Well Done to our Teacher Training Class

This blog is long overdue….

It has been a very, very busy last couple of months at the Timothy Centre, with the completion of our first teacher training course (August 26 – September 11).  All of the preparations for the final module on Methodology were finally completed a couple of days before the teachers arrived.

It was great to have two other teachers help facilitate this module.  On August 21, Rayleen arrived from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and helped with some of the set up, preparation of materials, repairing of mosquito nets in the dorms, setting up the resource library, etc.

   

Rayleen is a recent university graduate (B.Ed) and the daughter of a very good friend….and she grew up listening to stories of our work and ministry at Kibaale Community Centre and Timothy Centre when I would visit back in Canada over the last 20 years.  It was wonderful to have her participate in this teaching module.  Then on August 23, just two days before the teachers started reporting, Lizabee (our Pacific Academy colleague) also arrived from Canada to begin another year of service at Timothy Centre as the Director of Education.

She was also a huge help during the module, team teaching with Rayleen for a couple of the days that I needed to be away conducting a workshop at the UCU satellite campus in Kabale (near the Rwandan border in the far west region of Uganda).  Rayleen and Lizabee took responsibility for the marking of the teachers’ assignments for this module—a big job and a blessing to the teachers who were very happy to get more immediate feedback this time round.

The teachers participated whole heartedly in the class discussions and group work, and found the topics in this module especially practical as we focused on the biblical principles for teaching critical thinking, student-oriented active learning, classroom management and discipline (a hot topic in a culture where physical abuse in schools occurs too often), brain research and learning (one of their favourite topics it turned out!), cooperative learning techniques (as opposed to the highly competitive methods used almost exclusively in Ugandan schools), and cultural learning styles (helping teachers to recover and maximise traditional learning methods).

    

Towards the end of the two and a half weeks, we also gave teachers choices in some very practical workshops on early literacy teaching methods, hands-on mathematics methods, teaching student note-taking skills, and the use of graphic organisers.  These workshops catered to all levels (nursery and early primary up to secondary).  For the last two days, teachers had opportunity to make teaching aids (charts, big books, math games, etc.) to take back to their classrooms.  All the cardboard and other ‘junk’  that we had been collecting over the last 3-4 years was well used!

                                                                        

One of our Kibaale Primary School teachers, Margaret,  who has been attending our course was expecting her baby a couple of days after the start date of this module.  She wanted to finish the course so badly that she decided to come and to pray that the baby would wait until she was done with her studies.  She came faithfully each day and worked hard to complete here assignments….and went into labour the day we finished!  She has a lovely new daughter named Patience!

We will miss this group of dedicated teachers, as we have grown close in heart over the last two years.  We pray they will be a great blessing to their schools and to every student they teach!