The Miraculous Workshop

This week we began workshops again, so it was a busy but interesting week.
On Monday I worked hard at getting this research topic I am carrying out into shape. I am researching the attitude of children to learning English, more because it is expected that academic members of staff should engage in research and our department has been a little lax in this area so I thought I would do something to set an example but it has been interesting if a little time consuming.
Tuesday saw the first of our second semester of workshops, this workshop deals with organising the classroom and using action research as a problem solving technique. So Tuesday was the school with the most problems and the least English, always good to begin with a challenge. However about 45 minutes of the workshop was taken up by them arguing over their problems in Amharic, I began to my think that we may have done more harm than good drawing attention to all the problems, however on Friday I called into the school for another purpose and to my utter astonishment they are actively trying to solve their problems, the teachers were arranging their classrooms and had got locks for the doors (resources going missing was a big problem). They had also decided as a staff to donate a certain part of their salary each month to form a breakfast club for the hungry students and to buy notebooks and pens for those students who can’t afford them. I was speechless, I couldn’t believe that they were actually really getting to grips with the issues and coming up with their own solutions. It is things like this that reassure me that I am not wasting my time here and that there is a need to share skills and not just money with developing countries.
So this miraculous workshop continued all week and was well received in all schools, which is surprising as in essence it says “you aren’t trying hard enough and you have to solve your own problems, no-one else is going to do it for you” however with the action research model I think the teachers are surprised themselves that by discussing the problems and brainstorming they can actually come up with their own solutions. Another good example of this was the school I trained with on Friday; this schools main problem outside of not having materials was a lack of skill and confidence on the part of some teachers in organising their classrooms. They decided to come to the college on Saturday to see the model classroom and while there had a discussion about what they could do, and they have decided to organise all the classrooms as a team, instead of each teacher having to organise his or her classroom by him/herself so this will share skills and ensure all classrooms are well organised, also because of the shift system different grades use the classrooms in the morning and afternoon, but they have decided to rearrange the timetable so the same grade uses the classroom morning and afternoon to allow them to share resources. They also managed to collect a lot of materials from different departments in the college while there.
So all in all this workshop is going very well and so far is already showing great results. I was further reassured of the value of the programme when I visited a teacher who had attended a continuous assessment workshop at the beginning of the last semester, she showed me all the records she had kept of assessment and even though she had 56 children in her class she had really comprehensive records of their performance in all subjects and records of the assessment techniques she had used, I think she would put a lot of teachers at home to shame!
We also had a visit from Hossanna College of Teacher Education on Monday, getting a little tired of all the visitors to the college but I suppose it does show that the college is held in high regard by other colleges. Each visit involves a dinner or lunch which we always are invited to so that is nice and of course this one was no different only this time the people I ended up sitting with had very little English so between Amharic and English the conversation didn’t last too long.
We will be off on our own college tour soon which has been rearranged to take in a few more tourist attractions such as Harrar which is a very old walled muslim city and Awash national park which has a lot of wildlife so it sounds like it will be a good trip. This is following our trip to Gondar next week for the clustering workshop. I am heading up to Addis on Thursday for the Irish Embassies St. Patrick’s Day Party which hopefully should be fun. I of course had nothing that I could possibly wear to the party so had to go shopping yesterday and managed to get an outfit, not sure it is exactly what I would have bought if I was at home but never the less it will do.
No real other news, played a lot of table tennis yesterday and went to lunch in Yikatties house, Yikattie works in the English department and we are good friends. Then today we had a procession of visitors. This morning I decided that seeing as we have a well fenced in compound and given that the outfit I bought will show some previously unexposed parts of my body, I should sunbathe to get rid of the farmer tan, here in work it is really only ok to have your lower arms and head uncovered everything else is covered up. So I was sitting out trouser rolled up, sleeves rolled up when who should let himself into our compound but our landlord, at home you wouldn’t care but I am developing a sense of Ethiopian modesty so was highly embarrassed so he came in for a cup of tea, soon after Steve the other volunteer called with Mohamed the vice dean and his two children and then Yikattie and then Addis another woman from work so it was a very full house but really nice to see everyone, Dessie being Dessie everyone seemed to know each other anyway. Later Yikattie, Addis, Steve, Gill and I went for lunch and met up with another teacher Ashenafi for coffee afterwards, Steve came back to use my computer and has only left. So the weekend has flown by, it is amazing how easy it is to settle into a place like this.
My stomach is improving, I have identified foods which cause pain which unfortunately rules out most of the food available here, as it is lent Christians can’t buy meat at the moment, so we had to ask a muslim friend to get us meat the other day as any kind of spice was causing a lot of pain but thankfully it is improving now.

Anyway that is all the news, I shall be away next week but will post when I return the following weekend.

Ciao and Lá ‘le Pádraig Sona Daoibh

Orla

Busy Busy Week

Well it was a busier week this week than many of the previous weeks. On Monday Bonga college came on a visit to Dessie, with them was a volunteer Monique was the Netherlands who we know, so we went out for dinner and had a lovely evening with her.

College tours are very popular in Ethiopia; basically all the lectures in the college get on a bus and travel around for a week or two visiting other colleges and sharing experience and from what I have seen we have hosted three colleges so far they are very worthwhile. The colleges get to see each others work and ask questions about how other colleges have solved similar problems to ones they are facing and they are social occasions too with lunches and dinners so it means that the Education community in Ethiopia is a close knit one even though the country is huge. So Dessie will be heading off on a tour too, in 20 days time all the staff will be going to Addis Ababa, Nazareth, Awassa, Dilla and Jimma. It will take ten days and while ten days on the bus does sound like hell, I am really looking forward to seeing the South of Ethiopia, seeing other colleges and getting to know our colleagues better.

Tuesday saw us sorting out 15,000 birr worth of books which the college had bought for our department, so it was a long day of cataloguing and shelving the books, but our unit now has a well equipped library which will serve the local teachers, as the local libraries have very few books on Education. Also on Tuesday we went to the Preparatory school and spoke to the students about our countries and showed them pictures and that, they really enjoyed it and we will be making a programme to go regularly to support the English department. On Tuesday we also registered local school directors and supervisors for a computer course, myself and Tammarat (the computer technician) are giving the course and the trainees had probably never seen a computer before, I also wonder when in the future they will ever get a computer but still should computers suddenly zoom to Ethiopia, these directors and supervisors will be ready! And they are very keen, yesterday there was no electricity and they still all turned up and wanted a lesson so I surprised myself by teaching computers for an hour with no electricity! The fact that Tuesday was pancake Tuesday did not escape our attention and even without real milk we managed to make pancakes with powdered milk and they were very nice.

On Wednesday we had a meeting of all the supervisors in Kombolcha and Dessie and the Woreda (local authority) Education Officers, the meeting went well mostly in Amharic so was quite tiring for us to try and concentrate and there was a lot of political talk, most of the people high up in Education are also members of the Government party so frequently have to spend their work time doing other political things so it leads to problems, but in the end I think they all sorted most of it out and have agreed now at our suggestion to have monthly meetings so that the problems don’t just build up. We will be delivering training starting from next week for first cycle teachers in Classroom organisation and Action Research and then following that we will train second cycle teachers in English and Mathematics. So it will be nice to be back out in the field again (as they say over here).

Thursday was a holiday here, not that anyone noticed in work till we pointed it out. So I took advantage of the day off to go back to the clinic, where first off they didn’t want to see me because I hadn’t got my pink card, but as luck would have it one of the local teachers was also there and his uncle owns the clinic so he got behind the counter and found my file and brought it down to the doctor for me. After a short wait I got to see the doctor who has decided I now have a peptic ulcer! I think you could go in to the clinic with a headache and come out with a brain tumour! I was then given a full tour of the hospital, which has an operating theatre, a labour ward, general wards, dentist, x-ray department, it is they told me the best hospital in the region, so should I get very ill I am very lucky to be living directly across the road from the hospital!

On Friday we went to the kindergarten, this time Gillian had made play dough and the children had great fun making things from the play dough and nattering away to us in Amharic, which they obviously don’t realise we can’t speak. We planned out the forthcoming workshops and prepared resources for a school which had requested help.

Today we went to Robbit school where we once again sorted millions of books and shared them out between schools which were there, so it was a bit of a busy week but the coming weeks will be busier, I think we have work scheduled up until the middle of May so it will be all go, which is good.

So I didn’t know what to give up for lent, as there isn’t much left to give up over here, but then the doctor decided for me, he has told me not to drink alcohol for the duration of my medication which coincidently is forty days, so its no drink for me or berbere (which they put in everything here) or coffee or citrus fruits and really I am not to eat most of the available foods in Ethiopia, so it will be a fun lent! This week I have mostly been eating cabbage and lentils not my favourite foods!

Anyway take care and have a good week,
Ciao
Orla