Still writing at home.

I am working for the Adwa Teacher Training College as In-Service Cluster Coordinator. The Cluster programme is being established throughout Ethiopia and is basically a cascade model where schools are geographically grouped into clusters; training is provided to Key Teachers at these schools, and these teachers are meant to share their what they've learned with their colleagues. Adwa TTC is responsible for training First Cycle teachers (Primary - Grades 1 to 4) for 9 schools in the town of Adwa and over 50 schools in the surrounding rural areas.

Over the past few days, I've been meeting with my training colleagues/counterparts at the College to try and sort out our plans for training for this year. It has been a bit of a frustrating process for all of us, but I think finally we're converging towards a common understanding. Patience and willingness to change have been exercised on both sides.

Yesterday we visited two schools in and around Adwa. Cluster training started last year, and the results were quite impressive. In almost all the classes we visited, it was obvious that the teachers were trying to put the students into groups instead of rows, the walls were decorated with charts, and there was a hint of active learning. Ademalekah School in Adwa Town was particularly nice; Bete Yohanis School on the outskirts was admittedly quite rundown and the classrooms were very dark and small, but even so the teachers and students appeared keen, and all the classrooms we visited were striving to be model classrooms. (Model classroom is the name given to classrooms that are set up and decorated in a way that's meant to support active learning. I'll write more on this soon, but I'm beginning to suspect that many classes are adopting the trappings of model classrooms but are finding it harder to adopt the actual principles of active or student-centred learning.)

Today we decided to combine a visit to Axum, the historical centre of the Aksum/Axum Empire, with a visit to two rural schools that were meant to be on the way. Up until now, if I've been surprised it's been more because the level of development was greater than I expected. Today, that changed. I'm beginning to get a sense of what rural means, and the huge difference between life in rural and urban or even semi-urban communities. The two schools we visited today are not the most isolated and yet, after leaving the main road, it took us close to an hour to get to each school, navigating narrow, rocky trails through bush, mountain and even over a stream. We only made it because we had a four-wheel drive, and because our driver is amazing. The roads are probably easier to travel by foot than by car, and I'm not sure we could drive it at all during the rainy season. My head is still jiggling from the drive through those mountain roads. Now that I've had a glimpse of rural roads, I'm feeling a bit of dread about all those schools we have to reach.

At one school (I can’t remember the name right now), the teachers have to walk from Axum, at least a one and a half hour walk each way. At Maiwoney School, there's a teacher's residence on the school site which is good especially because many of the teachers are very young and are often not from the local area; and if they lived in Axum it would take hours to walk to school. I took a picture of the home shared by two of the male teachers. It's a single room the size of a small bedroom, with two stone beds built into the wall, and it serves as storage, dining room and bedroom for two. I don't think there was electricity in the rooms, at any rate it was very dim. Even by the standards of my Ethiopian colleagues, this home was quite small; I'm not sure if the picture I took accurately reflects its size and misery. The teachers were friendly and kind anyway.