On Tuesday of this week I found myself on the way to Kaduna, a city about three hours north of Abuja. I was visiting a school for Deaf Children carrying out a needs analysis for a placement on behalf of VSO before a new volunteer is due to arrive in February next year. I had been asked to do the visit by the Education Program Manager as the placement was very similar to mine and quite different to the normal placements in the Education Program area. A great way to utilise volunteers in country if you ask me.
To say that I enjoyed the day is somewhat of an understatement. The school was amazing, the principal Victoria was so motivated and inspiring and meeting those children in that environment was really lovely. I haven’t seen such happy and hardworking children since I’ve been here, the teachers were brilliant, it was all about child centred learning and you could see how much it has impacted these very lucky children. They were proud of their work, they wanted to show it to me and ask me if they were doing it right. Their work was on the walls along with affirmations and posters, it was a lovely environment for them to learn in.
The school however is run as a charity and it desperately needs funds to keep running and to become self-sustaining, hence a volunteer is now going to be placed there to help with fundraising. I can’t deny I was jealous of this new volunteer, theirs will be such a rewarding placement, getting to work in the school and learn sign language (I managed to learn good morning, how are you and thank you) so that you can communicate properly with the children and directly see the impact that your efforts are having in helping to keep the school running. Without this school these children would have nowhere to go, there isn’t the provision for disability like there is back home and it’s not taken into consideration in mainstream education meaning children like this are excluded. Here they can enter the school at nursery age where they can learn sign language so they can communicate from an early age and get an education like any other child. They even offer signing lessons to the parents at weekends so that they are able to communicate with their children.
I can only sum up by saying I loved, loved, loved my day there and that I wish all the schools here could implement teaching and learning like this.
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| Nursery 1: Half the class work the teacher |
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| Whilst the other half read, then they swap! |
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| Nursery 3: Half of the class doing some writing work |
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| Some maths in the Primary classes |
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| Here the teacher was asking the children to demonstrate different types of movement, they took it in turns to have a go. |
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| A science lesson in Junior Secondary |
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