Teaching Together

Another amazing day.

Today we started our "work" here in Uganda doing the things we actually signed up to do!

Six team members went to Sanyu and spent the day organizing, sorting and cleaning the orphanage from top to bottom so that they would know what was there. Apparently the caregivers were thrilled as they have no time to do that type of thing. The six were very excited and enthusiastic about how productive their day had been. Now they are all working around the center getting things ready for their work tomorrow. It is fantastic to see how excited they are!

Kath, Corey and I stayed at the center and worked with teachers who came from surrounding schools. Corey worked with one teacher, Muhamad, and taught information technology, while Kath and I taught Reading Power to 8 teachers. It may not be many but Karine did say yesterday that we would probably have 8 today and 88 by Thursday as the word spread. As it is, Muhamad spoke with his colleagues and Corey can expect to have a full class of 8 tomorrow. The teachers who worked with Kath and I also said that they would tell their colleagues and that we should expect more. I liked only having 8 because we were able to sit together and discuss about reading and the challenges we all face when teaching reading. It was a great morning but the highlight of it all was when I showed them a little trick that I learned last year for getting students to summarize what they have read. All the teachers were as excited about that as we had been when we learned the trick back in our workshop last September. That was a great moment when we all went "ooooooooh!". I think the teachers are quite surprised to learn that we are facing the same problems as they are when it comes to decoding and comprehension while reading.

Two teachers came from Nateete which just thrilled me because they are a very poor school and it is far away. The two asked if they could take enough for each class and I said that they certainly could. Now they will go and teach Reading Power to their colleagues. That's what this is all about: sharing these programs with the teachers and then having them share the new information with each other.

Kath and I spent the afternoon teaching four boys to play Yatzee. Michael, Samuel, Walter and Edward played two games of Yatzee with us and seemed to quite enjoy it. We'll see if they come for a rematch tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will be repeating the same program as today and then Wednesday and Thursday we will do Math and Science. That will be more hands-on demonstrations. I hope it proves to be useful for those teachers who come. Most of what I know is more elementary oriented but they can take what they can and leave the rest. It's just great to have the chance to interact together.

I am going to the hospital tomorrow to visit Muhamad's mother. That could be an interesting experience. She is over 70 years old and is suffering from some type of brain disorder. They are very concerned because she s not eating. Life expectancy in this country is 52.

So, touch wood, the Internet is been very generous with us this evening and we are all madly emailing and blogging to get our thoughts down to share with our families and friends. Corey is taking some awesome pictures so please take a look at the Niteo website: www.niteoafrica.org to see what we are doing and the beautiful people we are interacting with.

Time for a shower and a sleep.