Saturday, July 19, 2014

Back to School-First Stop Garden Presbyterian

Monday morning, we were up bright and early to visit a bunch more schools.  The schools we are visiting are all supported by the Christian Alliance, they are small schools in the middle of a big compound- another world built behind walls in the middle of the city.  We started at Garden Presbyterian.  This is a big school and a showcase school for the area.  They have 315 kids and 11 teachers (what's the ratio - I am math weary!).

This is the school kitchen and cafeteria.  Two days a week (Monday and Wednesday), the community kids are given rice for lunch.  These ladies are preparing it for them. 

Some students are "private" and stay the full day, community students come in for half days.  The principal was quite proud of her schools.  As we entered each classroom, the students would stand and say "Good Morning Visitors (pronounced Veeseetors).  I am fine, how are you?"  The boards were covered with notes.  There is a lot of education around AIDS and they do not beat around the bush....One of the questions of the day right after "which soil is good for farming" was "Unprotected sex can lead to...."  The curriculum does not seem watered down for these kids.
(There are lots of billboards about AIDS and you can even buy condoms -condoms have their own cartoon character-while you are in the line at immigration-but I digress).  

One of the teacher's at the school hitched a ride with us to the school and was grading student work on the way (sound familiar?).  He was the computer teacher and wanted to know if we knew of any educational programs they could download and use.  They were a long way from using the "internet" but had 4 computers that students could share during their scheduled class.  
Students had to take their shoes off before entering the computer room.  

Classrooms had homemade posters, rules were posted, teacher's duties and student schedules were posted.  In the math class we visited they were using bottle caps and sticks as manipulatives.

Did I mention that everyone here has a cellphone (not kids).  Teachers had cellphones out on their desks...

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