I have just recently come back from a week in Vieng Phouka district (south west from here), visiting a selection of our target villages as part of a small scale study into the effectiveness of the community development part of our project. All the target villages in the project are either provided with funds to workshop, create, discuss and implement initiatives to support education in their villages or new classrooms are built. We spent the week visiting a wide selection of villages in different contexts in an attempt to provide better and more effective training and support in this area. Was definitely one of those weeks whereby a broad range of thoughts and experiences came across my path. The stand out’s in words and photos …
* the teachers operating in these schools have hardly any resources, if at all, and in many cases don’t speak the local dialect, however their passion, energy and strong desire to provide good teaching to the kids in their village is little short of remarkable
* in aus we whinge when we have more than 25 students in a classroom … these guys have anywhere between 40 and 70
* the classrooms that have smaller numbers than that would prefer to have more … the point isn’t that there are too many classrooms … more that the children can’t/don’t want to/aren’t able to/are working with their parents etc etc
* i used to spend a great deal of my time back in aus dreaming up creative methods of getting students to wear the right thing, do the right thing, study the right way, treat each other the right way etc … the students here on the whole are better groomed, tidy, excited and encouraging of each other in their learning than i have experienced in a long time … fancy schools with fancy facilities with fancy opportunities doesn’t create effective learning on its own
* no private squat toilets to be found in a few of these villages … so yep … I just pulled the sinh (the long Lao kinda sarong style skirt you can see in some of the pic’s) up around my neck and squatted on the dirt in the middle of the village with a crowd of people surrounding me … even had a couple of conversations mid stream so to speak!
* rat soup … feet, hairy legs, toenails and all
* my favourite new word i learnt that week … “oopagone” which means “materials” ie learning materials, teaching materials etc … but it reminds me of the oompaloompas from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory … so makes me smile every time i hear or use it now!
* the teacher from Ban Namkhongnoy … read about him in the photos below …
What else … oh yeah and when I returned back home, a mate of mine from Vientiane was passing through and brought me bagels, gin, lentils, coffee and honey … mmmmmmmm … cheers mike!
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