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.