The adventure begins...: Workshops

Was a little nervous on Thursday-it was the first time I’d be running workshops completely on my own. With lots of notice, I’d organised 2 days of methodology training with the head of SOS school (one of my model schools) who assured me that her teachers would attend and was happy that we’d be joined by 2 more local schools. Predictably, I ended up contacting the other schools and though they both agreed on the date, time, in the end one of them pulled out because the head hadn’t managed to tell all their teachers…This has been one of my biggest frustrations here- people looking you straight in the eye and saying ‘yes’ when they really mean ‘no’. So although you speak with heads about numbers and who pays for what etc it’s never until the day arrives that you can be sure of anything.

We’d agreed that VSO would pay for the tea-break and that the schools would pay the ticket (transport costs for teachers) but I suspect that the fact the ticket wouldn’t be paid may have made the decision for one of the schools. I really don’t blame the teachers, after all this is their holidays and when a tin of milk powder costs a tenth of their monthly salary, I completely understand when they will only attend a training if they have a financial incentive…

VSO has a policy where ‘per diems’ are not paid, so teachers don’t just come along because of the payment. Thing is, in the UK you might attend a course for your professional development but that is in a context where you are paid a proper wage. This is not the case here. I have even heard other VSOers feel that the teachers here should be grateful of our input… I have to question whether I would attend a training session if I wasn’t getting a decent salary and I would have to say I wouldn’t. Indeed who can truly say they haven’t attended something only because of the promise of a free lunch, …or is that just me?

We recently had an education meeting where we were discussing what VSO should pay for in respect of the workshops since there is a budget available which we’re in fact currently under spending on. Anyway, I heard someone questioning whether we should pay for the tea-break (about 40p per teacher) when we do a morning session (about 4 hours). I wanted to scream, ‘how would you feel?’. The irony was that this particular person also felt that new volunteers should get a ‘welcome pack’ when they arrive in country which no doubt would cost 10 times more than a little Fanta and doughnut….argghhh, the hypocrisy!

So anyway, back to the workshops…I really enjoyed them last week - the evaluations were really positive so it was all worthwhile. I’m hoping to do one more day with this group for the resource making soon but in the meantime I have 2 more clusters to work with, so it’s fingers crossed all over again.

Some pics of the teachers at work: