Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Training Of Trainers- A First Step In Advancing Education in Schools Of The Diocese Of Haiti
While researching funding sources for my daily living expenses and special projects in Haiti. I learned of a special grant program available through St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Annapolis, Md. They had several priorities in their giving, among them education. I spoke with one of the members of the Grants Committee before departing for Haiti, so I had a sense of the competition for these awards and the kind of projects that might be most appealing. I did not have enough substantive information to complete the application in advance of my departure for Haiti. However, I did know that my goal as a Missioner and the hope and expectation of St. Margaret’s was the development of a sustainable, capacity building project. I began to imagine a peer training programs for teachers of the schools administered by the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti. I looked forward to testing the idea out on Rev. Oge Beauvoir, Dean of Seminaire de Theologie and Executive Director of the Bureau of Anglican Education of Haiti (BAEH).
Once I got my bearings in Haiti, one of my top priorities was the grant to St. Margaret’s. The deadline was the end of November, so there not time to lose. As I shared the premise for the proposal, I was thrilled to learn that Marianne Palisse, an education missionary and Assistant Dean at the Episcopal University of Haiti, had the very same idea. I received all the additional details needed to complete the proposal, including the fact that only 8% of the teachers in the private sector are trained and 15% in the public sector, and submitted it on November 30. As projected, we received word in February that we were among the proposals that made the cut. We were ecstatic. Following two rounds of follow up questions and a couple of conference calls, we anxiously awaited the final decision. In May, we were thrilled to receive word that teacher training project had been awarded $10,000. It was a wonderful start to what we hoped to be a three-year training program.
The months of planning and preparation passed quickly. Soon August 24th arrived and the beginning of the first 2-week training of trainers was here. Virginie Hoareau, the BAEH Director of Pedagogy, was recovering from surgery, so I served as an administrator for the program. This included gathering all the personal information on the teachers, producing name tags, tracking attendance, taking pictures and assigning a different participant to write a daily blog entry on the experience. Greeting each person as they arrived and managing these details really gave me a chance to get to know the different teachers. There were 20 participants, representing all 5 Archdeaconries. Many came long distances, some making the trip on a daily basis and others staying with family and friends in and around the Port au Prince.
The days were LONG and HOT. August was, without question, the steamiest month of my residency. We began at 8:30 a.m., took a 20-minute break around 10:30 a.m., had lunch at 1 p.m. and concluded the day at 4:30 p.m. The training was facilitated by Monsieur Rouille and Monsieur Maucouvert, two members of GREF, an organization of Retired French School teachers who offer their extensive experience to provide training to other teachers in French speaking countries. Though Haiti has a long history of rote learning, Monsieur Rouille and Monsieur Maucouvert emphasized the didactic approach to learning. This was reinforced in the training experience through small group discussions and individual and group presentations. Furthermore, with 4 female teachers in a group of 20 participants (a ratio, representative of the overall teaching population in Haiti), some important attention was given to encouraging their confidence and leadership in the academic arena.
Through the two-week session, the group focused first on philosophy of teaching, followed by an overview of Haitian curriculum and requirements of the Haitian Ministry of Education, instruction on the creation of a lesson plan, and, finally, a presentation of a class in each of the core subject areas. The last day was spent reviewing the overall training and determining, as a group, what should be placed in the training manual that would be assembled and sent to the team electronically by Monsieur Rouille and Monsieur Maucouvert.
The next training will take place during the two week around Mardi Gras in February. Although it was originally to focus on the newly trained trainers being observed training others, the GREF facilitators felt that another two weeks with the original group would be beneficial. July 2010 will be a month long training by the newly formed Haitian trainers throughout the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti, with GREF representatives offering counsel where needed.
It was very rewarding to see one of the projects first envisioned during my early weeks in Haiti come to fruition. The Teachers Training Teachers program is a perfect example of an initiative where I was only tangentially involved and which can, therefore, be easily sustained after I return to the states.
To learn more about this training, please visit the BAEH blog, baehdioceseofhaiti.blogspot.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)