What started out as a way to help fellow educators halfway around the world turned into a profound experience for one Olds High School teacher this past summer.
What started out as a way to help fellow educators halfway around the world turned into a profound experience for one Olds High School teacher this past summer.
Melanie Hillier, a new teacher of grades 8 and 9 at OHS this year, spent two weeks in July teaching at the Mali Primary School in Mali, Kenya. She was among a group of about 25 teachers from Central Alberta, B.C. and Saskatchewan, including five from Chinook’s Edge School Division, who went on a trip sponsored by the Lacombe-based organization A Better World, to help provide professional development to teachers.
Hillier said a wrinkle in the process was that the Mali teachers went on strike and the teachers from Central Alberta had to fill in for the Mali teachers most of the time while they were there.
"Our plans had to be adapted a little bit on the spot because when we got there we found out that the teachers were on strike, so we did a lot more working hands-on with the students than with the teachers, but the teachers did show up and do some of the (professional development) that we had planned as well," she said.
Hillier heard about the opportunity from a fellow teacher and seized the chance to share her expertise with other educators.
"It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, teaching and humanitarian (work). I was able to do it all in one trip and it was fabulous. It was a great experience; life changing," she said.
Part of the work in Mali involved giving the teachers different teaching strategies, helping them build lesson plans and then leaving them with different items such as decks of playing cards and dice to help them teach simple ways of understanding math and other tools that teachers could use to help teach the students.
Hillier said the experience was quite striking, realizing the poverty that the students live in on a daily basis. She said most have no access to running water and very little nutrition. While the school, which was built by A Better World, has running water, a breakfast program that the school sometimes offers was not operating while she was there because of a lack of resources.
"Most of these students at home don’t have running water. We visited the homes of some of the students on the last day and it’s complete devastation. There’s no running water, their crops are completely dry, they live in shacks," she said. "For us, we couldn’t foresee what we would be dealing with until we got there, so it was definitely a shock to see that they have (very little). You know that it’s a poor country going over there, but you don’t realize that they have absolutely nothing."
Most of what students have has been donated to them, including the school uniforms they wear, Hillier said.
"Despite having nothing, they still have the most incredible work ethic and just sheer happiness. They were so keen to learn, to be in the classroom. Even with the teachers being on strike, the teachers shouldn’t have been there, but they (were) because they wanted to get the professional development," she said.
After seeing what the students in Kenya go through and the lack of resources they have, Hillier said the experience gave her a new perspective.
"We’re so caught up in everything and (have) all these learning resources. Really, with absolutely nothing you can accomplish the same goal. (The students in Kenya) are just so happy and take advantage of every opportunity," she said.
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