Madagascar School Project Blog

I arrived at the school on July 2nd to a wonderful welcome from the students and teachers of Lova Soa. They sang for me and showed me what they can do. They know many phrases in English now, and greet me always in English. The teachers all donated to the cause to have a little party to welcome me back. The jet lag made me long for a bed, but the enthusiasm of the teachers and students and their desire to share with me all that they had learned warmed my heart.

It is cold here in Madagascar right now, with our apartment being around 15 degrees Celsius most of the time. It is also supposed to be the dry time, but has rained a very fine rain for much of the past week. The local mason has just finished building a brick shower for us at the side of the office of the school. Most days our guard has heated lovely warm water when we get up, for our morning sponge baths.

The children come to school around 7 am even though school doesn’t begin until 8:00. They play on our new play structure and enjoy being among their friends. In class I quickly learn that our Kindergarten class now know the days of the week, the months of the year, the seasons, and can count, most of them, up to 130. They know all the letters of the alphabet and their sounds, can each write their name, and have a bank of known English sight words, as well as many English songs.

It astounds me how much patience they demonstrate. They will wait quietly in class, sitting at their desk or standing in line for 20 minutes without fussing or fidgeting. They are respectful and well mannered in class and if they are asked to come and show something on the black board they are happy to have the chance and will say “thank you” to the teacher when they are finished, before returning to their seat.

Our OLPC (One Laptop per Child) team is here, ready to work with children who will receive the gift of a small laptop. Mary, Kate, Michael and Sean are all university students who have given of their time this summer to come to Madagascar and deploy these wonderfully designed computers. Our team received a ten day training course in Rwanda before coming to our village of Ambatoharanana.

The XO laptops, as they are called, were designed specifically for children in developing countries. They are extremely durable, dust-proof and made to be able to be worked with outside as the screen doesn’t reflect the sun. They are very intuitive and are able to be used in many languages. The children can chat amongst themselves in their villages, do a work of art on a paint project, learn programming through simple commands, take pictures, measure the distance between objects, do creative writing alone or along with others on their computers, etc. etc. We hope to employ the computers to help us in the teaching of numeracy and literacy as well as science, social studies, etc.

So far the four university students have been teaching the teachers every evening after school on their own 4 XO’s. The 100 computers that will be given out to students are still being held at the customs office awaiting the endless amount of paperwork and bureaucracy that needs to happen to process them before they are freed to us. Yesterday the OLPC team came to the school at lunch time, and during recess, they each worked with two students at a time until all 29 had had a chance to be introduced to the computer. The concentration on the faces of the children was quite something to behold, as they tried to make the track pad mouse go where they wanted it to.

We have been blessed with an incredible staff here at the school! From the teachers, who are so keen to learn anything they can and who are there to help the students through any difficulties, to our guard, Olivier, who knows the children by name and who cooks, sews, runs errands, cleans the school and is a friend to all. We also have a very dedicated committee here, who keep everything running smoothly and are willing to put aside their own work when called on to run to town for a meeting or other necessary business activities of the school.

We could not have asked for a better group of people running our school! Their dedication is obvious in the way the children have learned and the mutual respect and love that is exhibited by all.

The teachers and students asked me to thank all our supporters very much for all that you have given to this school. They are so very grateful for a hearty daily meal and the opportunity to learn.

-Kathy

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 3:49 pm and is filed under School Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.