Training

Sorry for the radio silence. (insert lame excuse involving 'busy')

I've been working at training for the new volunteers off and on (mostly on) for the past six weeks. It has been really interesting to see how, in some aspects, it is so different working on the other side of training. It feels like all I can write about is training because that has been my life.

So at the risk of sounding incredibly boring I'll give you an overview of training (or stage) from the perspective of a PCV facilitator (PCVF).

Stage has four sessions a day, two in the morning of two hours each with a thirty minute break in the middle and two in the afternoon of ninety minutes with a fifteen minute break in the middle. There are a few distinct types of sessions: language, cross culture, security, medical, and technical. Which are for the most part pretty self explanatory except technical.

As a PCVF I facilitate passing on the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to be successful in our sector (secondary education). I work along side several other PCVFs as well as some host country technical trainers. We have anywhere from 2 to 6 of these sessions a week which cover a wide range of teaching-related topics.

Because teaching IT is so different from other teaching experiences the IT trainees break off from the main group for many technical sessions and hold sessions of their own. We've covered things like computer repair and maintenance, OS configurations for teaching, challenges of IT teaching in Burkina Faso, classroom management and educational software. I spend the vast majority of my time planning, preparing and facilitating these sessions.

Currently the PCTs are gone visiting their sites. They are going to be back on Tuesday just in time to start preparation for a five week 'model school' program. Model school is going to be a big change in gear as I'll be spending most of my time observing PCTs teaching and giving them feedback on how to improve lessons and teaching techniques.

So that, in a nut shell, is what I've been doing for the past month and a half, and what I'll continue to do for the next month. I should be back up to (more) regular updates after that.