Local teachers Melanie Grant and Carmen Christie-Bill had a summer they will never forget.
Along with a team of 25 teachers from Central Alberta, they travelled to Kenya the first two weeks of July on a humanitarian tour organized by A Better World, to share professional development with and teach alongside Kenyan teachers.
“We arrived in Kenya July 1st, and spent our first week in Male (pronounced mallay), which really wasn't a village, but rather a school in the middle of nowhere,” said Grant, who teaches Grade 5 at Innisfail Middle School. “Male Primary School is a kindergarten to Grade 8 facility that A Better World built recently. It is a fairly modern building, but does not have electricity except for one building which is wired for solar, but is not ready yet. In fact, all of the students live simply up to 10 kilometres away, with limited access to basic resources such as water and electricity that we take for granted in Canada.”
Christie-Bill, who teaches senior high social studies at Innisfail Jr/Sr High, volunteered as team leader for the kindergarten to Grade 8 school, and liaised with the Kenyan principal on behalf of the 11 teachers who worked in Male.
“I served in a leadership role with our team, and scheduled the Canadian/Kenyan teachers in terms of teaching and professional development to best facilitate the experience for both teams,” Christie-Bill said.
The teaching team travelled to Kenya prepared.
“We gathered leftover school supplies from our schools, and our colleagues donated funds so we could purchase items the Kenyan students would need. One thing that amazed me was that the Kenyan students had so little, yet did so much with it. Each child had one pencil and one notebook. When we left Male, we presented each student with a new pencil, and left books behind for their resource room,” she added.
Grant taught every day, and was struck by the students' enthusiasm for learning.
“I partnered with Melanie Hillier from Olds, and we taught a variety of subjects. Our blackboards were painted on the walls of the building, and instead of using textbooks, our lessons were taught more by rote, than literary based methods. Science lessons were taught, for instance, with students gathering grasshoppers and butterflies from the nearby field for the science poster! The older the students, the better their English, as their first language is Swahili, so while we learned some local words, we had a definite language barrier.”
Professional development for the Kenyan teachers was a secondary reason for the teachers' trip. Grant and Christie-Bill had a surprise waiting for them.
“What we didn't know was that there was a teachers' strike going on, but the local teachers still came to learn from us. We shared literacy teaching techniques with them, as the students had to transition from Swahili to English, and they appreciated the different insights. We also took math games, playing cards, geometry sets, and dice with us to give them tools to teach mathematics to their students,” added Grant.
Grant reflected on her return, “What struck me the most about the students was their incredible spirit. No matter what was going on around them, or how far they walked to school, they were always ready to learn and truly excited to see us. It was very touching and something I will never forget.”
“I learned as much from the experience as the Kenyan teachers learned from us. Before the trip, I had worked in central office, and now teach senior high social studies. The experiences I had in Kenya now gives me valuable, first hand, more authentic, information to share with my students,” said Christie-Bill.
The trip impacted both teachers far beyond their profession.
“We, as North Americans, are very spoiled. Where we have everything, they are in what we would consider poverty. I think the opposite is true,” Grant said. “Their attitudes and values are so far opposite from what we see every day in Canada that our eyes were opened as to what is really important.”
“People and relationships are more important than the things we work so hard for in North America,” Christie-Bill added. “Their real quality of life is so much better.”
Chinook's Edge School Division No. 73 endorsed the humanitarian trip to Kenya as part of its early efforts to commemorate International Education Week, November 18 to 22 this year.
