The
thing I have noticed lately is that the more time we spend here the faster
everything seems to go. It is now March 15th and we have been in
country for more than nine months.
Last month we watched the Super
Bowl, our first away from America. And in order to do this we had to ask our
friend, a bar owner, to keep his place open all night because the game would be
playing at two am our time. By the time the game was over the sun was coming up.
School had just had first semester exams and was ready for a two week break.
Well, for Scott it was a two week break. My school went right back to work
after one week of holiday.
For the second semester I
decided that whatever I wanted to in the school I was just going to do without
the sweet demeanor I had in the first semester. I was no longer going to ask
multiple times for resources or attendance to my English club meetings. I know
we have that saying in America “if you want something done you have to do it
yourself”. Well, I have never taken that more seriously. I am supposed to be
incorporating local materials and community members but when people are utterly
unwilling to attend the things they say they so desperately need, you lose patience
with them and begin to work only with people who actually show up. I may have
only a few people I work with but when we work together we get things done.
Sorry for the rant but I guess
it helped me transition into my main reason for writing.
I
have had an amazing couple of weeks. Not only did we run in a 10K (my first)
and finish well but I have also been having huge successes in my professional life and I guess I can attribute these successes to my new tolerance.
With the help of my friend Becca
and my husband Scott we have started and will finish a World Map Project at my
school. The map they had before was outdated and not to scale. Plus, it was in
Tigrinya. This map will help students identify the different countries and
improve their English. The bright side is that I get to paint something. That’s
one of the projects that I have going that will provide quick and lasting results.
I began my English club with
students and my kids are the best. They
are willing to work hard and have fun. We meet every Monday at 4:30pm and so
far everything has been going well. I have made contacts at our Regional
Education Bureau (REB) and we have begun the process of implementing CPD. The REB is in charge of the education system in Tigray. For
those of you who don’t know what CPD is I am going to tell you right now.
CPD, or Continual Professional
Development, is a program mandated by the Ministry of Education in which all
teachers and schools continually develop through trainings, mentor programs,
and certificate earnings. As of late most teachers (in Ethiopia) do not
understand or implement CPD, nor do the Directors of each school. Every school
will tell you that they do, but in reality there is no trace of an efficient CPD anywhere.
The MoE and Regional Education Bureau have yet to figure out a way to ensure
CPD practices in the school because of under staffing and high turnover rates
within the school system. They have also not noticed that they have fully
trained, and better yet, free staff in their school to help develop the CPD
program, the Peace Corps Volunteers.
In the last two weeks I have
made a wonderful contact at the REB with the help of my British Volunteer
friend, Barbara. We have been able to break down the process of CPD and
conveyed that information to the Tigray PCV’s during our Regional IST this past
week. It’s a very complicated process and I now understand why no one has been
implementing CPD. In the past Cluster Supervisors have given one training on
how to conduct CPD but haven’t evaluated teachers understanding of it nor do
they monitor application. This is where Peace Corps can come in. We have the
training and the time to help teachers record and gain CPD hours (each teacher
is required to have 60 CPD credit hours).
To top this all off my Program
Manager, Daniel Okubit, wants me to help develop a module for the other
education PCV’s in Ethiopia and make my school a model school for CPD
implementation. For this process I am going to create and distribute a manual that my fellow PCV's can use to implement our new CPD program. Is this a big project? Yes. But, why not?
