Team 1 (Ingrid, Patricia, Monica)

Team 1 - July 13- 19th
After leaving Ngamba Island, and bonding as a group, it was a little hard to split up into Team 1 and 2. Team 1 (Ingird, Patricia and Monica) were scheduled to begin the first round of workshops in Masindi July 14th. Tracy (Program Manager - JGI Uganda) and Sophie (here to assess the program from JGI Canada) took us first to some of the rural schools that the teachers participating would be coming from.

Rural School Visits
Our first school visit was to Bokwe School. This primary school had 900 students ages ranging from 5 years old to 19. Children were dressed in purple and green uniforms but none had any shoes. One class visited had 41 boys and 58 girls for a total of 99 students in a room no larger than an average Canadian classroom. The schools do not have electricity which became aparent during a thunderstorm that darkened the classrooms to the point that is was difficult to see the chalkboard. This did not stop any lessons and as the shutters banged against the glassless window openings, the children continued to work in the dark. The only resources aside from limited chalk, students workbooks and their pencils were the charts, hand drawn on old plastic sacks that may have once contained flour or rice. One lesson that was observed had the children discussing how they contribute to their households. Fetching water and wood for the fire and cooking were how they spent their time in the huts they live in.




The children were fascinated with the "Mzungus" (white people) and their first camera shy behaviour soon turned to fascination with having their pictures taken. Patricia and Monica became encircled by at least 100 children who stared at us and then began asking questions. What did we eat? What is our country like? We exchanged national anthems and even sang them Row Row Row Your Boat to which they applauded. This exchange helped everybody realize that we had more similarities than differences despite our skin colour, socio-economic status and cultures. Our visit ended with a performance by the children who sang and danced in traditional ways for us.

This visit was very helpful in gaining some insight into what the rural teachers have to deal with daily: extremely limited resources, tremendous class sizes allowing only limited teaching methods and poor lighting.

Workshop #2 - Team 2 (Chris and April)

Team #2 (Chris and April) are currently in Masindi delivering the second workshop to a new group of teachers. 29 teachers arrived on Tuesday to participate in the environmental education workshop. The teachers have students in grades 5, 6, and 7. We had a great first day at the workshop as the teachers were very talkative and ready to participate. Our workshop days are long but the participants stay motivated throughout the day, which is very encouraging for us. Yesterday we covered lessons on sustainability, the importance of environmental education, and local environmental problems. Today we covered lessons on cooperative learning, experiential learning, multiple intelligences, body language, and how to integrate environmental education into specific subject areas. Tomorrow they will create lesson plans that they can take back to their schools and implement in their classrooms. They will also bring workshop materials back to their schools and share the information learned at the workshop with other teachers. We are visiting a local forest and education centre, and for some teachers it will be there first visit to a forest.

Unfortunately we do not have any photos to post right now as our Internet connection is less than reliable, even though between the five of us I am sure we've taken at least one thousand photos.