Teacher Training Conference

Participating in the Teacher Training Program was quite an experience. Despite sporadic moments of frustration, I have to say I found the week to be an overarching success. It was definitely very encouraging to work with so many eager teachers and it really reinvigorated my belief that OLPC was making a difference in transforming Rwanda's educational system. While some of my past experiences with teacher training at Rwamagana and Nonko have demonstrated that teacher training is often seen as a burden for the teachers more than anything else, this week told a very different story. All of the three hundred teachers at the conference arrived bright eyed with an unquestionable interest in understanding the XO. The teachers that I worked with, some who had never even worked with a computer before, seemed to love the training and wanted to take away as much as they could. The afternoons were filled with their endless questions and it was easy to see that the teachers were really trying to coordinate their lesson plans around using the XO. Truly, I genuinely believed that the teachers were more than pleased at the end of teacher training and if we were to evaluate our work based on the satisfaction of our trainees, our marks would be steller.

One of the things that I am most proud of and feel the most personally invested in would be the theatre performance put on by all the interns. In spite of a lot of worrying and a good bit of frustration, at the end of it, I was quite proud and I thought that it turned out rather well. Most importantly, I think the teachers were entertained and amused enough for the important information to stick.

However, despite all the great things about the teacher training, I can't help but notice the flaw in not allowing the teachers to take home the laptops after teacher training was over. While many of the teachers, including the ones who were really struggling at the beginning, had made a lot of progress by the time teacher training was over, I am sure that if they do not consistently practice their skills on the XO, all the progress wil be lost. If we allow the teachers to take the laptops home, they will be allowed to spend more time working with the programs and may ultimately understand how to bring the XO into the classroom environment and can better train the students. Really, I think OLPC Rwanda should look into finding a way for the teachers to have more time with the XO so they can be better equipped for the classroom. With this change, I am confident that teacher training, though on a good track right now, can continue to be a highly successful initiative for OLPC Rwanda.