Critical appraisal of the HIV trip- Teachers' View.

Teachers questionnaires had only two open questions: Lessons learned from the trip and what went wrong and suggestions for future trips.

1. Lessons learned.

All 8 teachers said the trip enabled them to understand more what they used to teach just in theory. A relevant example was the meteo instruments seen for the first time at the airport. They feel they are now more confident in explaining those instruments to kids. Indeed, 1 teacher said he will not struggle in drawing them whilst teaching kids about them in the future!

They said they also got more insights and understanding about HIV/AIDS. The talk made clearer a bit of what they already knew but confess to have got more understanding about ways through which people can contract HIV/AIDS, prevention methods and the impact of HIV/AID on the community.

2. What went wrong and suggestions for future trips

All teachers noticed that lunch was served very late. This is true because kids only had a piece of bread and soft drink around 3pm local time when RSVP coordinator noticed nothing was being done for them.

They ended up having a cooked meal in Kamembe on their way back to Bugarama. That was about 6pm. But yet the church minister, head teacher, all teachers and RSVP coordinator were all present...! None of them got an insight to check on the head teacher who was in charge of meals.

So, in all honesty, this went badly and very unecessarily wrong. The Rwandan coordinator has investigated the issue and lessons have been learned.

2 out of 8 teachers who took part in the trip said that too much was condensed in just one day, consequently feel they have not had enough time to fully explore each visited place.

1 teacher also mentionned that the timing was not good, he/she thinks it would have been better to organise such a trip in the second term rather than final school term (national test exam period).

Teachers' suggestions include

organising a separate study visit only for teachers in order to increase their knowledge and build up their capacities in different domains such as technology and national geography.

They also pleaded for more children to be included in future trips, i.e. taking P6 and P5 altogether, or the best 5 students in lower classes.

A recommendation was given to continue such trips year after year, and this is also Dr Damien Nsabimana's passionate plea to RSVP donors

.

Please click here to see the direct translation of teachers questionnaire and a selection of answers.

HIV Trip: Kids' View.       Nov 07 Newsletter Listings.