We started with our first ever intensive Literacy teacher’s training course this week!
Our aim is to have Mwinika teachers trained and ready to do the literacy classes in their community. Up till now, we have been training our teachers – those that have done the course already – as we were teaching the Literacy classes. Although there were a few that stood out as potential teachers, we never felt that they are quite ready for the challenge of teaching on their own.
Therefore, this time before we started our forth Mwinika literacy class, we decide to take some time with the potential teachers on their own and study through teaching and classroom procedures, qualities of a good teacher and talking about the need for Literacy in the community and their role as teachers. We then practiced some of the actual lessons together.
It was really successful in the sense that these four guys are now highly motivated and understand exactly what will be expected of them. I will slowly give them more responsibilities in teaching and as time go by, I want to see each one actually teaching a full lesson themselves. They understand now what they will be evaluated on and really took this challenge by heart!
They are all volunteers: a huge step in a culture where you don’t do something unless you profit directly from it. Each received a pocket file with their stationary and an exercise book and it was such a joy to see their reaction to this gift! Amazingly, these files are now one of our greatest “advertisements”! Wherever they go, people are interested to know what it is all about… and have the opportunity to tell them about the Literacy classes.
We hope that more and more people will want to read and write eMwinika as this is their key to open the Word in their own language.