How long did it take to build Rome?

So yes, I DO actually get some work done around here. Today I was at an all day meeting with some of the "partners", which means other NGOs who are working in the education sector. Because this country is really just emerging out of decades of war, systems are, well, not really in place for basic things like education and training teachers. As a result, the vast majority of any sort of education work that's done around here has been done a bit piece-meal, by lots of different people in lots of different ways. Most people aren't even using the same syllabus or curriculum in their schools! So you can imagine what a challenge it is to pull all these different ideas together to start to come up with a more standardized system that can work for the country as a whole, and be more "owned" by the Ministry of Education.

So with the blessing of the Ministry of Education, all of us who have done any sort of work or who have any sort of materials for teacher training have gotten together to try to come up with something more unified and something that's been tested and proven "on the ground", so to speak.

I have to admit, I don't usually relish the thought of all day meetings, but this one was incredible! We got so much work done together. I think it helped that we were a smaller group, and that we were all committed to the task that we had set before ourselves.

Of course it was a good meeting for me because everyone there also listened to me as I got on my soap box about mother tongue teacher training. If you're going to have teachers teach in the local languages, you also need to train those teachers how to do that! In fact, most of the teachers need to be taught how to read and write their language, before they can even start teaching a child how to do it. Not a simple thing in a country with at least 63 recognized languages and no textbooks to be found. But people are getting the message that language is kind of an integral part of a child's education, and I think we're starting to make some headway. In this country, it's not at all unusual to have teachers who have barely passed the 4th grade (and this is not like our 4th grade - probably more equivalent to our 2nd grade) being trained as teachers, which means they are often barely literate in any language.

It's not every day that I come away from meetings about the education system in this country with a smile on my face! So today was a good day, and I'm actually feeling like there's hope for the education of the children of this country... unfortunately, this isn't a feeling I have after most meetings that I end up at.

But God is good, and I know that with his strength and wisdom, we'll somehow muddle through and build up the education system here. And in the meantime, I just have to remind myself that Rome wasn't built in a day... and we're not just trying to build a city, we're trying to build an entire country!