Saturday, June 29 The wedding!
Sunday, June 30 – traveling home
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Errands and a Party
Thursday, June 27
Friday, June 28
Mostly Music!
Monday, June 24
Tuesday, June 25
Wednesday, June 26
Fri June 21
Sat June 22 – Gorillas!
The rest of the day
Sunday, June 23
Wed June 19
Tour of St. Ignace Primary and Secondary Private School
Thurs June 20 Visit #2 to Camp Kigali Public School
Camp Kigali Public School visit - This is all about what I learned about public education in Rwanda
· We dropped our student off at her internship with a teacher at the public school called Camp Kigali. Gerise and I got to stick around for the morning. We met the teacher (who Gerise already knew) and she gave us a tour of the school. When I refer to the teacher, I am referring to this particular teacher who spoke with us a great deal. · Basics of Camp Kigali campus o Camp Kigali is a school that is for age 3 through what they call Senior 6, which is essentially like our 12th grade. The layout of grades is like this:
· Rwandan school calendar o Students go to school year-round, from 8-5-ish 5 days a week. Their school year is from January through November. They have 3 trimesters – from Jan-April then a 2-week break; mid-April through mid-July then a 2-week break; then August through early November. They get about 6 weeks off from mid-November until around mid-January. I’m going to talk about some of the most salient aspects of public education that I learned as I observed while we were there, and while we talked to the teacher and the Head Mistress. · The growth of public education here o I learned a lot about the growth of the public schools in Rwanda over the past several years. I’m not sure if right after the genocide was the marker for more focus on education, but it seems to me that sometime soon after that is when the government started focusing on getting more students to go to school. o The biggest success in Rwanda’s education, it seems, is that they have the highest percentage of students in school of any African country – at 96.5%. That’s so great! Before, many children didn’t have to go to school, or just didn’t. Now, students are required to go to school for 9 years. · Class sizes, OMG o Since there has been such a focus on getting all children to be in school, they now have huge class sizes, with not enough teachers, not enough classrooms, and not enough teacher training. The average class size of the 3-year old Kindergarten classes is about 30. The average class size of Primary School classes is about 40. And the average class size of the Secondary School classes is about 55-60. Some have 70. It was SHOCKING to see so many middle and high school students in one classroom. They have desks that they sit in that are 3 to a desk – they are long benches (enough for 3 students) with a desktop area and no backs to the benches. Very primitive and quite uncomfortable, imho. Also, in the secondary schools all of the TEACHERS MOVE CLASSROOMS, and all of the students stay in the same classroom all day long. You can imagine that it doesn’t make for a very homey environment – there are no posters or pictures or any decorations on the walls, because the rooms do not belong to any one teacher. Not to mention that, at this school, all of the secondary classrooms had windows on either side of them for the majority of the wall space. That causes an enormous amount of distraction for classroom learning. Not to mention the uncomfortable benches students sit on. Not to mention the sheer number of students in one classroom, and of course they tend to talk. So, it is quite a loud (and sometimes chaotic) learning environment, even for the teachers who have the best classroom management. · Teacher training o Now that the vast majority of students are in school, the Rwandan government has placed a major focus on two areas of improving the quality of education in Rwanda. o First is on attracting people into Teacher Training Programs. From what I can understand (and I’m still not very clear on this and am trying to learn more of how this looks on the ground), if people want to be teachers, they start taking classes for it in their advanced secondary school classes. And it seems like after they graduate high school with the right types of classes to be teachers, then they go to a Teacher Training College, which is a tertiary non-degree program. According to https://rw.usembassy.gov/education-culture/rwanda-education-system/, these schools are three-year degrees where students can earn a Higher National Diploma in Education, also called an Advanced Diploma. They note that “the Advance Diploma is not equivalent to a Bachelor’s degree, but undergraduate transfer credit can be awarded, as is also the case for Teacher Training Colleges and other tertiary non-degree programs.” o The things I was so struck by in visiting Camp Kigali were the fact that there are so not enough teachers and so not enough classrooms so that students can learn in a calm environment. o So, the government is working to apparently attract more and better teachers to the field and, secondly, to improve the education Teacher Training Programs provide for teachers to become trained. This means adding/changing the way teachers are trained, as well as changing the best practices teaching in primary and secondary schools to be more student-centered. A news article from November, 2018 in the New Times (Rwanda’s daily newspaper) indicated that “Best performing students from Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs) will be given scholarships to pursue Bachelor’s degree after two years of teaching in primary schools. This is one of the proposals being mooted by the Ministry of Education as it seeks to scale up the number of Rwandans enrolling in TTCs and attract more people to pursue a career in teaching” (https://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/government-outlines-reforms-improve-teacher-training-colleges). o Also according to the New Times in Feb, 2019, “The curriculum used in Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs) has been changed from knowledge based to competency based in a bid to help students acquire the skills they need. This comes after the Government announced more incentives to encourage students to join the teaching profession” (https://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/teacher-training-curriculum-reviewed). o Finally, according to Rwanda Today (another newspaper) in January, 2019, they stated that Teacher colleges have yet to adopt competence-based curriculum courses (http://rwandatoday.africa/news/colleges-yet-to-adopt-competence-based-curriculum-courses/4383214-4944832-hm5q0p/index.html). The article stated that, “Two years after the implementation of the competence-based curriculum, the government is yet to finalise a matching curriculum for teacher training colleges. A number of partners and donors, who talked to Rwanda Today, have commended the rate at which the competence-based curriculum is being implemented, but have urged the government to mobilise more resources to implement the learner-centred programme.” o So, they want to teach students in primary and secondary schools based on competency rather than just knowledge consumption (which has been the push in the US as well), i.e., critical thinking, speaking, writing, discourse as a means to learning and understanding content knowledge, rather than simply learning content knowledge. And this is what the Head Mistress said when I asked her about the new curriculum for teacher training programs. She spoke very highly of it and said that yes, it’s happening in their schools now. However, I’m skeptical because many in education know that moving from knowledge-based teaching to competency-based teaching is a drastic change in conceptualizing the way someone teaches. But, they are working toward this in both primary, secondary, and tertiary schools. And they are working toward creating classes on how to do this in tertiary school Teacher Training programs, it seems. · Uniforms o All students in all public schools must wear uniforms. If they don’t have uniforms, they can’t go to school. I asked the Head Mistress about it, like what if students/families can’t afford the school uniform? She said somehow it all works out. That there are only a few families who really can’t afford it but that often other families or sometimes teachers contribute funds to get students uniforms so that they can all attend school. I’m skeptical that “it all just works out.” How do they know? Who are the kids who can’t afford it that are simply not going to school? From what I gathered about what she said, there is no official scholarship or grant fund to help students who need uniforms to get funding for them. It seems that public schools here are not actually free. There is still work that the government needs to do in this area, and maybe they are working on it. I’m not sure… · Other materials o I got different messages when I asked the teacher and the Head Mistress about materials. The HM told me that the government has done wonderful things for the school, in that they provide all of the textbooks, classrooms, buildings that are needed for the students in the public school. However, when I spoke with the teacher about it, she made it clear that there are not enough textbooks or materials for all of the students. Sometimes they have to share books, or often times make copies of pages from the books so that all of the students can have the materials. This seems to me to be a problem – why won’t the government provide the proper amounts of materials? o And the teacher spoke about teacher burnout in the profession due to the lack of pay, lack of resources, and the huge class sizes. But once teachers get into the profession, it’s a decent job, so if they leave it, where else will they go? There is a problem in this country of generally not having enough quality employment. So, there are teachers who are burned out and are not enthusiastic about their jobs, and are, therefore, probably pretty bad teachers. But they feel trapped and don’t have many if any other options. This is not completely different from the US, but to me, the problem seems exacerbated here simply because of the class sizes and lack of options for other jobs. But again, this is my perception of what I asked about and witnessed in one public school. · National exams o I learned about these exams from the teacher and the Head Mistress. This is from https://rw.usembassy.gov/education-culture/rwanda-education-system/: o Junior Secondary School: Each year 28,000 Rwandan students take the national secondary Education Ordinary Level test at the end of Junior Secondary School Form 3 (ninth grade) in nine subjects. If failed, a student can retake the third year or decide to join a private school. o Senior Secondary School: Admission to Senior Secondary School is competitive: fewer than 13,000 students can be admitted into the 734 secondary schools. The vast majority of Rwandan students attend public boarding schools, many of which are highly competitive; there are also private secondary schools in the country. Students must take a national Secondary Education Advance Level exam to graduate. Fewer than 1000 independent students take a different national exam to receive a high school diploma each year. o So it seems to me that not every student can just go to high school if they don’t pass the national exams. I haven’t learned enough to know how this proliferates out to people’s everyday lives, who doesn’t get to continue on to school who wants to, etc. But these are important key exams that can determine if a student can continue on into secondary school, and ultimately, to college if they want to go. · Technology o The school has a computer lab, which is about 100 laptops total for the whole school. The teacher we spoke to said that she doesn’t ever use the computers because there’s so few of them, and she uses chalk boards because they are more reliable and always available (and she is a young teacher who I would think would be able to do a lot with technology if she had the ability to access it properly). I assume those computers have internet access, but I didn’t ask and she didn’t say. The school definitely doesn’t have Wifi, because it is still very expensive to get throughout Rwanda. · Music Education o There is sadly no formal music education in Rwandan public schools. But I did learn more about how music education is being proliferate in the country by other means. I’ll talk about that later. o But it does seem that the way public school kids learn music here, if they do at all, is through church if they go, after-school programs if they are part of one of those, or through Youtube. There are music programs during the day in some private schools, and other private schools have after-school clubs that include music as an option. Sat June 15
Sun June 16
Mon June 17
I’m a bit behind on writing. But last Friday was basically our last day where we were doing more like classroom learning. This past Monday the students started their internships at different places. Two went to intern at RWAMREC, one went to WeACTX for Hope, and one went to a public school called Camp Kigali. I’ll try to write more about these topics later on.
But here is some of what we learned last Friday at the Iriba Center. We watched a documentary from a Belgian ethnomusicology doc student who wanted to know about women, music, and the question of memory. Some of my notes:
Assumpta Mugiraneza talks about: Singing the struggle – Analyzing the songs of RPF
Mageragere Prison visit
Rweru Reconciliation Village
Sunday, June 9
Sunday, we took the day off. We went to eat brunch at the Hotel de Mille Collines, which, during the genocide is the hotel where many people took refuge. I’m sure many people have watched Hotel Rwanda. I actually haven’t seen it yet. But I’m reading a book called Inside the Hotel Rwanda, written by Eduard Kayihura, who survived the genocide by hiding out there. He tells his story of what really happened there, which is much more accurate than what the movie depicts (i.e., the movie is not accurate). After that, we went to watch one of Béa’s former students play violin at a church. Then we had some much-needed down time at home. Monday June 10 The leader of Rwamrec, spoke to us today. His name is Fidel; his colleague Cyrus also spoke to us about the programs they offer in the community. The motto of this organization is: Men working with women to promote gender equality. They are feminist men working for gender equality in Rwanda and to work against hegemonic traditional masculinity. They work in five areas: child support and youth mentoring; violence prevention; fatherhood and caregiving; women’s economic empowerment; and gender justice, masculinities, and health. For example, they work in small groups to teach men new skills and attitudes - men don’t know how to raise kids and do house work a lot, so they teach these things. My thoughts: In Rwanda, they have lots of programs to help women and change the culture of gender norms here. I learned that some are supported by the government and some are non-government organizations. It’s truly an amazing thing that government in Rwanda is behind this and that there is such a big focus on changing the cultural norms on this. Bea explained to me that a major reason for all of this focus on empowering women is because there was SO MUCH violence against women during the genocide specifically. It’s so great to see that the government is behind it, meaning that there is funding available and people working to change things. We have said in our conversations within our group how wonderful it would be if the United States government put so much focus and attention on it. It’s definitely needed in the US too. Tuesday, June 11 Chantal Benekigeri, who is a nurse, spoke to us from WeACTx, which is an international community-based HIV/AIDS initiative. A doctor who works there came and spoke with us as well. From their website http://www.we-actx.org/ : The project was launched in 2003, when a group of frontline AIDS physicians, activists and researchers responded to an urgent global appeal from Rwandan genocide survivors for help accessing AIDS medications. Today, a dedicated team of Rwandan health care providers operate their own local non-government organization (NGO), WE-ACTx for Hope, with the support of WE-ACTx, grassroots community partners and Rwandan government health agencies. They provide access to care and treatment of HIV. The women we visited at INEZA come here to get their treatment, as well as counseling. This organization also focuses on helping on MSM (men who sleep w men/LGBTQ people) and women who are sex workers. To help them with their mental and emotional issues and ultimately to have a better life and become educated on HIV and to take preventative measures. Here are some of the highlights of what they spoke about.
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