Talking, Writing, and Teaching Democratic Values in Post-Genocide Rwanda
A workshop for Peace Corps Education Volunteers on how to teach narrative writing in Rwandan classrooms
By Meghan Costello, Ed 2
“The narrative writing workshop was a really unique opportunity to see how we - as PCV teachers - can help our students create a safe place to share a story, experience, or to create an alternate story for themselves. We saw firsthand how displaying emotion in a controlled and safe setting can unlock a whole other world of expression for Rwandan students.” -Jen Romba, Ed 3
The workshop, “Talking, Writing, and Teaching Democratic Values in Post-Genocide Rwanda,” was an opportunity for 11 Peace Corps Education Volunteers to come together for technical training. Held July 7-8 in Kigali at the Peace Corps Office, the goal of this workshop was to help PCVs get closer to creating classrooms where open and honest writing and discussion are valued. The workshop was facilitated by me and Dr. Julie Kipp, a Literature and Women’s Studies professor at Hope College in Holland MI, who happens to be my mother. Over two days, the group worked together to discuss strategies to facilitate more open, truthful, and effective communication in our Rwandan classrooms. We also spent considerable time talking and writing about the difficulties PCVs face in realizing that goal. In a roundtable discussion with a local Headmaster, Charles Uwimana, we explored some of the hardest things American volunteer teachers in Rwanda must overcome: facing gender equality in our communities, confronting the challenges inhibiting the expression of individual thought in our classrooms, and dealing with our students’ lingering post-conflict stress, their poverty, our own foreignness and inevitable outsider statuses.
The workshop also gave PCVs an opportunity to think about and share some of our own stories and strategies we’ve developed for negotiating difficulties we’ve encountered in our service. One participant noted that the mix of volunteers was small enough so that things didn’t feel overwhelming, and that it was “such an eclectic group of volunteers and professionals that there were constantly good conversations and awesome ideas being tossed around. We all got to throw in our personal success stories and failures while still getting the opportunity to think creatively (something not all that possible at our sites) and come up with new things as a group” - Ella Robinson, Ed 3
By the end of the weekend, we had developed some useful tools and specific ideas for action plans that can be implemented at our sites. We learned about different teaching ideas that work, modeling many activities that were successful, including a monologue exercise. Jen Romba, Ed 3, reports that she is “going to be using the monologue writing in all 3 levels of [her] A-Level classes this term” and Andrew Udelsman, an Ed 2 volunteer, also plans to implement some of the ideas he picked up at the workshop during his last term teaching. Suzanne Enoch, Ella Robinson, and a few other Ed 3 volunteers are planning to create a national essay writing contest for students in the 2013 school year. This would be a great way to expand the skilled gained in the workshop to more volunteers and schools.
“Our overarching goal as educators is inevitably to create classrooms where genuine communication can flourish,” stresses Dr. Julie Kipp, co-facilitator of the project. “I hope the workshop gave PCVs a chance to grow as teachers, but also to process together a fraction of what they are themselves learning.”
The workshop, “Talking, Writing, and Teaching Democratic Values in Post-Genocide Rwanda,” was an opportunity for 11 Peace Corps Education Volunteers to come together for technical training. Held July 7-8 in Kigali at the Peace Corps Office, the goal of this workshop was to help PCVs get closer to creating classrooms where open and honest writing and discussion are valued. The workshop was facilitated by me and Dr. Julie Kipp, a Literature and Women’s Studies professor at Hope College in Holland MI, who happens to be my mother. Over two days, the group worked together to discuss strategies to facilitate more open, truthful, and effective communication in our Rwandan classrooms. We also spent considerable time talking and writing about the difficulties PCVs face in realizing that goal. In a roundtable discussion with a local Headmaster, Charles Uwimana, we explored some of the hardest things American volunteer teachers in Rwanda must overcome: facing gender equality in our communities, confronting the challenges inhibiting the expression of individual thought in our classrooms, and dealing with our students’ lingering post-conflict stress, their poverty, our own foreignness and inevitable outsider statuses.
The workshop also gave PCVs an opportunity to think about and share some of our own stories and strategies we’ve developed for negotiating difficulties we’ve encountered in our service. One participant noted that the mix of volunteers was small enough so that things didn’t feel overwhelming, and that it was “such an eclectic group of volunteers and professionals that there were constantly good conversations and awesome ideas being tossed around. We all got to throw in our personal success stories and failures while still getting the opportunity to think creatively (something not all that possible at our sites) and come up with new things as a group” - Ella Robinson, Ed 3
By the end of the weekend, we had developed some useful tools and specific ideas for action plans that can be implemented at our sites. We learned about different teaching ideas that work, modeling many activities that were successful, including a monologue exercise. Jen Romba, Ed 3, reports that she is “going to be using the monologue writing in all 3 levels of [her] A-Level classes this term” and Andrew Udelsman, an Ed 2 volunteer, also plans to implement some of the ideas he picked up at the workshop during his last term teaching. Suzanne Enoch, Ella Robinson, and a few other Ed 3 volunteers are planning to create a national essay writing contest for students in the 2013 school year. This would be a great way to expand the skilled gained in the workshop to more volunteers and schools.
“Our overarching goal as educators is inevitably to create classrooms where genuine communication can flourish,” stresses Dr. Julie Kipp, co-facilitator of the project. “I hope the workshop gave PCVs a chance to grow as teachers, but also to process together a fraction of what they are themselves learning.”