Dan and Jodes… in Gulu, Uganda

Three months ago I asked many of you to pray for Teacher Bonny, a teacher who I have been working with who was diagnosed with TB and very sick. He lost a lot of weight, was out of school and in and out of hospital for the first term of school, but now he seems to be well on the road to recovery. He is still on treatment, but doing well. Bonny was able to help out with a small team of facilitators to lead two days of teacher training at El Shaddai Primary School in Gulu this week (the last week of the school holidays here). El Shaddai is a private school and has the best reputation for results in Gulu. It was a tough crowd but a brilliant two days for many reasons. Here are a few:

1. It was brilliant because… it was the first training Teacher Bonny was able to help out with. This was a huge encouragement and motivating factor for him. And it was lovely for us to have him to help (there were 55 teachers present, so we needed a lot of help!)
2. It was the last training for Tara-Lee Duffy, an intern with CEED (Community, Empowerment, Education, and Development) Concordia, (a Canadian-based charity) who has been helping with training and giving feedback to schools. She has been an incredible help. It will be sad to see her go, and teachers will miss her here, but it is lovely for her to end on a high!
3. Teacher Caroline really stepped up to the mark! She was awesome! Caroline is a teacher employed by the parent community at a local government school (that means her salary is about one quarter of her government-employed colleagues). She is a brilliant reading teacher for P1 (reception/kindergarten) and I have slowly been including her in some of my trainings when needed. I also love how this was an incredible boost for her. For her to be teaching the best teachers in Gulu, that’s pretty awesome!
4. The teachers were amazing! It was such a high-energy training. I had grown men singing ‘the wheels on the bus’ at the top of their lungs; upper primary teachers actively participating in games for nursery children; was regularly ambushed with questions which told me teachers were thinking; and there was an applause after our first few phonics songs were played.
5. Many teachers had asked about how to pronounce different words. After attempting to answer about 40 on the spot at one stage (and deferring a few until lunch when I had time to ‘google’ them); I then asked teachers to write any words they wanted help with on the chalkboard at lunch and we would discuss them after lunch. I returned to an absolutely full chalkboard!

A truly motivating and engaging two days. Thanks El Shaddai Primary School! Don’t think this is the last we will see of you 🙂

Saturday we started our first lot of training specifically in IMO (indigenous micro-organisms) piggery. This is a great, newish organic system that was developed in South Korea. In a nutshell, we introduce IMO from the surrounding area to the floor area of the pig pen (which is made out of rice husks or sawdust etc); it breaks all the faeces down and in doing so takes away the smell of the pig pen completely. It is a fantastic system which is ideal for semi-urban agriculture. The pigs are also a lot happier as they are not on cement floors, they can dig and do what pigs do. The empty the floor after six months or so and it can go straight onto the garden as nutrient-rich compost/manure.

I put together a training manual that we are using for the course, taught by local trainer Denish. We have about 10 participants in all different stages of life – from a retired doctor to a school secretary/widower and a local boda driver (motorbike taxi) – all wanting to learn the IMO technology. It is running over two weekends, with the last day being a life skills training day in the forest of TRP.

One of the participants has particularly encouraged me: he was keen for me to take his picture all the time during different stages of the process. His logic was ‘when I am old, I will show my grandchildren where I learnt this technology. And when I have 500 pigs in the future, these pictures will be memorabilia.’ 

Dan

I had a mini melt down after chatting to a representative from the National Curriculum Development Committee (NCDC) yesterday to confirm my presentation was still going ahead tomorrow (May 25). He told me that all the attendees were ‘in the field’; and by ‘in the field’ he meant all across the country! He apologized and asked to reschedule. I wanted to scream and cry at the same time. I certainly didn’t sound very gracious and humble replying how I was currently in Kampala and had planned my two-week schedule around this meeting. He explained that most officials were conducting refresher training for the RTI School Health and Reading Program (SHARP) across the country. This made me more livid! I had been to those trainings and knew the program quite well. Some people mistakenly think I am a tutor with the program. Well funded by an international NGO – lots of resources and funding to help teach rote learning and memorisation. Such fun! The very thing I am advocating against in schools here.

Ironically, half of my presentation was going to be on the shortfalls of this reading program and a possible way forward.

That was the one goal scored by the other side.

On a brighter note, I had quite an encouraging meeting today with two representatives from USAID, the major donor of the RTI SHARP Reading Program. They were humble, willing to learn, and appreciated our discussion.

It is difficult dealing with government officials, especially when I won’t splash money their way. I also think there are significant undercurrents and resistance to positive change, especially for the poor (all government officials’ children would attend private schools, so little of what I am discussing would effect them personally).

I am trying to reschedule a meeting for a few weeks’ time with the key education players in the government. Please pray for this! Don’t give up, and I won’t either.

Can you believe it! Here are a few snaps of some of the work the Spencer family of Molong, NSW, have put in for a piggery fundraiser for The Recreation Project in Gulu. They have exceeded the target of $5000 (AUS) and have raised enough to build a 10-stall piggery. The piggery will help generate funds to sustain the life skills training section of The Recreation Project as well as being used for vocational training in pig husbandry, specifically indigenous micro-organism (IMO). The plan is eventually to raise enough out-growers (pig farmers) that will be the first step of a value-chain that we hope to end with a butchery with value-added products.

A BIG thank you to Wayne, Julie, Joe and Adam Spencer, and all the community members of Molong and further afield who helped reach the target.

Dan

Some solitude, sanctuary… feel the serenity! That’s what we needed and that’s what we are doing! We are taking a few days off from the day-to-day craziness to take a rest along the River Nile. This has been a challenging month for various reasons, but it is brilliant to slow down, read, rest, reflect, eat great food (possibly too much, I can hear my Gulu friends now: you have seriously grown fatter!), swim and have no great plans for each day.

Blessed to be able to getaway to such a beautiful hideaway. The bottom picture is literally the view from our room 🙂

This weekend I returned with Teacher Catherine to Mega Radio station in Gulu to run a one-hour program on how to teach reading. Catherine and I attended the studio last week for what we thought was a one-off, one-hour pre-recorded session. We had a lot of fun during the recording, it certainly was a little difficult teaching reading on the radio when listeners can’t obviously see what you are talking about; but I think it went well. When radio presenter Teacher Jackline was winding up the program she told the listeners to tune in again next Saturday when we would be back, live in the studio with a class of children!

We returned yesterday, with ‘Mega Classroom’, and recorded the second session with 15 children in the studio; the children participated in the interactive program while others rang in. Catherine did a stirling job and we are receiving a very positive response from the community. We will return again next Saturday for another session.

After two years of lobbying and contacting education authorities about curriculum reform, particularly in the teaching of reading, I finally have a one-day presentation scheduled for next month with the education commissioner, curriculum specialists, Ministry of Education officials and representatives from the National Curriculum Development Committee (NCDC) of Uganda.

I am pretty stoked that this event is planned – quite incredible to get all these education ‘bigwigs’ together to listen to what I have to say.

I have been in communication with the Head of Primary at the NCDC planning this for a few months now. Initially, I had planned for a two-day training event. I was going to present key skills in teaching reading, then make a presentation about a heavily funded reading program which (to be brutally honest) is lots of money and resources to make rote learning easier. Thanks for that one NGO world! You are making my life easier (not!)

I was asked if I would contribute to a transport refund for people from other offices attending. The people from other offices are all highly paid government or charity education workers. ‘Transport refund’ is a term used
to describe paying people to attend your meeting or training. This started out as a well-meaning ‘carrot’ by NGOs to gather people for meetings for important information about a range of topics. Nowadays, people will say it is part of local culture.

Here in Gulu I have conducted possibly more than 50 training events but never once have I given ‘transport refund’. I have actually tried to put this western-introduced idea on its head by asking schools to refund my transport. Which means schools will pay me the cost of my boda (motorbike taxi) to school; this on average is a $2.50 (£1.30) return journey. Part of encouraging locals to invest in the training means they take ownership of it and are more likely to implement it.

So, can you guess what my response was when I was asked to supply a transport refund to these highly paid professionals living in Kampala? I said no.

I was notified this week that the two days of training and presentations have been reduced to one day because I am not supplying a transport refund. The Head of Primary Curriculum
said to me if after the first day those attending do not receive a ‘transport refund’ then they would not return for the second day.

Oh well – one day it is then.

The presentations are planned for Wednesday, May 25. Please pray that this day will go ahead! That it will not be cancelled, and for the preparations that will go into it. Pray I will be able to effectively inform the key education stakeholders about the key skills involved in reading and what is needed to help reform education here. And that, hopefully, one day in the future this can be acted upon.

Most of my work here is with government schools or local private schools, however occasionally I have worked with a few NGO-supported schools – all schools here need help with teaching children to read and write. I recently returned to visit a primary school run by a large international charity. They also regularly receive international volunteers for various periods of time. I was asked to come and do some training with the teachers last year. I did. During the training I organised a little ‘mock’ lesson with some of the pupils and I was absolutely shocked with how low their reading and writing ability was – it was lower than many of the government schools I work with.

I was asked to return this year to repeat the training since some teachers missed out. I requested one day of lesson observations before training. I observed six lessons and saw one of the six teachers implementing well what I had taught last year (but at quite a low level for the age of the learners). Two teachers were new and hadn’t received the training: in one of those classes I saw classic rote learning teaching practices. In the nursery classes teachers had smatterings of good reading practices, but not much. Class sizes were large: there were 65 three-year-olds in one room. During the lesson I observed children were falling asleep, falling off chairs and fighting whilst the teaching attempted to teach from the front of the classroom. Many of these children are sponsored and their school fees are paid for. On the charity’s website they claim to be providing the best quality education that they can afford for the poorest children in their area.

I was disappointed in a few ways, questioning how well donor funding was being spent as well as being disappointed that the training had not been implemented as well as I had hoped.

I had an interesting journey back to town with a couple of local employees from the organisation (one of them driving a very nice car). They also gave one of their friends a lift back to town with me. She shared some of her concerns with me after we had been dropped off in the local market. I was super impressed with this lady’s thinking. She said to me: ‘I have a lot of friends in this organisation, so I keep my mouth shut. They are benefitting, getting paid well and doing well in life but I see that they don’t care for the children, which is what the organisation is all about. And no staff member sends their child there, which says a lot. The community looks to the school as a place where kids get fed for free, but not a school offering good education. You only have to look at results to see that’. She also mentioned how the short-term western visitors come, visit the children’s home, cuddle the babies, greet the children in class, think everything is amazing, and then return home again. She said: ‘I read a lot, observe and think, but I keep my mouth shut’.

Those of you who have been following our Gulu journey would have heard a little about Teacher Catherine. We taught together at Layibi Techo Primary School for almost two years; and throughout last year we have been training together at different schools throughout Gulu town, along with me taking teachers to observe model phonics reading lessons with her P1 class.

I had to think fast a couple of weeks ago when there was a change of head teacher at her school. She was getting a few job offers from head teachers around town, and she had also applied for a job in a district school (out of town). I have been training and mentoring Catherine for over three years – she’s brilliant! Such a humble, dedicated, hard-working and passionate teacher. I knew she would be accepted for a job in the district (higher pay) but I didn’t want to lose her. So what do I do? Offer her a job myself 🙂

I am so excited to announce that Catherine is working alongside me full-time now: her main role is to train local teachers in better methods of teaching reading and writing, and carry out follow-up visits to schools. Layibi Techo Primary will certainly miss Catherine. But hundreds of local teachers across Gulu municipality will now gain from her expertise, passion and leadership. Catherine has only been on the job for a week and already she has co-trained with me at two schools; conducted model phonics lessons at two schools and helped with observation lessons at three schools. It is way more powerful when Catherine stands in front of a class and demonstrates a lesson than if I do. And now teachers are asking Catherine for her number (not me) and asking Catherine to come back and help them. Awesome!

Together, we have conducted training at more than 20 primary schools in the Gulu municipal (and a few more just out of that boundary). Now the real work starts when we go to follow-up those schools.