Bwanji, all!

Wow, what a week – our 2020 Teacher Conference has come to a close. A HUGE thanks to our management team, our operations team, and our academics team who all worked together to pull this off! We just spent the last week steeped in comprehensive workshops, productive conversations, and exciting brainstorming with every single one of our staff members here in Zambia. The feeling, from day one, was electric!

Today though, I want to focus on just the last few hours of the conference. Each cluster was asked to prepare a Literacy Submission and a STEM Submission for our Literacy and STEM Fair! They were asked to create relevant, creative, and thoughtful teaching aids from locally available materials – the idea being that each of the teachers could then take some of the ideas they learned at the fair to inspire them to bring creativity and fun into the classroom.

I am not sure what my expectations were – but they were blown away! I saw:

An electric fan created out of paper and cardboard, fashioned out of a cellphone battery meant to show students the parts of a circuit.
A word camera and a manual TV designed to teach literacy to the earliest readers.
An entire replica of the skeleton made out of wire, wood, and paper.
An awesome game of literacy checkers made out of bottle tops.
A creative abacus made out of bicycle wire, bottle tops, and wood.
So so much more.

Nothing can capture the energy and creativity of our teachers. I was so impressed with how resourceful our teachers were, using things that are considered trash in the village, and re-purposing them to give new life into their classrooms. I was refreshed by their presentations, and the energy they brought with them to the stage. And nothing made me happier than seeing the teams celebrate their teammates and each other. This week was not just about workshops and pedagogy, it was also about building friendships and trust with their peers to prepare them for the 2020 school year. Bring it on!

-Reshma