Enjoying a doughnut after a meal at our local coffee shop to celebrate our family anniversary.

Today – October 25^th, 2017 – marks the one-year anniversary of our little family being together. One year ago today Myron came to join our family and it has changed immeasurably!

Here’s a summary of the back-story…

The preparation and journey towards Myron began a little over 5 years ago when we were told we couldn’t naturally have children. This was a significant shock to us, who always thought that it would happen when the timing was right.

While we processed the news ourselves we continued to listen to friends, church members and acquaintances ask us: “when are we going to have children? Our body clock was ticking, we aren’t getting any younger, or are you baron?” – we heard all the lines. Mostly, we politely laughed, and sometimes with strangers pretended we were younger. Occasionally we just went in with a bang and said: “we can’t”. That sometimes stopped the conversation. It’s not exactly true that we couldn’t, we could try IVF, but just didn’t feel it was for us.

After much discussion, and prayer we decided that we would try to adopt. We just wanted to wait for the right timing (when we thought we were stable enough in one country for the process to happen).

We began the fostering-in-the-view-of-adoption process from Uganda. We were in line to foster/adopt an abandoned baby early last year; however close to the end process the baby died. That floored us! And I in particular became quite emotionally guarded from that time. We took a step back but still continued the process. A few months later we were told about Myron. We said we wanted to continue the process with him in mind, but didn’t want to meet him until we knew for sure that it was going to happen (trying to project both of us I guess).

We continued in that vain for a few months then on the 21^st October last year we got a call from the Children’s Protection Officer at our local orphanage, St Jude’s, to say that we could come and collect Myron in four days time. Yikes! Better do some fast acquaintance and bonding then!

I was quite worried, about many things. But my fears were quickly relieved. And apart from a bumpy couple of weeks settling in, it has been a match, literally made in heaven! It is quite phenomenal how well Myron suits us as a family.

Myron is loud, boisterous, talkative, absolutely loves imaginative play, screams out Bob Dylan when a Dylan song comes on a play list; often plays a pretend ‘harmonica’ or air guitar, or drums, or lets loose with energetic dance moves in the middle of our local coffee shop, ties everything up, takes an age to eat his breakfast (or lunch or dinner) because he is too distracted, loves wrestling with the dogs (and Dan), offers empathy whenever we hurt ourselves, will get annoyed when he greets people and they don’t greet him back, insists other children use manners when they talk to him, when he sneezes in bed he will yell out to us to “please say bless you to me”, will remind us not to say “huh” or “mmm” but to “say yes”, can sit and listen to stories being read to him for a good 20-30 minutes, will yell out each night (habitually) that his eye is sore, then answer in chorus with us that it will get better when he sleeps…

We haven’t read any books about adoption or attachment; but plenty of research on fine gross motor, imaginative play and early literacy skills 🙂

Although not yet officially adopted, Myron is a big part of our family! And we can’t quite remember or imagine what our life was like without him! Happy anniversary to us 🙂

Jody

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Independence in Uganda took place on the 9^th of October 1962. Uganda was one of the many African countries that was colonised by the British.

In the north (not so in central and south Uganda) it is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) days to celebrate. This means meat and lots of it!

Denis, one of our local boda drivers (motorbike taxi), each year takes the initiative and buys a bull to be slaughtered in the early hours of the day. It is then wheel-barrowed up to the designated sale position and sold bones and all to the queuing community. To ensure all the meat is sold, he has employed a very unique marketing strategy: Denis leads the bull up and down the main road and down footpaths (of which there are many) speaking to the community and informing them of the vending position as well as taking bookings for specific parts. The head, the 4 legs, the tail and fillet (we booked that one) were sold before his route was complete. This strategy was so successful that by 10.30am all 140kg was sold!

The fillet was pretty good too!

Dan

Here’s a blog post I wrote yesterday for READ for Life about a classroom observation I did. Puts it all in perspective…

This morning I went to observe an early morning ‘extra’ lesson at a

nearby government school at 7.30am. I had recently read an article on BBC News Online with the headline: ‘In school, but learning nothing’. This morning I observed one of these lessons. It was frustrating, and on several occasions I restrained myself from interrupting the teacher to correct her and help the children.

The teacher, approaching retirement age, had attended one of my training sessions on teaching reading with phonics. But simply attending a training and teaching a ‘phonics’ lesson doesn’t necessarily transform teaching; there’s a lot more to it than that!

Some of the highlights of the lowlights would have to be the teacher mispronouncing sounds and making grunts of sounds and asking children to write that word – even I had no clue what she was asking them to write. Or the good ol’ pick the word in the teacher’s head question that wastes a lot of time and achieves nothing. No learning took place in that lesson. I waited until the end of the lesson and during marking of the pointless writing exercise I dashed to the head teacher’s office to share my concerns. I left the head teacher’s office with a wider perspective and insight into the story behind the lesson: the teacher has one child, a son who is currently in prison. The family recently purchased land, which the son was looking after, and whilst he is in prison other people tried to steal the land from them. The teacher sought school leave to try and solve the situation. She also has diabetes and HIV and regularly receives treatment from the hospital. Life shifts back in perspective and I consider carefully how to give her feedback.

Meanwhile, I observed two other infant classes in that school. I was blown away in one lesson with the level of progress one teacher had made with his P2 class. I remember observing him more than a year ago and not knowing where to begin with feedback. But today, he taught a quality lesson: he gave constructive feedback to students, had high expectations for his pupils and beautifully scaffolded their learning. I was encouraged and inspired after watching his lesson.

Yes, some children are in school but learning nothing; but fortunately other children are in school and a lot of learning is taking place!

Find out more about how READ for Life is trying to transform teaching and learning in primary schools in Uganda and to flip the switch from children ‘not learning’ in school, to ‘learning in school’. To keep up to date with how we do this, check out our blog and our Facebook page. 

I spent Thursday afternoon teaching reading games with P1 (reception/kindergarten) teachers. Here’s tricky word tic-tac-toe 🙂
One teacher did ask me: but when can I play these games? I don’t have time on the timetable for games, can I do them in the reading lesson? Yes! 

This training session was part of our response to noticing poor reading levels from P1 pupils in our Early Grade Reading Assessments we recently carried out at the end of Term 2. P1 pupils (7 year-olds) were reading at an average of 2 words per minute – we held a super blending training to try and give teachers tools to raise that figure!

Today we said goodbye to our incredible friends Cam and Leah Grant and their two boys who bravely came out from Australia to come and visit us! We were so blessed by their visit: it was refreshing to spend time with old friends and to show them around our Ugandan neighbourhoods… Although we were busy and had a lot on, it was food for the soul 🙂

There’s not water in that bottle…

Climbing buddies

Dan and Cam drinking coffee that took them 2 hours to prepare in a coffee plantation

On a trek around Sipi Falls

In Murchison Park

Leah teaching some teachers in Gulu

The Grants at Sipi Falls

At Sipi Falls…

It’s not a piggery, this time it’s classrooms 🙂
For the past few months Dan has been overseeing the construction of an education complex in Layibi, Gulu, funded by Serve Direct. READ for Life is partnering with Serve Direct and we are excited about the future education opportunities for the local community!

The multi-disciplinary education centre will house a children’s library (first active one in Gulu); classrooms and a teacher training room. The training room will host our nursery teacher’s training college (weekend program) when it opens in February next year; as well as host regular teacher training events. We will keep our training room in Holy Rosary Primary School and now have two training campuses in town (at different locations). Serve Direct will employ local primary teachers to run lessons for classes from the neighbouring primary schools (including Layibi Techo Primary School where our Gulu education journey began). These lessons will be tailored to the specific needs of the learners and will act as remedial lessons to fill in gaps, where a lower teacher-pupil ratio and learning resources could help significantly.

It’s a privilege to work alongside Serve Direct (an organisation with a similar vision to ours) and we are deeply grateful for their investment into our local community here.

We have some exciting plans and dreams for this education centre, keep reading to hear more in the future…

One of the workers finishing the floor in one of the classrooms. 

An architectural drawing of the completed education centre in Layibi, Gulu (not quite sure if it will feature a palm tree though… )

Yesterday I was proud to reach one of my physical/spiritual milestones: to be able to listen to a sermon whilst jogging!

It was refreshing to listen to a sermon from Timothy Keller (an old favourite) and during the jog I made a couple of personal revelations and reflections.

Revelation 1: Here, I have access to the best sermons in the world! In the past I have often been frustrated at the end of a local church service. Frustrated with (in my eyes) the quality of the sermon, the deviation from the text, the volume of the speaker, the off-the-cuff comments about poor treatment of women, my list of negativity goes on. There are many reasons for this, possibly lack of appropriate education is the root cause though. But going without great quality sermons is my own fault. I just need to make time, they are all there online!

Reflection 1: Keller’s sermon ‘The Struggle for Love’ was based on the Genesis story of Jacob when he was tricked into marrying Leah and later marries Rachel (Genesis 29:15-35). One of Keller’s analogies is that we all want to wake up next to Rachel, but in the end we will always wake up next to Leah. He quotes from CS Lewis to explain his analogy well:

‘Most people, if they really learned how to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something this world can never give them’.

Keller recognises that:

‘in all our life, through every event, there will always be a ground note of cosmic disappointment’.

This was a very good reminder for me. Here, away from my creature comforts; my countrymen who understand my sense of humour; my friends who know my history; I sometimes long for people/things that are not here. Possibly I am hoping to wake up next to Rachel, but it’s Leah who greets me in the morning. It’s also a reminder to not look to things or people to fill any void that is there. If you have time, listen to the sermon. You will hopefully be challenged, stretched and learn more like I did.

I went for a jog this morning and listened to half of a really interesting podcast from Invisibilia: Flip the Script. The last two podcasts I have listened to from Invisibilia have made me want to jog further to find out what happens next! Better than a good drumbeat for motivation.

If you have a little time, or want to listen to something whilst cleaning, driving, commuting, download the Flip the Script episode.  It’s about where someone does the opposite of what their natural instinct is, the psychology term is: non-complementary behaviour.

“Love and caring – for most Western countries, these are not among the weapons we use to fight terrorism..”

Regardless of your motivation or belief system, I think we could all benefit from practising non-complementary behaviour in certain situations…

After being a tyrant at the two local teacher’s colleges and finishing with a plea for the student teachers to borrow storybooks from the college library to practise reading aloud… I thought I should look in the primary teacher’s college libraries. What storybooks do they have?

At this local primary teacher’s college this is what I found in the ‘story book’ section. I can just imagine getting out that ‘Windows 2000 Server’ manual for a riveting read to seven-year-olds. Or ‘Cooking Explained’, that’s a real page-turner and will inspire an appetite for reading.

Unfortunately good intentions are not always the best of intentions. I wonder what was running through the mind of the person bringing these books as a donation to this teacher’s college…

This week Catherine was away for training in Central Uganda so I filled her spot teaching in our two local teacher’s colleges with Katie, our awesome Peace Corps Volunteer.

This afternoon we were at the government teacher’s college. It’s exam week (end of term exams start tomorrow), so the student teachers seem quite preoccupied and not as committed as they should be. We had planned a lesson about reading aloud to children and how to conduct a ‘Read Aloud’ lesson. Of course, the content of what we had to teach was in my opinion far more important than exam preparation.

For our second session there were only two students in the front row about 10 minutes after the lesson should have started. Where was everyone else? Studying in the library, revising in the computer room… well go and get them!

The small crowd of students under the mango tree slowly increased. Katie began the lesson whilst I hovered to the side, barking at and cross-examining the late-comers.

Why are you late? I was showering. Showering? During lesson time? There are plenty of other times you should be showering!

Why are you late? I was copying a friend’s notes. Copying! When you should be in class! Sit down!

Why are you walking slowly when you are late to class? Move those legs!

I felt like a character out of a Roald Dahl novel and I couldn’t stop myself!

Later in the lesson I modelled reading aloud with Giraffes Can’t Dance – a beautifully written children’s book about poor Gerald who at the beginning fumbles over his feet, but by the end is a beautiful dancer! The students were enthralled during the reading and we shared some beautiful teaching moments together.

I asked a couple of questions after the book, which was a little enlightening, but also quite frightening, to discover the lack of comprehension abilities of our future primary school teachers.

We then gave them the opportunity to practice reading aloud to each other; something that seemed very new to them. We have a long way to go to work on our fluency… but it was a good start.