over management responsibility to someone who actually came here to do that job, and who clearly has the necessary talent and capability to do it well. Of course David and I are not just dumping everything in Alison's lap and running away, but it is a joy to see her spending time learning how we have been doing things and getting to know the key people in our team. How lucky we have been that we have this six week period of overlap so that we can support her to build on what we have done. So often the needs of individual volunteers mean that such timing is impossible, but the benefit to the project is immeasurable and where it can be arranged it should be, I feel. So many times people's work is wasted because no one knows what they have done.

The students have been delighted about the changes we made to the practical part of the Diploma last week. For a very few it means that they have only one or two tasks left to do and then their Diploma will be completed. The rush is on to be the first! Everyone has been encouraged. Students have stopped me to say how much they love me this week! Such is the power of being able to reduce workload I suppose. I know it is cupboard-love, but it feels good just the same! We have tackled head on the problem of assessment priorities taking over from preparing the best for the children. I have typed a little homily for the notice board which I tried hard to make positive and not nagging. I was encouraged when I ran it past Kirren to hear her say she thought it was inspirational, so I pinned it up! We shall see. I have a secret horror of communicating with my team through officious little notices, but because of all the part-time jobs and the distances people travel to work with us it is impossible to get the whole team together. The staff notice board is therefore a very important mode of communication. Some people are excellent about reading it every morning, others are less good I fear.

It is lovely to be out on the floor almost all day watching students working with children. I am helping the baby room staff to look at systems of planning for individual children in the room and the two Room Leaders are thinking hard about how to make it work. We are using a lot of post-it notes, so if anyone knows a source of free post-its that could be put on a container in Abbotts Bromley and sent to Malawi please let George know. george.furnival@krizevac.org Talking of resources, I am not sure if I have ever written about all the multitude of uses to which we have put the several boxes of obsolete computer paper donated by Dairy Crest. I could write a whole blog entry or magazine article about this. However the last box is now empty and we are missing it so much! If your company has such a thing mouldering in the back of a cupboard get that to Abbotts Bromley too. I can promise you the CC will make good use of it, or indeed any other useful plain paper.

One student tackled the 'Nutrition' task this week. She made a meal with six five-year olds which contained all the six food groups described by the Malawian Government's classification of foods which is designed to be a straightforward way of helping parents to understand what a balanced diet really is. Aida's meal contained spaghetti, a staple food; eggs, an animal food; tomatoes and avocados, fruits and vegetables (well both fruits actually, but the thought was there!); and cooking oil, oils and fats. The only thing that was missing was nuts and pulses, but she brought some dried beans to show the children and talked about the value to their bodies of eating these too, so she certainly covered everything. I have watched several ball games designed to support the development of gross motor skills and a variety of arty activities supposed to show me how to support the development of creativity in young children. Some were better than others! I have been heartened to note how much better the relationships between students and children have become over the four months since we opened. I am acutely aware of the debt we owe to the Room Leaders who demonstrated such good practice. I wish so much they could have stayed longer. Tamara led a musical activity in the baby room of which any early years practitioner in the world could have been proud. She chose a milestone from the Social and Emotional Domain of the Malawian ECD Curriculum concerned with 'developing a sense of self' and built upon the babies' familiar morning routine of songs and rhymes introducing a finger rhyme which deals with the place of babies in families and a new song using each child's name individually. Children were encouraged to choose their own chitenje from a heap of bright cloth in the middle of the circle and their own photograph from the photo cards they use for self-registration in the mornings when they arrive. The children's zitenje are so important to them. They are so much a part of their young lives. They are used to tie the babies to their mother's backs, one rarely sees push chairs in Malawi. They are spread on the ground for babies to sit out of the dust. They are used to cover a sleeping child. They are used to wipe noses and to clean little fingers. Above all they smell of mum and are a comfort object.

Of course we are far from providing a perfect early years curriculum. I left Tamara's assessment to pass the Toddler Room and hear the chanting of 'Calendar, calendar, I know my calendar; January, February, March…etc'. Oh dear! Rote learning at its worst! The children have no idea what these English words mean. They are only 2-3 years old in this room and the chanting was vigourous. They know the words, but context is there none! Ho hum! Back to the drawing board!

Blessings, a leader in the 3-4s, and a really promising student, is planning to make a garden in some tyres and grow some vegetables with her class. She asked me for a large tyre and I was able simply to pull out my mobile and call Dereck, the chief mechanic for Torrent Plant Hire, one of the Beehive group of companies. Alison called her husband Jason who is a foreman on the site and asked for four wheelbarrow loads of topsoil, and the project was begun. I think that the tyre must have arrived as yesterday (Saturday) I had a text from Blessings: Please could I help her cut the tyre in half as it is too deep for the children to be able to reach to garden! It must be off a big truck or a JCB or something. Now who do I need to come and slice a huge tyre in half? A welder? I guess that's a job for Monday morning……

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