Second day of work and school visit

An interesting and rather moving day today. I mentioned before that we were the only group with a flexible schedule and thus it was the job of Chris and myself this morning to head out to make the school visit. The Edswaleny school was about thirty five minutes out of town, and has 917 students, in 22 classrooms ranging in ages 5 (preschool) through 11 (end of primary school). Our plan was to meet with the educators, determine an appropriate program for a Thursday visit and then attempt to assess the needs of the school and children in the hopes that we would take up a collection amongst ourselves and then buy the school supplies and sports equipment.

The motto to the school, "To produce multi-skilled learners through effective teaching and learning involving all stakeholders".

While we were there we had the opportunity to witness one of the classroom activities in action. As part of the economics class, the children have to create a small business and do the economics of it. Here the children are selling little bits of candy and chips, and of course we were happy to buy some.

After meeting with the administrators of the school, we were led on a tour of the buildings. There are three buildings, two of which are connected by a room and brick floor which makes for kind of a general assembly area used both by the school and the community. It's in the right of the picture below, flanked on either side by classrooms.

Part of the school's education program is something called Room 13, started apparently in Scotland. It's an afterschool program that teaches kids about and encourages them to create art. We saw everything from drawing, to painting, to handicrafts, to poetry. This is, in fact, one of the larger demands for the school, art supplies to support the Room 13 project.

Below is a typical classroom that we saw while we were there. They have around 22 of these on-site and have between 35-40 in each classroom.

Below is the kitchen at the school which supplies all the food. The government provides the school weekly and monthly with the nourishment for the kids. They eat a rotating menu of cabbage, mealie meal, or other vegetables and beans. This meal at school is often the only meal that the kids eat each day so it's all the more important. Along these lines, it's also a significant problem for certain kids on weekends and especially holidays since they do not get food at home. There are times when a child will come back from the weekend break, having not eaten since Friday. The school has started trying to send food home with the children in the most need.

Below are the preschoolers who sang for us in English while we were there. The ages of the children are between 5 and 6 years old. There's a video of them singing at the bottom of the page.

I tried to capture it, but apparently missed. Turns out that pulling your pants up really high is humorous no matter where you are. I saw a couple of kids with their pants pulled up to their armpits walking around goofy. Always funny (especially when Terra does it).

Below is another example of a hands on learning experience. This is a vegetable garden tended by the children. They learn how to grow and rotate crops and then the harvest is incorporated into their diet for additional nourishment. While we were there, we saw lettuce and tomatoes growing.

This is an example of one of the larger shacks that the people in the area live in. It was hard to get good pictures of the living conditions, but the places were quite small, maybe 8'x10' and there could be 8 people living there, maybe a mother, father, and 6 children.

Before the video, here's a couple of other things to think about, and this is from the mouths of the teachers, unedited. Many of the children are orphans, often because their parents died from HIV/AIDS. The HIV infection percentage is around 40%, and there are several children at the school with HIV. Because of this, there are households headed by 11 year olds. Think about that for a second, being 11 years old, in fifth grade, having to be responsible for your brothers and sisters, the house, and trying to go to school. It's not a very good predicament.

Another thing that came up when we were talking about the school needs was improved transportation. Some of the children live up to 7 kilometers away (4.5 miles or so), and have to walk to school each day. There are criminals on the road who have in the past at times raped the children. Again, these are kids between the ages of 5-11.

Clearly a school in need. It's not all lost though, we've got 14 IBMers here determined to make a difference, and I'm not sure that there are many forces in the world that can stop that. It may be a little cliche to talk about it, but I do truly think that IBMers, and in particular those on this trip are cut from a different cloth than the every man.

Preschool kids singing in English for us: