Welcome to the blog of the Rwamagana Lutheran School in the Eastern Province of Rwanda! Check in with us every so often and find out what’s happening. Our pedagogical framework is based on Expeditionary Learning (more about that later) and we plan to welcome our first class of Primary 7 students in January of 2010. Right now we have 22 students in our English Bridge Program.
It’s August and we start back from our holidays on August 3. I think we’ve built a strong sense of community and shown students that we are interested in them as people and not just as grade-earners. But now the pressure will be on: can they get enough English between now and January to prepare them for Secondary 1 (these days, also called Primary 7)? The stakes are high.
We teachers and staff just said farewell to our visitors from the University of Wisconsin Fulbright-Hayes grant program: they were with us in Rwamagana for 10 days. Studying water use, national identity, culture and education (among other things!), it was terrific to see the cross-cultural friendships and conversations between educators from the US and Rwanda. Insights abound…
Meanwhile, we are getting ready to start construction. Our 2.5 hectare land site is ready for clearing and we’ll start with our first classroom building, to have ten rooms. At last!! Far more than just a building, this will be our “foundation” for learning — a place for our library, for study, for inquiry and investigation. I hope it will be a place that all of the community will benefit from.
