Imagination - take two

While we were at one of the local primary schools, waiting to start Bible club, a friend asked us to print some things off for her. They were just lesson schemes, and a simple worksheet for each of the kids to fill in. But, it was the first printed worksheet that I have seen used in a classroom in my thirteen and a half months here, and it was a strange shock of, "Oh, yeah. That's how people teach in America."

I had to fight with myself for a minute, against a very American response of wanting to "improve" their school by getting them more things. After spending so much time learning to gradually see both the strengths and the weaknesses of the school system here, and to just take it for what it is, it was surprising and more than a little disconcerting to find myself, however briefly wanting to make them like Americans.

It took a few minutes to figure out what it was that I was really wanting.


It wasn't a matter of getting them "real" posters, or putting in classroom bins full to overflowing with school supplies. or even printing off worksheet after worksheet for them to use in class. Hand drawn posters can be used as teaching aids just as effectively as store printed ones can -- perhaps more so, because they can be tailored to match the things that the students already know and don't know. And, creativity can happen without access to construction paper, pipe cleaners, and tubs of glitter -- no matter what the sellers of such items might try to tell you. :)

Places don't have to look like a well funded American school in order to be good schools.


What was bothering me, turned out to be the same thing that has been bothering me since the first time that we took a tour of the school. Somewhere in my mind, computer printed worksheets are connected with teaching at CHECK. And, CHECK means using the imagination as part of the learning process.

While there is a place for financial support to help pay the school fees for sponsored students, the "thing" that I was wanting to give them, wasn't a "thing" at all. Unfortunately, imagination and a love for learning are not exactly something that I can go to Nairobi to buy, or have sent in a package from America. We've done a lot of work in that department, but it takes time to change the entire ideology behind an education system, and time isn't exactly something that is in excess on a sixteen month internship .

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