We are having a quiet Sunday at Mitsidi. It is very hot today. Originally we planned to go for a walk today, maybe to show some of the new volunteers the Way of the Rosary, but we are all a bit tired. On Friday we had the usual after work drink in the Liquor Garden but somehow it developed into a full-blown evening out including a meal in the Gold Card Executive Lodge in Namiwawa and then returning to the Liquor for late night drinks as well, and rolling home well after midnight. Yesterday I went and met Zoe for a coffee at Shoprite and bought a lot of stuff for making playdough and other messy play activities for the Children's Centre before setting off to the airport to collect two new volunteers. One, Sadia , who prefers to be called by her middle name 'Kiran' is to be part of the training/management team for the children's centre with me and David; the other, Francoise, will be helping to support and streamline administration throughout Beehive. That will be quite a challenge I imagine. Yet again I was surprised by how little one needs to know about a person in order to be able to find them easily in a mass of people emerging from the arrivals door at Chileka Airport. All I knew was that they would be travelling together, their first names and that one was Asian and one European in origin. I watched a steady stream of people for about three-quarters of an hour without seeing anyone even possible. At last I spotted them and caught Francoise's eye, mouthing her name through the glass door. She nodded vigorously and that was that! Krizevac has introduced a new procedure for welcoming and supporting new volunteers. This is a good idea and involves each volunteer in having a buddy who has various duties to perform to make sure that vital information is passed on about things like telephones, internet connections, hospitals and so forth. I am to be Kiran's buddy and Rita is to do the honours for Francoise. In the afternoon we helped them settle into their accommodation and showed them Mitsidi. It was full of the delicious smells of baking as David had a 'Pudding Party' in the late afternoon/early evening. We each made a delicious dessert and took wine, and a thoroughly good time was had by all. We don't get much in the way of dessert in Malawi so it was quite a treat to get a tiny portion of about ten different desserts. Our Malawian friends seemed to really enjoy it and there was much asking of 'What is this?', 'How do you make this?' etc. Mary Kamwendo came and commented upon the 'Englishness' of it all. We worried about the vast numbers of calories we were consuming, but then we did the right thing by dancing with energy and enthusiasm. Then, surprise, surprise we ended up in the Liquor Garden again!
This morning I have caught up on my marking. Many of the students are very enthusiastic to get their Diplomas as soon as possible. David and I have been bombarded with piles of draft task plans for activities they want us to observe so we can assess their progress. In an ideal world we would want them to have a bit more time to settle in to the daily routine of working with children before rushing in to assessments, but I am only too aware of how little time there is to get through the assessment process for over 60 students doing 20 tasks each by the end of May when David and I will be going home. Kiran will off course still be here and will be able to complete the process for any stragglers but many of them want to complete before we go and it is good to have a time to aim for. There are just not enough hours in the day for all the things that need to be done to keep the Centre ticking over and to support mentees and carry out assessments but we are doing our best! I am feeling a bit bad that I have not given sufficient attention to the problems of setting up a good cleaning schedule for the Centre and a number of other fundamental, practical procedures, but I guess they will come bit by bit. I cannot help the fact that my heart lies with the training, which is the reason why I came here. Although I know that the other role is equally important and in some ways more urgent I am reluctant to let the training schedule slide. I am so glad that the responsibility is shared with David and the Room Leaders and now with Kiran too. I am sure we shall get there in the end!
I have enjoyed the hour I have spent in supervision with each of the Room Leaders and we have planned for more support to be offered to the students in modeling high quality activities with children, to give thought to record keeping procedures and to begin to sort out how a key-person system will operate in each room, so I have not been completely idle on the management side! It has been a bit of a week of meetings and David and I have experienced our first Krizevac/Beehive senior management meeting which was interesting. We are getting uniforms distributed to the children in supported places at the centre, and have looked at simplifying the process of getting the cash for buying resources etc, so it has been far from a week devoted only to teaching and assessing. We have got through quite a few assessments and mentoring sessions too, to the extent that I only made it to lunch once this week, mostly because I had my head down working and forgot the time!
How do I feel now that I am seeing the results of our training programme as our students settle into the caring and teaching roles of working with children? There are some frustrations but overwhelmingly I am proud of the students as I see them building positive relationships with the children, watching what is going on around them and drawing conclusions about how they can improve their practice and make things better for the children. I have seen some lovely activities, especially with paint and clay where children are exploring the materials and being creative. There is not always as strong a link as I would like between what they observe about the children and the activities that they plan, but that is down to lack of experience and it will come. Sometimes they plan the most obvious, simple activity and it could be made more relevant to the children concerned with only a little extra thought; sometimes, conversely they make their activities unnecessarily complicated. The Room Leaders are going to help by doing some written plans themselves and modelling good practice. I have to remember that the Children's Centre is itself in its infancy, that all the staff are new together and learning as they go along, and also that my brief was to create a course comparable in level to about NVQ 3. Sometimes I think I am not the best at remembering exactly what that level is! On Friday I watched Charles who is the tallest of our students, sitting on the mat at snack time with three babies and chatting with them about the fruit salad he had made for them, what was in it, what they liked, how it was good for them… He did it in a simple, straight forward way that was entirely appropriate even though they were all between 1 and 2 years only. I wish I had had the camera – Early years health education in action!
This morning I read carefully the first submission I have received for the 'Reflective Practice' task which involves keeping a reflective diary for at least 6 weeks. It came from a student who I know is a thoughtful woman and a strong student but I was so pleased and proud that I nearly cried when I read it. She has thought so hard about what has happened in the first six weeks of her employment with Beehive and drawn some positive and interesting conclusions. It has given me some useful feedback that I will be able to use if I ever plan another course like this! She said such nice things about her Room Leader in the Baby Room and what is happening in there that I got Joan to come and read it as a bit of positive feedback for her too. I really look forward to getting some more of these and hope to learn something new and useful from each one.
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