I started my morning with a run at 6 am - joined today by Keiko my teammate from Japan. She's training for a relay event when she returns to Japan. We did 2.5 miles - our driver is coming early today so not time for a longer run.
Our driver arrived early today - he was waiting for us at 7:30! We dropped 4 of the team at the provincial offices and the 3 of us continued to the district office about 60 km away. The day was very productive! We used the information we gathered so far and revised our statement of work - and shared our suggested approach with the client. He accepted our recommendation - and our suggested changes to the schedule!
We met with the District Manager - George - he's a delightful and very knowledgeable person! In the mid 80's he was a teacher, then in the early 90's became a principal and served for 17 years. This was during the great transformation - apartheid ended in 1994 and there were many changes to all parts of society including the schools. He shared his experiences - and how he inspired the students in his school to learn and be productive citizens. He took a deep interest in his students and knew each one. He started a program for excellent students and provided special mentoring to them. This program continues and is now coordinated by our key client contact. About 2 years ago Geroge became District Manager and is a champion for excellence in both students and teachers. What a refreshing conversation! The team will be meeting with him each Friday to share our progress - so each Thursday evening the team will be busy putting our report together for him!
We then met with several managers including HR and Finance to understand how professional development for teachers is funded and planned. We learned that teachers can take training and get a promotion - but there's only 1 level promotion possible - after that they are at the top.There are many layers of approval required for planning the professional development and a high level of tracking that training is provided but we did not find any information about evaluating the effectiveness of that training.
In the afternoon we met with the Curriculum Advisors - these people visit the schools and do monitoring and reporting. We got great guidance from them on their needs for the curriculum framework we're to develop - and will receive additional materials on Thursday to help us with this part of our work. The 9 monitors cover many schools. We will receive copies of some of these reports on Thursday to understand what is observed and how they work with the teachers and principals.
The ride back to Polokwane was more relaxed - when Noah went over 140 kph we asked him to slow down - and he did. Later 4 of us walked about a mile to the mall - to get postcards and stamps - and to buy groceries. There's no place to buy lunch in the rural area where we work so we need to bring something to eat - or we get nothing! We also bought groceries and came back and Luca (from Italy) made a great pasta dinner for us in the hotel kitchen.
On Thursday we will be visiting several schools in the rural areas - even more remote than where's we've been. I'll be taking lots of pictures - and I'll figure out how to post these!!
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