Jenny and I will be heading back to Liberia in one week.  Although we have changed organizations, our focus is the same - to help Liberian teachers become better literacy teachers. We will be working at a school in Massaquoi Village.  This school has a library with reading books for grades 1-5.  We will be training the teachers in using small group instruction in their classes and how to use books to teach literacy.  We will also be working at a school in Kokoyah in Bong County.  Since they do not have any books, we will be bringing some books to them in order to give their teachers the same training.  We have never been up to Bong County before so this will be a new adventure traveling into the interior of Liberia. If you would like to donate to our work, just click the donate button on the right and it will take you to the home page of Liberia Education Project.  All donations are tax deductible.

No Excuses!

Administrators from eight schools were invited to special sessions on improving schools.  Our goals was to get school administrators to think in innovative ways and begin to make systemic changes in the ways that students learn and achieve. 







Martha presented the administrators with ideas on changing their management styles.  In Liberia the power structure in any organization is very rigid.  The person in charge tells others what to do and usually doesn't listen to suggestions or ideas from those working for him/her. The special session for administrators focused on collaboration with other administrators, the teachers and even the students in addition to learner centered education.  Martha's mantra was "No Excuses!" for anyone involved in the learning process.  It was 7 days of learning how to listen, use data and develop a plan for each school to improving student achievement. Martha also spoke on being involved and being a leader in the community and not just in their schools.  She is the president of the Rotary Club back home in Borrego Springs.

 

Teachers in the Wetlands Project present
what they are learning to the administrators.

The administrators spent time visiting the other workshops so that they would have an understanding of the new ways to teach Science, Geography, English, Reading and using the libraries.  They were often quite surprised at some of the ways in which learning could occur using hands on activities and higher level thinking.

Environmental Activism – Wetlands

One of our most exciting workshops presented during our time in Liberia centered around the wetlands.  Liberia has five wetlands recognized by the Liberian government.  The Liberian Environmental Protection Agency is working to get these wetlands protected, but with economic and health issues at the forefront of building the nation up, the environment often gets ignored.  Most Liberians are in a day to day struggle to put food on the table for their families and do not know the important role the wetlands play in providing sustainable protein in their diets in the form of fish.

Teachers Testing the Water

Kristy, Jooyoung and Jenny collaborated on the project teaching methods designed to engage learners and bring thinking to a higher level.  We invited secondary Biology, Chemistry, Geography and English teachers and many attended the seven sessions.

Peter Fahn
 Journalist/Environmentalist

On the first day a Liberian journalist, Peter Fahn, came to speak to our teachers on the Liberian wetlands and their importance for food and clean water. 

Then for three days Kristy, Jooyoung and Jenny presented the teachers with strategies such as KWLA, graphic organizers and questions stems.  They would teach the strategy and then use it as it pertained the teachers’ subject matter.  Learning then focused on planning lessons on the wetlands for Liberian students.  On the 4^th and 5^th day students came to participate in the project.  The Liberian teachers got to practice their new strategies and taught the students about wetlands and the connections that wetlands have to their lives. 

On Wednesday afternoon the students took all their learning and held a Wetlands Festival for the community.  The students presented songs, drawings, dramas, wetland tours, community clean ups and water testing for the community.  The most surprising event was when the results came back on the water testing showing e coli and other bacteria in the neighborhood estuary.

On the last day the teachers spent the day reflecting on their experience and planning lessons for the upcoming year.  Many of the teachers and students say that they are looking at their environment in a new way and will continue to learn more about it and find ways to protect it.

Our team this year is a group of amazing people.  We have educators from San Antonio all the way to San Diego.  We have college professors, principals and talented teachers.  We have five projects that we are working on: integrated unit on wetlands, administrative leadership, adult literacy, kinder curriculum, guided reading and (of course) library science. 

Monday we toured our seven schools with whom we have set up libraries.  On Tuesday we began with a large group of 70 Liberian educators covering an ethics class. Today we had breakout session for wetlands and administration.  The day began with a torrential downpour and still had a good turnout.  The educators were so appreciative of the knowledge and learning we shared with them.  We have been so blessed with a wonderful team and great Liberians to work with.

Let the Wetlands Begin: Activism!

This is our first day in charge of the Best Practices/Wetlands Teacher conference. It began with our cars and a long conversation with Samuel (one of the drivers) about God and love. He is going to be an interesting character in my journey on this trip. I can feel it. The conference began with each of the content area groups (math and science, LA and English, History) being put into groups and us talking about our own positive attributes and how they work within group dynamics. These teachers wrote words such as LOVE, CARE, LEADERSHIP and even FLEXIBILITY. Some they copied from our example and others, they felt compelled to share. We then added the words to petals and made a garden of flowers with all of the positive things we bring to a community of learners. Posted on the walls, these flowers would hopefully remind us of our own roles in a professional learning community. And thus, we were off! A quick aside, thank goodness for the ingenuity of Kristy who brought duct tape! Our carton of supplies set in April had not been let out of port and thus, we were teaching with only what we brought in our luggage. Without her tape, we would have been in a BIG ole bind. The walls though are concrete and nothing sticks for very long. Each day we had to reapply tape somewhere as the rainy season torrents humidified the water into damp pages!After our attempts to get to know everyone (including duct tape name badges), we began our instruction. Blooms Taxonomy and KWLA charts were our teaching goals. 

We used the wetlands as our examples. Through these best practices for comprehension instruction, these teachers would not only learn the strategy, but have a unit embedded around them, a unit perfect for their community. The KWLA went off well and they enjoyed engaging in the activity. I think they will need not only more practice, but specific practice embedding it in their own content area. For the science teachers, this will be relatively simple, but for everyone else, not so much. Good thing we will have tie for them to practice! Blooms taxonomy was a new idea for everyone. Several of the participants told me that a) they had heard about Bloom's before and, b) it went from low levels of memorizing text to higher and more substantial levels of understanding text. Thus, we all had to get them to understand that memorizing is the lowest level, no matter the length of text. It was so fun to see them attempting questions and pondering over the handouts. My group had made packets of handouts, being careful not to have too much, but to provide just the right amount of support for our teaching. The students were mesmerized. These teachers want training and they want us to share, to help them to make the country stronger, more literate. 

I think we all left the day feeling like it was a whirlwind of expertise and conundrum. Kristy and I feel fairly seemless as we coteach and Joo is learning to find her voice and expertise as a teacher. She is the only one that doesnt have teaching experience, but I can tell she is going to be able to fit right in as we begin to know our flow better. Im so loud as a teacher, it is nice to be balanced with some that are quieter. I feel like these woman are two of the smartest and most capable people I know. They have so much to share. This is going to be the start of something BIG.

Professionalism and Ethics: Who are YOU?

Here we go! It is the first day of the Conference: At 630am, I was downstairs and ready to roll. Breakfast is included in our stay so I ate up. Being I am a silent, not good morning person, explanations had to be made to the group, but all was well as our drivers showed up on time and we headed to VICA, the school we will be at for two weeks training the teachers (Joo, Kristy and I), administrators (Martha) and librarians (Kathy). The first day's topic was ethics and professionalism (for everyone) which they desperately needed. There is little accountability or self regulation at schools for anyone, teachers, students, principals, directors. Most use punishment of students (expulsion, caning, yelling) as ways to manage the classroom and often it is not student-centered. We kept reminding them all that we are there "for the students," that, "without students we would have no job," and that, "God gave us dominion over creatures so we could glorify him and be stweards of those in our care." In Liberia, some teachers accept bribes for grades and others don't even come to class, and that is just the start. For us, we focused on honesty, both within their professional life and within themselves and other characteristics of professional and ethical judgement. The team (Kathy, myself, Kristy, Martha and Joo) worked with them as they looked at themselves as educators, then their role in the school (sharing out with each other when they felt okay to), and then their role within the community. The big question was, "Who are you in the world and who do you want to be?" Everyone was hungry for thinking and talking and shared with each other and with the group. We ran a powerpoint through a generator and they all watched careful and attempted everything we asked them, regardless of their trouble understandings us (which would get better as they got more used to the accents etc) and their limited literacy skills. Most have writing that looks like a 3rd grader, arduous, slow, and with weird formations in their letters. It could easily be misrepresented as a child's penmanship. The heart is so there though and they try so hard to get it all, to soak it in. I loved watching their hard work and delighted to think about the shifting cultural expectations that were being spoken of. These educators wouldnt be the same at the end of the conference. It seemed clear.

Books and Libraries...

Because there are so few books, Kathy and Anne have been creating libraries in the schools. These libraries are basically classrooms (although one library is housed in one of the teacher's homes, with cinder blocks and about 400 books on wooden planks. The planks bow low because the weather is so humid. as a generalized notion, these libraries are dark, sticky and the books are dusty as most dont get checked out because of the fear of losing them and mostly due to the fact that everyone in the whole school/ area are a bit unsure how to utilize the texts for instruction and learning. Books are such a commodity that everyone is scared to let them go. We saw libraries with padlocks, shelves at the ceiling and screened window holes (there are NO glass windows, of course). It was an interesting juxtaposition, all the light that can be found in the books, the far away places and thoughts that are bigger than ourselves, and yet the dankness and fear of losing the possibilities contained inside. Kathy did an amazing job of reinforcing the importance of using books, repeating I'm sure for the 100th time that books wither and die without use. My favorite Kathy quote of the day was, "What are you proteting the book from... readers?" Her tenacity with this challenge is admirable. We all need to remember that change is hard, learning is hard. The impressive part is the ability to keep going and to create something where nothing was before. These libraries are rife with possibilities and sheer determination from the education founders of Liberia Now.

The librarian is often herself a struggling reader and while she has been trained on how to catalogue books, keep the books safe but let them venture out and about, for most the "safekeeping" falls on the shoulders of a principal who insists on padlocks and allows little use,  taken out by a student for an hour or 2 and a teacher the same, if they are used at all. There is much work to be done to train these teachers, librarians and administrator, not to mention the students and parents.

The teachers have very limited access and in some cases, no books to use if not for the libraries, funded and established by Kathy, Anne and others. But, they have not been used well in most cases. It will be a constant mission for this team, I think! Glorious, the education point person in Liberia, is in charge of making sure the libraries get utilized. She is in a state of literacy growth herself and, I believe, struggles to understand her roles and responsibilities, but has passion and will learn over time, like all of us. Our connection to these books and the education they mirror is already inside our hearts. Im not sure if that comes from our love of books here in the States, or the amazing libraries in these text-poor schools.

There are shifts happening everywhere in Liberia! Kathy and Anne have done amazing things getting these libraries here, amazing. Now, the hard work of training teachers and holding them accountable for using the books, of not being scared to lose them, of recognizing the importance of text, while living half a world away begins. I'm glad I get to be a part of that! It will be a profound psychological and social shift! Kathy was on it like white on rice as we toured. In time, like the ladies before me, I know it WILL happen. Faith is something I can already tell is important when working here.  This whole task seems insurmountable without it.

After we returned from our tour, walking in mud and grime, we met for dinner, and regrouped to begin tomorrow with the conference. These ladies are hilarious! We laughed and planned for tomorrow some more, and I decided I adore everyone one of them. Boy, this is going to be hard work, fun, but hard work! I'm already glad to know these women who are standing for literacy in ways I have always tried to myself. Their intense passion for this work shines under every dusty book and through every packed box of books. Here we go!

Feeding the attendees

Their was much talk about not feeding them during the lunch hour. Many come from a long way (some were traveling as much as 9 miles without a car) and have no time nor possibility to return home for lunch. As such, the soda and water we provided was all most had the whole day. Im not sure what the answer is, other than finding support, but it is something we will work on for our next trip. It was hard to know that the teachers and administrators wanted lunch (and needed lunch), and that we couldn't provide it as the price we were quoted was just too much per day. With 70 participants, the cost was nuts for everyday for 2 weeks. This was one time I could clearly see that having support for education from those in the US could change the learning experience. As students, we need food to learn and to think. For a hundred dollars or so each day, we could have fed them. But, most people donate to the areas that see quick, change: water wells and supplies for a clinic. Education takes time to infiltrate, time to percolate in order to see direct, tangible change and many don't understand how literacy is paramount to the success of a nation rebuilding. When those wells break or the clinic gets the medicine and no one can read for understanding, it all breaks down. Education must come first and all must work together to insure that it is seen as an integral part. No one denies its importance, surely, but funding is lacking in the area of education for Liberia Now!

The MISSION begins

About Liberia, West Africa, my experience: There is no way to show words or pictures what the 14 year Civil War did to this country. There is no way to explain the poverty, the filth, the utter devastation left on the people and yet, also to explain the almost tangible hope they seem to have. That being said, of course I am going to attempt: For one, there is no trash service. Trash lines the road, floods from the house and, due to the rainy season, literally moves across the street in rivers of iron- colored goo. The smell while driving is of pure petrol and putrid air and cycles in and out through our windows as we drive over the giant pot holes and through the seas of people walking to and fro with bundles on their heads. The smell of people permeates the markets and lines the food with an almost tastable BO. It is like everything is crowded into one space, lining the streets with raw food and dirty umbrellas, people and their merchandise and at the same time, there is nothing really worth much, nothing Yet, there is something that is so alive and wonderful about the whole scenario. Commerce is alive, the people are beautiful and the hope for a better future lives in their minds, I feels as if there is so much to do and it all needs to be done now. When I think about what is meant for me in my life, having a cause like this, wherein I know I can make a difference even though small, is important. The ladies I am working with are amazing people. I know they feel the same way.

We spent the first day visiting the schools of Lower, Virginia, Liberia. I am always reminded that our students in the US, who we consider at poverty level are guaranteed the right to go to school. They all get free lunch, and they all are provided electricity in their schools, services for special needs, and supplies. It is such a farce to say that our children are in extreme poverty. Poverty yes, extreme, no. Here, there is real, definable, poverty: Hope and song, and povery. But, I digress So, the schools: We saw 6 schools (the 7th will occur later in the trip) wherein the teachers who will spend 2 weeks at a workshop learning about service learning, KWLA, and other best practices, lesson planning and assessment, particularly ongoing assessment, they are very good at assessing with TESTS (capital TEST), will originate from. We, Kristy, JooYoung and I have met many times with Kathy to work through our plans. Even now, before we have actually started, I know there will be revisions to our ideas and curriculums. Simple things such as, while Liberians speak English, they are difficult to understand being that they drop the final sounds and of course have an accent. That being said, they sound as if they speak so fast! So, if that is true for them, it most certainly is true of our American accent, it will be problematic. My Texas drawl and fast speech will be hard for them. But, we will struggle together and learn a lot. I love language! And so far, these people as well! Their schools are all similar concrete buildings with tin roofs, humid, no electricity, large classes in a room the size of my living room and one teacher, one blackboard and chalk. There is a well close by where kids or others pump the water when needed. There are no bathrooms, although there is a room that has a toliet basin where they go and then wash it out with a bucket. God forbid if you have the classroom with an adjoining wall. The chalkboard is a black board that doesnt really erase and a box of very humid, crumbly chalk for the year. The desks are made of wood, most are rickety and scary for someone my size to sit on. A couple of the schools have benches. It is all very "Little House on the Prairie" without any of the charm. There are no posters, no tablet paper, little supplies and nothing to make a teacher's job easy. I do so hope our strategies, planned with little supplies needed, will be usable for them! When we arrived at Brefo, one of the schools, there were teachers there (one walking with a cane in hand in case punishment was needed?) and children.

"Gather the little children" kept running through my head as plentiful kiddies were around and within minutes I was surrounded, showing them my cell phone camera and laughing at my dog videos along side their white smiles and interested faces. That would be my learning today: Children gather to listen and learn, no matter where in the world they are. They long for affection, time,value and literacy. They will gather in His name and be glorified. Today, I sat among angels in dirty clothes with runny noses and little in their tummies and yet, felt hopeful. There is work for me here. I can feel it. We all feel it, I think.

Books or Training

The age-old question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” comes to mind when planning this trip to Liberia.  My question, however, is “What is more important, books or training?” On my first trip back to Liberia in 2009 I visited several schools in the Lower Virginia area.  What struck me first and most was the lack of books.  There were no books in the schools.  I asked and the response was always that there were very few books in the country.  Even at the college level, it was difficult to get a textbook for any course.  No wonder literacy rates were so low.

How can students learn how to read if they have nothing to read?  So I had a book drive and collected 3,000 books for a library.  The school district I work at donated thousands of reading and literature textbooks.  In 2010 we set up two school libraries and gave basic training in library science and reading instruction.  In 2011 we set up another 5 school libraries and gave even more in depth training.  This year we are sending more books and setting up one more library.

With each trip, however, I realize that the real need is for teacher training.  If you have never had books in your life – not in school or at home – and you have never had a book to use to teach your students, then the concept of using books is a very foreign concept indeed.  Liberian teachers’ lives are full.  They don’t have time set aside for reading.  They are used to teaching a certain way and to add more instruction to their full day is difficult.  A mindset shift needs to occur.  A shift from teacher centered instruction to learner centered instruction needs to occur in order for the books to be used and literacy rates to improve.  Just training reading teachers is not going to bring about this change.  The change needs to happen from the top all the way through the faculty at each school. 

This is our goal this year.  The schools have the books.  Now they need training.  This year we have a team of eight educators going to Liberia to teach the Liberian educators how to turn their schools around and become reading communities.  We have sessions on Professionalism, Ethics, Administration Teaming, Wetlands and Service Projects, Guided Reading and Critical Thinking.  Which is more important? Books or training?  They are both equally important. Without books a person cannot become fully literate, but without training the books just sit on shelves and never get used.

New Year New Travels

Spending a year in Liberia as a teenager changed my outlook on life.  In 2009 I returned to Liberia to find a country decimated by a 14 year civil war.  Being an educator, I wanted to visit schools to see what the needs were.  The classrooms had nothing but walls and old dusty blackboards.  There were no books or other learning materials.

I began by asking schools in the U.S. to hold book drives.  In 2010 we returned to set up two school libraries.  In 2011 we set up another five school libraries and one community library.  Although we conducted teacher and librarian training, we realized that books weren’t the only need these schools had.  Fourteen years of civil war had left the pool of teachers undereducated and in great need of teacher training. 

This year we hope to return with a larger group of U.S. teachers to hold a four day educator conference with sessions in ethics, critical thinking, reading, literature, science, leadership and library science.  The cost for one person to travel to Liberia from the U.S. is about $3500. We have teachers willing to give of their time and expertise, but the price is too steep for someone on a teacher’s salary.  When people donate to a worthy cause, the want to see tangible results, like libraries, but without training, a person who has never read a book will not know the first thing about running a library.  Without training, a teacher will not know how to teach reading to her students using books.  The results of quality education are only tangible in indirect ways, like a student’s understanding of difficult concepts or a productive, employable adult 10 years in the future.  Liberia is slowly building their nation up, but without quality education their efforts will have minimal results.

A donation to Liberia Now Education will bring much needed training to teachers who are hungry for content and teaching strategies.  Liberian teachers care deeply about their students and their community, but struggle with a small knowledge base due to a lack of training resources.  It will help cover the costs of travel and lodging for U.S. teachers who cannot afford the entire cost of the trip.  If you would like to donate to make a difference in an entire community, please visit the Liberia Now website and donate online or send a check to the address below.  Please specifically note that your donation is for the education team.

Liberia Now

P.O. Box 781767
San Antonio, Texas, 78278

Liberia Now is a 501 (3)c organization and all donations are tax deductible.

Melanie and Kathy can speak to any group.

Last Two Days in Liberia

We spent Friday and Saturday in meetings and doing some sightseeing.  Here are some pictures of the sights.

The new bridge will be finished in November.  This will help clear up some of the traffic on the old bridge.  It takes about 45 minutes to travel about 11 miles because the traffic is so congested.

Trash is a problem, although it gets better each time we come.  We saw some goats eating the biodegradable parts of the roadside trash.

 The economy is up but mostly on a small scale.  There are lots of small vendors in the market places with everyone buying and selling.

 Centerpoint is a library in downtown Monrovia.  We shipped some books over on our container in April.  Minner (in the center) is their librarian.  She came to our training on Monday and Tuesday to learn about cataoguing books.

                                                                                                                            Of course we had to visit the beach and it was beautiful.

  We leave on Sunday for our long flight.  Liberia will be missed but we are excited to get back home.

Adult Literacy Celebration

This evening the adult literacy classes held a celebration for their progress this year.   Only 60% of the adult population in Liberia is literate.  This past year Liberia Now started an adult literacy program hiring two teachers who held classes three times a week.  These classes were one of our most successful programs. Linda and Jerry surpassed all expections and did a wonderful job of teaching adults to read.  All of the students who finished the program were reading by the end of this year.  One student, Marie, didn't even know the alphabet at last September.  Tonight she read a speech that she wrote.  All of the students are amazing as they all worked very hard to learn while also working and taking care of their families. 



Marie reading the speech she wrote.

Final Visits to the Libraries

Today we had the final visit to the libraries to deliver the rest of the supplies and to see if the librarian had any questions before we left.  Each library has a sponsor school in the U.S. that donated most of their books.  We visited Pamela Kay High School yesterday and they are temporarily using boxes of notebooks to hold the shelves up before they build more permanent shelves.  Today we first visited Tegeste School and they were ready with their shelves.  Then we moved to Saytumah and they were also ready.  After that we went to see the new school that Liberia Now is helping to build.  The foundation is laid and the walls are up. After that we went to Massaquoi village school and helped them organize their library.  We visited their classroom and saw their community garden project.  We traveled back to Bushrod Island and went to Mark S. Richards High School and Brefo School.   Both of these schools are in the slums of the city.  It is really humbling to see how such poverty exists in the world today at the same time that many people live in a world of wealth.

Pamela Kay High School - The Wonder Lair Library

Tegeste School - The Reading Castle

Massaquoi Village School

Saytumah School - The Reading Den

 

Richards High School - The Reading and Beyond Library

Brefo Academy - The Reading Tree

Liberia Now Librarian Association

Today we finished up librarian training.  We taught them the Dewey Decimal System and how to have a check out system.  Liberia has very few libraries and most of those are not really libraries but rather reading rooms.  The people think that books are too valuable, so they won't let the books be checked out and taken home.  Our program requires that a school has a check out system, but training them to think differently about books is very difficult because of this mindset.  Many of our new librarians have never read an entire book on their own.  We also taught them how to scan documents and send reports on a computer.  Only three of the five the librarians had ever used a computer.  They are all very excited about their new job and have decided to start a librarian association and have named it the Liberia Now Librarian Association and will meet four times during the next school year.  They also decided that they would all help each other set up their new libraries next week.

Adult Literacy Classes

One of Liberia Now's projects is adult literacy classes.  We went to watch the class on Monday night.  The students are 12 women from ages 22 to 48.  They have children and go to market to sell everyday and then three evenings out of the week they travel to go to reading class.  Half of them did not even know their ABC's when they started the class last September.  They can all read now!  They all had their latest assignment to read to me.  They are my heroes!

Linda (the teacher) and Anne

Readers Marie and Helena

Church in Liberia

On Sunday we went to an African church.  It was too much fun.  They sang and danced and sang and danced.  Melanie got into the action and danced around with everyone.

Missing Chart Tablets!

Friday we trained the kindergarten teachers in literacy activities using big books, small readers, and shared writing.  All the books had been delivered, but we were missing the abc charts and the large writing tablets for shared writing.  Oh no! Where were they delivered?  Of course only 2 people on our entire team have cell phones and Melanie and I are not one of those two.  At lunch we found out that it was probably delivered by mistake the day before to either Pamela Kay High School or to Rev. Koffa School.  Melanie went back to teaching and working hard, while I began a journey to the two schools in search of writing tablets.  First I went to Pamela Kay School, which was close to where we were, but no luck.  Then we went through thick and heavy traffic and Duala Market to Koffa.  Success!  We drove back with only 30 minutes to spare and the teachers learned how to write a class story.