Today we embark on a new adventure: new training for Day Care and K1 teachers (teachers of 2-4 year olds) in Gulu. There will be a team of 5 of us facilitating: myself, two passionate US Peace Corps volunteers (Abby and Katie) working with me and my two invaluable Ugandan teachers (Caroline and Catherine). We are all pretty excited about it! I guess the inspiration came from being frustrated and deflated walking into a K1 nursery classroom and seeing 50 or more 3-year-olds sitting behind a desk copying from the chalkboard and repeating after the teacher (even though the curriculum states differently). Over the holidays we have been planning and scheming, making resources and now the paint is made, play dough is ready, plastic scissors have been sourced, local weaving looms made out of papyrus mats and puppets made out of cardboard. Yesterday during a phonics training session Catherine was reminding the Day Care/K1 teachers to come: ‘you won’t get anything like this in the country, I can assure you that.’
The longer I am here the more I believe we need to focus on younger children and the skills we need to help them develop. Creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and literacy development beings with these young ones.
Let the fun begin!
Dan and Jodes... in Gulu, Uganda 