A spider web, a rainbow and orchids

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A spider web, a rainbow and orchids 

Monday morning while on my way to school I saw a spider's web: a marvel of intelligence, a mixture of chemistry, physics and much more. 

I was going to visit the teachers training on the project "Learning by playing". A project conceived in the Czech Republic, which friends of the NGO SIRIRI have been carrying out for 5 years. It is a pedagogical method developed for elementary students to try to change a rather difficult situation: children learn what they can by heart, without much assistance of their teachers in terms of helping them actually understand, to develop reasoning that brings them to really learn. In addition to this, the program is done in French something that the students do not speak neither at school or at home it so the difficulties in actually learning this program are quite large.

There are benefits to the new program though; it tries to help children learn while having fun, and involves teaching in the national language (Sango). A simpler language, spoken and used every day. 

Thanks to this method, children are able to read and write in the first months of the first grade. A big difference with the traditional method, in which children take 2-3 years to stutter a little in French, without really understanding the rules and the mechanism. 

These days a group of volunteers from the Czech Republic and France are training more than 250 teachers (160 here in Bozoum and 90 in Bouar). Training is provided mainly by Central African teachers, with Czech volunteers providing safe support and guidance. 

That's why the spider web struck me: calm, method and patience, a small revolution is happening in Central African education. 

Low and behold the rainbow of yesterday (a double rainbow), calls for peace, of which school and teaching is one of the foundations. 

To top it all, these days orchids are blooming on the grounds of the Mission.