I was nervous. We had talked about teacher training day, invested lots of time and energy into it, spent hours planning and praying but I still didn’t know if things would go well. I had imagined the day in my head time after time, but also had though through everything possible that could go wrong.
Would the teachers actually come? People here don’t exactly keep day timers, so I was a little nervous that they would forget the dates. My other fear was that there would be too many people. Troy, our contact here, warned often events like this pick up stragglers.
Because I don’t know much of anything about teaching preschoolers, my job was logistics. I’m sure that those of you who know my lack of organizational abilities are laughing about that, but God can work miracles and improve planning skills. I got to ride along with the bus in the morning and make sure that we didn’t leave any teachers behind.
It was so exciting when we got to the first care point and one of the teachers was standing out by the road waiting. She was dressed in her best clothing, with a purse under her arm. As we stopped at the other care points it was obvious that none of the women had forgotten and there were no extra tag alongs. There was a spirit of excitement as we rode the bus back to the meeting place.
When we walked in I was amazed by all the work that our group had put into making the room look professional. Each teacher had a spot with a notebook, paper for a name tag, pen, markers, etc. The women excitedly took their seats and were instructed to write their names on the paper in front of them.
Heather and Spano begin the training portion of the event. They were amazing, both studied education in school and were able to condense years of material into two days of seminar. Besides being taught how to structure a classroom the teachers were taught games to play with the kids, songs to sing and basic education theory. They were so into the training, all of them took notes; even the ones who couldn’t write would copy the pictures from the board.
More then anything else this gave the women the sense that they could teach. They were empowered. Instead of us coming in and teaching for them, they were given the tools and resources. The women who came to the seminar have very little formal education. Some stopped school at third grade while others went through high school. They are the women who serve food day in and day out at the care points but have an interest in doing more and running classes for the kids.
At the end of the two days we did manicures and pedicures for the participants. They work so hard for the kids, we wanted to have a time for them to recieve. When I explained what manicures and pedicures were, they were a little hesitant but quickly warmed up to the ideas of foot rubs.
I enjoyed giving the pedicures, for some reason feet don’t faze me, maybe because mine are so gross that everyone else’s are good in comparison. As I was rubbing one woman’s feet Sma one of the teachers said to me, “Morgan you are a living sermon right now.” What a complement!
