Teaching is generally not regarded as an attractive career option in Rwanda. A young person will enter the teaching profession when most other options are no longer available. Many aspire to be doctors, lawyers, or entrepreneurs, but when they fail to do well enough in their secondary school leaving examinations, they choose education as a last resort.

Teachers at the lowest end of the pay scale receive a net monthly salary of 30,000 Rwandan francs (approximately $54 Canadian). This sum is nowhere close to a living wage. To make matters more difficult, districts are sometimes two to three months late in paying their teachers this meager amount.

While public education is "free" in Rwanda, there is always an expectation that parents will pay teacher incentives to the school each term. These incentives are used to supplement the teacher's salary. While these incentives are small and may not seem like a great deal of money, many parents either are unable to pay or chose not to pay for a variety of reasons. When parents do not pay these incentives, Head Teachers then use much of their valuable time tracking down the money. This produces many conflicts between administration and parents and sometimes trickles down to the classroom to create tension between teachers and students.

Seated on benches against the wall of the small room are ten well-dressed teachers, only three of whom look a day over twenty-two years old. On a somewhat cool day by Rwanda's standards, some even wear long-sleeved sweaters. The teachers have been summoned to a meeting, and there is an air of anticipation as they await what the afternoon will hold for them.

Justine, the Head Teacher of Ruhanga School, opens the meeting with a welcome and asks one of the more veteran teachers to give an introductory prayer. She also reminds the teachers about the focus of today's meeting.

When the agenda of the meeting is handed over to Wellspring, Teacher Trainer Ladislas reminds all of his keen listeners that today's topic is effective group work. Just two weeks ago, these teachers were at a two-day Wellspring workshop on the same topic. The purpose of today's meeting is to reinforce what was learned at the workshop.

Wellspring teacher trainer Theogene makes a point during a recent staff meeting at Ruhanga School

I once read a book entitled, "Death by Meeting" by Patrick Lencioni. In his modern fable, Lencioni outlines what he feels is one of the biggest problems of modern business: bad meetings. The story follows a young, dynamic CEO as he does his best to radically reform the culture of meetings within the organization he leads.

These staff meetings led by Wellspring bring life to our Whole School Development Program. Held at the school, they are very practical in nature, as the teachers know that they will immediately be implementing what they are learning. These meetings are the in-between step as the teachers transition from the workshop setting to the classroom setting. Within days of these meetings, Wellspring trainers enter the classrooms to observe and work with the teachers as they move from best theory to best practice. These school-based meetings and the follow-up classroom observations and conversations that come next set Wellspring apart from many organizations which do teacher training in Rwanda. Workshops alone can often be easily forgotten if new ideas are not implemented quickly.

Today, the Wellspring trainers are modeling what effective group work looks like. The teachers are quickly divided into three groups and asked to list the important concepts of effective group work. Their task is then to represent this in a poster with pictures on a large piece of chart paper. Trainers Mercy, Beatrice, Theogene, and Ladislas circulate amongst the groups to ensure they are on-task and working towards the stated purpose.

Before creating the poster, the teachers discuss how many students will be in each group, what the individual students will be doing, how they will keep the students engaged, and whether each group will have its own name. They remind each other that groups will often choose leaders, secretaries, reporters, and timekeepers. After the posters have been completed, each group designates a spokesperson to share the posters with the rest of the staff.

Ruhanga teacher Patrick explains his group’s poster to the rest of the staff

At the end of the presentations, Justine asks which of the teacher groups summarized the topic well and which of the groups worked most effectively. Immediately, the volume rises in the room as the teachers vociferously advocate for their own groups. It is a light-hearted debate as much laughter also fills the room. Like a good teacher would do in his own classroom, Ladislas allows for some discussion but then intervenes and praises all three groups, indicating that each of the groups' presentations complemented each other's.

This is a meeting, and indeed the teachers have no choice but to be here, but there is life in this room.

April is Rwanda’s month of national mourning and as the nation remembers its brokenness and pain through its theme of ‘Hope’, the importance of empowering Head Teachers, Deputies, Teachers and Parents seems even more significant. The future of a nation’s hope depends on what it is building in its schools and children today. Thus as we completed our final Whole School Development workshop there was sense of accomplishment that, in spite of challenges, we were rebuilding the present and future hope of a nation.

Having found the other members of their group during a workshop game, Teacher Trainer Ernest Ntamugabo
(far right) and teachers now discuss the shared characteristics that make them a group.

Add a comment

When faced with pending change, there are four general styles or types of people we come across in these situations. They are commonly known as Resistors, Followers, Early Adopters or Pioneers.

Théophile is the Head Teacher at Kabuga School, located approximately twenty minutes outside of Kigali. He definitely fell into the 'Resistor' category when Wellspring's Whole School Development Program started in his school two years ago.

Kabuga Head Teacher, Théophile, discusses an idea with Kabuga’s deputy at a recent Head Teachers’ Day at Wellspring

Not unlike some of his other administrative colleagues, Théophile was a very reluctant participant. By definition, individuals with a 'Resistor' personal change handling style are likely to be reluctant to accept change or like to be the very last to do so if possible. As such, resistors tend to have little or no interest in thinking about a change initiative unless it is likely to offer substantial benefits over and beyond the circumstances that they currently enjoy. When a 'Resistor' is also the leader of the school, changing the school culture is likely to be next to impossible.

"What must underlie successful epidemics, in the end, is a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus." - Author Malcolm Gladwell

Earlier this week, Wellspring was invited to the "Teacher Education, Management and Professionalisation Reform Summit" hosted by Rwanda’s Ministry of Education. It was a chance to hear about the general direction education is heading with regards to issues such as pre-service training, in-service training, and the quality education agenda.

Those in attendance included Ministry of Education employees, District Education Officers, or those involved in pre-service education (those programs granting initial teaching certification). Also there were those from the donor community – Department for International Development (Britain), UNICEF, U.S. AID, and the British Council. In short, everyone who is important in the Rwanda education community was present.

Kirsten Lake, Mark Thiessen & Jeff Komant listen attentively to a
keynote address at the recent Teacher Education Summit in Kigali

Of approximately 150 attendees to the Summit, only a handful are actually involved in the type of in-service training that Wellspring conducts in our Whole School Development Program. We feel we have much to add to the conversation of what constitutes a quality education for our students and what constitutes quality professional development for teachers and Head Teachers. Still, for whatever reason, we have not been as influential as we feel we could be. Add a comment