Learning Reconsidered

We've now finished our first workshop series at Chishawasha, a personal and leadership development program for students ages 14 (or so) and up, and we're pretty exhausted, but so happy with the results!  We ran workshops for about 25 kids total on such topics as risk-taking, trust, leadership styles, communication, problem-solving, role modelling, coaching, and mentoring.  To the children, our 'facilitation' was clearly a different way of approaching education, so it was amazing to see them get more and more comfortable sharing their thoughts and opinions throughout the week, and to see them begin to grasp the concepts and how important and applicable they can be in their own lives.  Living in families of 8-14 children and only one or two mothers, all of the children this age have an important leadership role to play in the teaching and mentoring and caring of their younger 'siblings'.  It has been so clear that many of them take their roles very seriously and really want to be the best role models they can for their younger brothers and sisters.  The things these children have seen and experienced and the responsibilities they hold are humbling. When we see them playing games and coming to our workshops so eager to learn, the resilience of children becomes clear, and is a truly awesome thing to witness.

We've been noticing that as a whole, the children here have some really interesting and important skill sets that seem to be a bit less common in Canada.  In general, they're very kinaesthetically intelligent - they understand their bodies so well and use them with so much skill!  This observation was driven home to us pretty clearly and in a very humbling way when we asked a group of the leaders-in-training to teach us a traditional dance.  They just seem to have an ability to move so fluidly and seamlessly... impressive.  We, apparently, have no such abilities, so the kids had a great laugh while they patiently kept attempting to explain to us how to loosen up our hips.  It's also amazing to watch young boys play football (soccer) - they are so quick and skillful, they could probably put Canadian boys much older than themselves to shame. 

In our leadership sessions, we ask the students to do a variety of problem-solving tasks, and we've really noticed how important it is to them that when they are given an assignment, they do it as well as possible.  They will spend a long time talking through possible solutions and strategies, and they really want to be sure that their plan will work before they begin.  They've come up with some really creative approaches that we've never seen before to tasks we've facilitated many times, which is really fascinating - again many involving that kinaesthetic intelligence in new (to us) and creative ways.  Some of the insights we've heard this week, and the connections that are being made by these students, have been exceptionally high level, so we're learning as much from them as they are from us, if not more! 

One really interesting challenge has been navigating the language barrier.  All of the children speak Nyenja, and they all speak English to varying degrees.  Because the group's process is more important than our facilitation, and because we quickly found they have a difficult time expressing feelings (maybe cultural?), we've encouraged them to speak in whatever language they feel they can express themselves best.  So often their discussions in our sessions are conducted in Nyenja.  It's pretty fascinating to analyze group dynamics when you can't understand what's being said, but you would be amazed at how much you can still tell without the words.  We've had to be very conscious of the way we communicate as well, and we always need to make sure the language we're using is accessible yet not condescending.  It's an ongoing process, and we get better all the time - yet another part of our own education in this journey.

The most rewarding part, though, is when you have the opportunity to see one of the children really connected to the material.  When we hear that they've told their mothers how much they enjoyed it, or when they come to us and tell us, "I took a social risk today!", for example, that is such a reward and fortunately for us there have been many such rewards already. 

Next up is a series of workshops for the Chishawasha staff, and based on the talk about our leadership workshops, we've got a lot to live up to!  That will be our main project for the week, followed by some "playshops" for the younger kids.  So we're really busy, but completely excited, and finding some time for ourselves in between workshops, language lessons (we're learning Nyenja, they're learning French!), card games, and reading with the kids.

In other news, Jimi took a pretty big emotional risk of his own recently... but that's another story.  Stay tuned!

Much love, Jenny and Jimi