October 26, 2015
I never get tired of waking
up to the beautiful morning light at Maranyundo. The sounds of waking birds,
girls walking to early study and breakfast, the mellow moo of a cow or two, it
is an amazing warm welcome to a new day.
Our day began slowly, as we savored the many flavors of the colorful breakfast Maria prepares each morning. The luscious golden
mango slices, the little bananas, bread with rich brown peanut butter and
smooth honey, slices of rich cheese and the coffee…Rwandan coffee. What a special gift to enjoy all of
this hospitality in an even tempo. A luxury.
The focus of our morning was to be a meeting with Sister
Juvenal. We were to present the latest draft of the annual evaluation for which
we gathered data in March during an on-site visit. We would ask for Sister’s
in-put and go through the suggestions we had made for advancing the school’s
mission for the coming year. We were all looking forward to this exchange of
ideas with Sister.
We gathered in Sister’s office. She wanted to begin by
seeking our advice. With the expansion of the school, she is keen to hire the
best new teachers she can find to join the current faculty who are clearly
dedicated to becoming more proficient in their content knowledge and “student
centered methodologies.” She thinks so carefully about the hiring process.
Together, she and the Dean review all the applications . She chooses candidates
she thinks may be the “best” and invites each of them to come to the school for
a demonstration lesson. She observes the lesson along with a department
teacher. And, the best part, she then asks the students to give their feedback
on each of the candidates.
Currently,
she is looking for a physics teacher. She has invited three candidates to the
school to interview and do a demonstration lesson. Sister wanted now our
advice…not on whom to hire… but rather
how she should think about each of the candidates strengths and challenge as
she saw them.
One
candidate, she told us, is a seasoned teacher who did a very engaging lesson.
But he does not have much experience using technology. He is not very
comfortable with computers. A second
candidate, very early in his career, has excellent English skills, learned his
content in his college years in the US. But he did not teach a very engaging
lesson. He lectured to the students.
A third candidate knows physics very well, had some good teaching
strategies, but his English was not always understood by the students.
What
is the best way to consider the strengths and challenges of each of these
candidates?
The
predicament in which Sister Juvenal finds herself is a familiar story for school
administrators everywhere. Determined to convene a faculty who demonstrate the
important elements that are needed to create a professional community, one
needs people who have strong content knowledge. Teachers also need to
demonstrate a focus on student thinking and engaging students in interesting
lessons. New standards developed by national teams of educators in Rwanda require
students to be critical thinkers, problem solvers, computer savvy, all with
excellent English skills…across the curriculum. For this critical hire for the
new Maranyundo STEM high school, a physics teacher, the stakes are high.
Physics is central to the new combinations…the majors… that the students can choose at the high school
level. The physics teacher will play a key role in shaping the depth of student
knowledge and subject matter pedagogy. Would it be better to hire someone with
content knowledge, good teaching strategies and require him to learn computer skills?
Or should an administrator go with the novice who has strong content knowledge
and command of English but needs to learn inquiry based teaching strategies?
How critical is the English level to learning in physics?
Together
we sat in Sister Juvenal’s sunny, efficient office and weighed the different
ways to consider her conundrum. And we thought of how critical the role of the
teacher is in inspiring learning for every student, in every discipline.
Rwanda, like all nations in the world, is trying so hard to staff schools well.
But as other areas of the economy move forward, talented college graduates,
especially those in the STEM fields, are sought after to join engineering
firms, financial institutions, and NGOs focused on issues such as health care
and the environment. Across the globe the pool of ideal candidates for teaching
positions is shrinking. But if this girls’ school in Nyamata is any indication,
the pool of young people who are eager to learn and excited to embrace new
technologies is growing rapidly.
We
did not solve Sister Juvenal’s puzzle this morning. We did help her think about
the issues that are most important for her in a teacher candidate. The
importance of respect for students, the belief that every student can engage in
challenging curriculum, are supremely important to Sister Juvenal. Conducting
lessons that allow the students to “uncover” rather than “cover” content (as
David Hawkins sees the curriculum enterprise) is the shape of teaching she
wants to see. Having time to consider these priorities, to reflect on the ways
in which she wants her students and faculty to relate to the work they do
together brings a refreshed perspective to the hard choices of whom to hire.
Listening
to Sister Juvenal describe how she wants her girls to experience their
education, I thought about my favorite sentence from Eleanor Duckworth’s
classic text about listening to students’ thinking in the classroom, The
Having of Wonderful Ideas.
“The
more we help children to have their wonderful ideas and to feel good about
themselves for having them, the more likely it is that they will some day
happen upon wonderful ideas that no one else has happened upon before.”
The essence of education...and the fun!
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