Reading Workshop - CRC School.

This past week I (Ella) had the opportunity to lead a full day reading workshop for the staff at the CRC school.

We spent the day talking, reading, eating, and reading some more. 

 The statistics on literacy in this country are very telling of an educational system that is in crisis.  The staff at this school aim to work against this. 

While being read to aloud ("Infidel"), the teachers produced some pretty good art.

The teachers developed plans for implementing new reading strategies into their classrooms, including reading aloud to their students everyday, paired reading, and a buddy reading program, pairing up older and younger students.

This coming week I will be training a couple staff members and a group of students how to organize the library and "catalogue" books.  Libraries are not prevalent or used in this country. There is a saying here, that if you want to keep something hidden, put it in a book. In the four and a half months we have been here, I have only seen the town library gate unpadlocked once.

This is not the case with the CRC school library. When ever I come to visit the library I find the books all mis-shelved and out of order, and I am more than happy to organize them again.

The morning mist over the hillside by the school as we gathered for the workshop.  Hopefully the fog of illiteracy begins to lift through the work of good people like Dr. Jo Kuyvenhoven and others with the Ministry of Education in Sierra Leone.