This morning, I had an amazing opportunity to visit a local school in a village on Lake Togo! Our friend Lucien, who guided us around Togoville this past weekend is a teacher here and he gave us a guided tour!
First thing in the morning, the students sweep up the schoolyard and clean all the classrooms! No caretakers here...
These kids are in kindergarden so they don't sweep up yet! They were very interested in us and were all very excited to see their picture on the camera screen.
The "bell" to start the school day is actually these boys playing the drums. All the kids lined up behind their teacher and waited for the raising of the flag, singing of the national anthem and then marched in formation to their classroom door!
From what I understood, this school is only partially funded by the state and three teachers are paid this way. The other teachers are hired by the parents. At the moment the school is short one teacher and the parents haven't been able to afford to hire anyone. This leaves a grade one class with 136 kids! The sign on the wall in this packed classroom reads "children have the right to an education"
Every time we walked into a classroom the kids would clap and sing a welcome chant. In Lucien's class they wanted to know our names and we showed them our countries on a world map. The teacher who walked us from class to class told all the kids that if we come back next year, we'll be expecting to see they have all moved up a grade and this only happens via hard work. ( par le billet du travail). In most classes the teacher would say... How does this happen? And the kids all answer together " par le billet du travail". I'd say, these kids all know how to work hard!
Finally, when Lucien asks his class a question they all write the answer on a chalk board and hold it up. No pencils and paper here! However, the kids did have rather nice french language textbooks!
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