Today was easily my best day at the village. I found out
that three of the major projects that I’ve started while here are sustainable,
and are already in the curriculum for next year. Meanwhile, I’m still sitting here
wondering why people are taking my ideas seriously.
Idea 1: Guidance counseling day.
One of the issues that comes up now and again in discussions
about inequality in America is guidance counselors (or a lack thereof). There
are many underfunded schools in the US that have guidance counselors to student
ratios of 1:500 or worse. This sucks because it means that kids don’t get
access to structured 1-on-1 time to discuss their goals and how they’re working
on achieving them.
At the village, there are no dedicated guidance counselors,
and the resources are definitely not there to hire them. The closest things to
guidance counselors we have are Keturah, Moses, and me in the Career
Development Department, but we’re all remarkably busy and don’t have time to give
adequate guidance to 500 students. Students can seek out adult advice/guidance,
but there is a sizable population (25-50%) that doesn’t reach out, and they
probably need guidance the most. While those students probably still interact
plenty with their “family mama” and “family big sister/brother” that still
isn’t the same. Families are 16 people, and individual time and attention are
surprisingly easy not to give if you aren’t consciously thinking about it. I
had a cabin of 6 kids this summer, and I spent plenty of time with them as a
group but didn’t regularly have 1-on-1 conversations with at least half of
them.
So the idea, which made it onto the schedule this morning,
is to have a guidance counselor day. We’ve set aside an afternoon where the
entire staff can set up shop in the dining hall, where each one of us can meet
with 2 or 3 students in their freshman year to talk about what they’re shooting
for and what they’re doing to get there. Afterwards, we can each write a few
sentences (there’s already a paralyzing amount of reporting done here) on the
students, so that we can follow up with them at the next meeting and keep track
of their trajectory over time. Since most of the staff is around for a long time,
most students will have the same mentor for their entire time at the village.
This will also help the village administration get more face-time with the
students, which should be great on both sides (I find that most school
administrators work at schools to be around kids, but end up stuck in offices
all day). If this goes well, it can happen each term for every grade next
year. The next incoming class will never know an Agahozo-Shalom where this
wasn’t the modus operandi.
Idea 2: English wristbands.
The Rwandan education system is, for better or worse, in
English. Since many of our students come in with extremely fledgling English
skills, and students tend to speak only Kinyarwanda with one another, they
struggle at school. Almost every kid here will tell you that they desperately
want to improve their English. After they graduate, the number one thing we
hear from alumni is that the English development here didn’t prepare them well
enough for either universities abroad or Rwandan universities. So how can we
bridge the gap between students wanting to improve their English but not
knowing how to do it?
My solution was to allow students (on a totally voluntary
basis) to sign up for an English wristband. To get one, a student finds a
partner and they sign a contract saying that they will speak only English to
other students that also have wristbands. If one of them breaks the contract,
they both lose the wristbands (although enforcement is nonexistent
intentionally). After telling the 150 students in the English classes I’m
coordinating (more on that in #3) I made sure they had to go well out of their
way to get a wristband, and created artificial scarcity by only distributing
limited numbers of wristbands at a time. This made sure kids were serious about
making the commitment, and kept the subjective value of the wristbands high
(looks like my econ major is good for something). I knew that a few kids were
keeping up with the bargain, but until this morning I had no idea about the
other ones. This morning I got feedback from a number of people that the students
are actually, en masse, adhering to the rules of the contract. I’m sure there
are plenty of students that are disregarding it, but the fact that most of the
(over 80) kids that have wristbands are following through and probably speaking 3x the english they were beforehand is pretty sweet.
Idea 3: English classes for freshmen and sophomores.
I spent my first few weeks sitting in on Keturah’s SAT/TOEFL
class for seniors. Watching and talking with Keturah made it obvious that
our students, even the top brass, were drastically underprepared for either
test. Trying to learn how to take those tests is hard for anyone, and they’re
impossible to prepare for in less than a year if you haven’t had a formal
English grammar education in years (if at all). So I put out an application for
freshman and sophomore English classes. I was expecting to get something like
60 applications and take 2/3 of applicants to have one 20 person class for each grade. When I counted out the 150 students applications (1/2 the
freshman class and 3/4 of the sophomore class) it was not an option to take 40
kids and throw the other 110 to the curb. So I looked into the scheduling, got
the fellows to agree to help teach 5 of the 9 sections, and accepted everyone.
The first few classes have gone really well, and the head of informal education
at the village is making these classes available to all first and second year
students next year. The students are hungry to learn, and the curriculum and
manpower should be there to help them for years to come, which makes me really
happy.
If you’ve read this far and are wondering how you can e-meet
these kids or pitch in to help them learn English, you’re in luck! Shoot an
email to RwandaEnglish@gmail.com saying you're tentatively interested
and I’ll set you up with one of my students who is working on their writing and
grammar skills. You can edit their work, give them advice, etc. I (obviously)
won’t be offended if you don’t want to, but if you have some spare time, these
kids are really incredible and anyone would be lucky to hear their stories—I
know I have been.
