nica-eh: Teacher Training in Matagalpa

I have been in Nicaragua for 5 days now. This week I traveled to the new NCA campus in Matagalpa. I've been working with the teachers in the mornings and helping with the library and other details in the afternoons.

Here are three of my favorite moments from teacher training so far:

1) By far the most exciting part of the training thus far is when I modelled a lesson. The teachers were my fourth grade students and I taught them about angles. They were highly motivated, eager to learn, and enthusiastic to participate. I had to remind them that they were 4th graders! The best is when I "assigned homework" several of the teachers wrote down the assignment in their notebooks.

2) One of the teachers has been coming into the 'library' each afternoon before he leaves for his house. He returns the book he took the previous day and selects a new one to take home to his girls. Children's picture books are not a resource that is accessible to most of the population in Nicaragua. Watching this teacher already utilize the books in this library, demonstrates to me the great impact the school will have in this community.

3) Today we shared with the teachers the resources we brought down for them to decorate their classrooms. They were like children in a candy store as they looked through teaching resources they have never seen in their lives. Some of the teachers held up posters, pictures, and cut-out letters to examine and look at them very closely. Although the resources we took down are minuscule in comparison to the resources available to us in North America, to this group of teachers they hit a jackpot this morning. Tomorrow I hope to talk about how to utilize visual aids in the classroom and then have them begin to think about how they will decorate their own classrooms.

Below are a few photos from around the school: