Vusumnotfo: Ongoing Training, Monitoring & Evaluation

As a supplement to the training that I’ve been doing with rural pre-school teachers, I have been visiting them in their classrooms every other week to observe and to support them in implementing the ideas taught during training. As previously mentioned, the main ideas taught revolve around assisting the teachers in understanding what a 3-5 year old child should be able to know/do based on child development, how to plan and how to teach said concepts, and finally how to assess whether the child has mastered said concepts. It all goes back to ‘vision, assessment and planning.’

Due to the fact that rural, community pres-schools in Swaziland operate in a ‘resource limited setting’ in every sense of the definition, I have had to be particularly scrupulous when sharing ideas for activities or strategies for instruction as to not recommend things that require ‘materials.’ In the instance that I do use materials, I am sure to make them ‘reusable’ so that the teachers get a lot of use from them.

I have really enjoyed working with the community pre-school teachers and have gained some credibility with them because I magically appear in their classrooms (in the middle of NOWHERE Swaziland) every other week. The pictures below are just a compilation from my most recent trips.

Nkosingiphile ‘labeling’ the parts of the body on a pupil volunteer

Constance, showing off her ‘phonics’ hangar

Planning tool in use! Hooray!

Since writing is a challenge for some of the teachers, I developed a tool that they can use for planning that requires them to move tiles around, as opposed to writing. The color coding represents ‘standards’ (like Identity of Self, Sharing, Counting, Classification, etc.), special events (like a field trip, sport’s day, graduation, etc.) or non-teaching time (like school holidays, professional development workshops, etc.). The goal of the calendar is to ensure that at least one ‘standard’ is taught every day and that the order in which they are taught is given some consideration.

And since it is pre-school and children learn through play, it is always nice to capture the fun stuff, as well

Outdoor games

Smiles

These boys have made a racetrack out of blocks and are using the smaller blocks, turned on their side, as cars. Boys will be boys; even without a car or track in sight, they have figured out a way to play

This is a tippy-tap; because many of the schools don’t have running water, this is a ‘faucet’ that can be operated by stepping on the wooden pedal and causing the 5L jug to ‘tip.’ There’s a hole in the top of the jug, next to the cap, so the water only flows when the jug is brought to a ‘pouring’ position with the foot pedal. Genius. Genius, I tell you.

Some of the classrooms that I visit have 10 pupils from the community; while others have 40. I’m not kidding. Here’s a group that can barely fit if they sit down; therefore, during ‘lessons’ they have to remain standing

In contrast, this class only has 8 pupils; therefore, they have all of the space in the world and using magazines is no problem (because they can share a couple of magazines between them, as opposed to needing at least 12-15 magazines for the class with 40 pupils. I’m including these pictures because anyone who has visited us has been asked (by me) to bring over ‘US Weekly’ and ‘People’ magazines. Most people make fun of me because that’s what I miss…pop culture. Oh well. But, I just want you all to note how helpful these recycled magazines are in assisting children in identifying the parts of the body.

Thank you Mr. Smith and Mr. Depp

Thank you for providing endless hours of entertainment for a 4 year old working on the fine motor skill of cutting

The teachers are just as resourceful as the pupils…no babysitter? No problem.

Last, but not least. You gotta love the 2 year old who is too young for pre-school but who comes and sits in the doorway, anyways

I have two more ‘monitoring’ trips and one more ‘training’ trip before our departure in early June. I am hopeful that some of the things that the teachers have learned from me will ‘stick’ and that they will carry-on in my absence. That quotation, ‘everything I needed to know I learned in Kindergarten’ is kind of true…