| For two weeks in July, two teachers from the Junior School went to work with teachers and children in Shyogwe and Nyragenge in Rwanda as a third stage in the long–running partnership. It was Miriam Bateman’s third visit but it was the first time for Jane Lane.
Mrs Bateman continued the work she had started on previous visits, helping the teachers to teach English in imaginative and enjoyable ways whilst working within the very limited resources of a developing, African country. Most mornings she worked with classes of children, some as large as 120, in basic, dimly-lit classrooms, modelling lessons that the Rwandan teachers could observe and try for themselves. In the afternoons she was taken by jeep or very old car on a hazardous, one and a half hour, cross-country journey to Nyragenge, another small town where she again worked with teachers and children in much the same conditions.
Mrs Lane spent all of her time working in Shyogwe Primary School, again teaching English to large numbers of children in as many different and innovative ways as possible, sometimes through action songs and puppet shows,( the puppets being finger puppets, thanks to the kind donations of finger puppets made by many of our children prior to Mrs Bateman’s visit in 2005) . Mrs Lane also used the theme of ‘Recycling’ not only as a vehicle for teaching English but also as a partnership project, comparing our ‘throw away’ culture with the ‘recycle everything’ way of life in Rwanda. It is very obvious that we could learn a lot from the Rwandans in this respect. The theme was also explored through a project she conducted with the children entitled ‘A Day in the life of a Shyogwe child’. Giving many of the children disposable cameras to take home with them, some fascinating insights into the children’s home lives were revealed. Quite different from life in Marchwood in many, many ways.
On two occasions during the visit, Mrs Bateman and Mrs Lane spoke by mobile phone to an assembly of children at Marchwood Junior School. Using a speaker phone linked up to a public address system, our children could hear their teachers and ask them questions about where they were, what they were doing and what life was like in Rwanda. This direct line of communication across thousands of miles brought to life the differences and similarities between our two cultures.
Marchwood Junior School is now looking forward to the next stage of the partnership project; it is hoped that two teachers from Rwanda will be able to come to Marchwood for 3 weeks towards the end of the year to work with our teachers and children so that we can continue to learn from each other. We’re looking forward to that enormously.
The visit to Rwanda and the planned visit by the Rwandan teachers have been made possible partly through a grant from The British Council but mainly because of the generosity of parents who sponsored their children in the school’s annual ‘Swimathon’ and the ‘Mini-Marathon’ last March.
| 
