Voulenteer at Lemlem School in Addis Ababa

This is the review I made my self one of my last days at Lemlem School.

I have been working as a volunteer at Lemlem School in Addis Ababa from September the 17 to the 28 of November 2013 (10 weeks).

My main tasks at Lemlem:

• Personal feedback for the teachers
• Case classes (8*45 min teaching)
• Teacher training for the teachers in School (2,5 hours)
• Teacher training for the teachers in Kindergarten (1 hour)
• Giving in my point of view for decision made by the management

During my time I have worked with the teachers and their methods in the classroom. The main focus has been to improve active and involving learning. I have observed different teachers individual during their classes and afterwards giving them some comments and concrete ideas for their teaching. A concrete idea could be that the students should read loud two and two for each other, and then the teacher can take a couple and let them read for him (so he still got the chance to correct them) instead of let one student read for the whole class. In this way you make all the students active instead of only one. Another thing I have suggested for a teacher was to let the students go through the homework instead of him and next time I observed him he followed my advice and found it successful. The advices could be as simple as: “Have a look on you mobile clock now and then during the lesson, so you get a feeling of time, and have a chance to end the lesson in a good way”. During three lessons this teacher progressed from a very bad time management to ending the lesson at the exact time.

I made some case classes to prove that active learning is possible here. I took over two English lessons in grade 4 and two lessons in grade 8. I choose the same topic for the class as the teacher already planned, but with the methods that I believed would let the students learn as much as possible. I let both the normal teacher and some extra teachers observe me during the classes, and got some good feedback afterwards.

One Saturday in the middle of the time here I arranged a workshop day for the teachers. It was 2,5 hour and the main focus was active learning. During the day I did both different kind of groupwork and some inspiration talk by myself.  Beside from active learning the themes were how to develop new ideas for teaching and how to plan a lesson well.

In the belonging Kindergarten (3-6 years old students) I made some observations too. The main thing I noticed was that the children has to wait a lot, just sitting still. This made me develop some games and plays, to be used both for stimulating the children’s imagination, but also using the time in a more active and useful way. I did a teacher training session, where I played all the games with the teachers in the Kindergarten. The following days I also went to the kindergarten to play some of the games with the children to implement more successful.

Finally I was giving my point of view in different discussions in the management. We have had different conversations about solving problems and implementing new things. Sometimes I have been the facilitator of decision making and had the chance to suggest new ideas now and then. In general I have been a part of solving small as well as bigger challenges in the daily life at Lemlem School.