IU-Newark-Rwanda partnership bridges education gap

Each student at Kabwende Primary School in rural Rwanda has a new book this semester.

The books are filled with stories written by peers an ocean away.

In June, two IU students documented the scene as the Kabwende children, accustomed to sharing one textbook among four students, received their own personal books.

“Even before we gave them the books, the excitement was apparent from 100 yards away,” said junior Chris Purvis, a photographer and videographer for the Books and Beyond documentation team. “It was apparent in their faces that to have something of their own, a real possession, was something new.”

The international story-exchange project was a yearlong endeavor started by IU’s Global Village Living-Learning Center to bring books to Rwanda schools with limited resources.

But Books and Beyond, as its name indicates, is about more than book donation.

“It’s not just going to Africa and helping people and leaving,” said junior Caitlin Ryan, who documented the Rwanda trip with Purvis. “It’s truly a three-way partnership where every group is giving and every group is getting something. It’s an exchange in every sense of the word.”

The three partners are three very different schools – IU, Newark Collegiate Academy in Newark, N.J., and Kabwende Primary School in Kinigi, Rwanda, a northern town at the base of Volcanoes National Park.

Each school contributes to and benefits from the give-and-take project.  

Mentoring charter school students

About 25 students from the Global Village participated in Books and Beyond in the past year. Most were designated “writing partners” and mentored one middle or high school student from Newark Collegiate Academy to produce short children’s stories.

The stories were then compiled into a book for Kabwende students, who are currently writing their own stories to send back.

NCA, a member of the TEAM charter schools system in Newark, strives to send each of its students to college.

Students are chosen from Newark city schools based on a lottery system.

“Typical students entering fifth grade at NCA are about two years behind in math and three years behind in reading,” said Ali Nagle, who teaches fifth-grade reading at NCA and co-founded Books and Beyond. “Of my 112 students, about 15 are below kindergarten reading level.”

Living in a city where only 9 percent of residents have bachelor’s degrees, NCA students escape Newark’s poverty cycle by setting their sights on higher education.

“A kid goes into a TEAM school, and within six months, they’re performing markedly better on standardized tests,” Ryan said. “After a couple years in the TEAM system, they’re not only caught up with the national standard for students their age, they’re surpassing it.”

Every single NCA student aspires to attend college, Nagle said, and IU students serve as mentors and role models.

“All our middle schoolers were able to see actual people who go to college,” Nagle said. “They could talk to them about what it takes to get into college and how to succeed once there.”

Many of the Global Village writing partners traveled to Newark during Spring Break to work face-to-face with NCA students and put the final touches on their children’s stories.

In October, 18 students and two teachers from NCA will visit IU, a trip made possible by monetary donations from several directors of Residential Programs and Services.

“Our kids here in Newark are going to be very prepared for college, and they are an untapped resource for IU,” Nagle said. “If IU and TEAM schools could capitalize on this partnership, we could get TEAM students to attend IU.”

Promoting literacy in Rwanda

The Kabwende Primary School, like many primary education facilities in Rwanda, has no electricity, running water or windows and never has enough books.

There are 27 teachers for 1,900 students. Students may attend only half a day in order to fit everyone into the schedule.

But despite the school’s lack of resources, its students, ages 5 to 17, are quite serious about learning.

“I’ve worked in education for 10 years, and I’ve never seen students understand in this
serious a way how education is their bridge to a better life,” Nagle said.

In October 2008, the Rwandan Ministry of Education mandated that all primary school classes be taught in English rather than French.

Most teachers there speak French or Kinyarwanda primarily, said IU School of Education professor and Books and Beyond adviser Beth Samuelson.

As Rwanda continues to recover from the genocide it faced 15 years ago, Rwanda President Paul Kagame is attempting to gain international recognition by mandating English instruction in primary schools.

“He really wants his country to get in the global mix in the reconstruction of his country,” said IU alumna Nancy Uslan, who first envisioned Books and Beyond after a 2005 trip to Rwanda. “The only way to really do that is for people to start speaking English.”

But Rwanda’s teachers, who often don’t speak English any  better than their students, get little government support.

“The government has not provided teachers with any resources to improve their own English, let alone resources to teach English to their students,” Ryan said.

Books and Beyond is playing a key role in advancing English literacy.

Samuelson created an instruction manual and English lesson guide for the Kabwende teachers, and now Kabwende students have English children’s stories written by NCA
students.

In addition to supporting English literacy, Books and Beyond promotes an entirely different teaching methodology for Kabwende instructors.

“There is no independent thought process in the schools there at this point,” Uslan said. “They teach the chalk-and-talk method: The teacher writes something on the blackboard and the children regurgitate what they see.”

Samuelson expressed similar education concerns.

“They learned a top-down teaching style from colonial rule,” she said. “The colonials were not interested in developing an intellectual class in their colonies, but just wanted people who would do what they were told.”

Samuelson said her teaching guide includes discussion questions that encourage students to move beyond basic comprehension toward more critical analysis of the reading.

Preparing for the future

Kabwende students are now completing their stories, which will be compiled with the American students’ stories and sold in Bloomington and Newark in early 2010.

Proceeds will fund the continuation of Books and Beyond.

As the project begins its second year this fall, Uslan said she thinks Books and Beyond has the capability to expand to other Rwanda schools.

“There’s no question that we have to let our program do its thing and see how it does within a three-year period,” she said. “But we are very hopeful that it will work ... and that we will be ready to expand.”

Ryan said she and several others met with the mayor of the Musanze district, an area that includes Volcanoes National Park and Kabwende. She said he and the minister of education for Rwanda understood the benefits of Books and Beyond.

“It’s something they would like to have expanded to other schools as being a resource for their teachers to learn English,” Ryan said.

For now, the three-way partnership among IU, Newark and Kabwende prepares for a second round of story-sharing, and every student involved can tell his or hers.

“From the very beginning, this project has always been built on sharing your story,” Nagle said. “Everyone has a story to tell.”