During my visit to The Bromley School in Liberia, I paid a visit to the kindergarten class. Quite a difference from our kindergarten classes in LoCo, to be sure. The room is small -- about 10'x20' (?) There is no electricity or running water. No brightly colored displays of student work, no manipulatives for hands-on learning, no books..... Just sweet, smiling children and their teachers.
They practiced their letters on the ancient chalkboard in the room......
....as kindergartners do everywhere.....
...they also practiced forming letters in composition notebooks with their teacher working with them.....
They taught me some of their favorite songs and games.......
Many of the games were similar to Duck, Duck, Goose; the hokie pokey; and London Bridge.......
And then, I taught a little math lesson on collecting and analyzing data. In case you can't tell by my artistic representations, we are determining favorite fruit: mango (called plum in Liberia), pineapple and banana......
We also did some story problems on the chalk board. I wanted to engage them in conversation about their thinking process as they approached a math problem. This was new for them. Much of the instruction is more teacher directed with less "wait time" than what we are used to in the States. The teachers were very gracious and anxious to see what I would do with their students.....
As I worked in this classroom, I noted that these children were born after the wars in Liberia had ended. They have not experienced the war witnessed by their older peers. We were told that some families were able to keep their children pretty sheltered from the war by keeping them hidden at home. For others, that was not the case.
At any rate.... the joyful smiles of the children were a very, very good thing.
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