Integrated Curriculum Workshops - Going solo!!

Week 3

It was an early start on Monday with little sleep as I visualized my presentation to 50 lecturers and anxiously anticipated their reaction – were they going to be cautious, questioning, hostile?? Who knew, it was a new audience for me, and without my partner in crime Anna I was nervous. An 8.30am start meant a 9am start and my introduction, warm up activities and co-operative learning presentation went really well…getting back on the horse after a weeks planning was going to be great (I thought!)

My 4 day long workshops were all prepared to introduce the New Primary School Curriculum to lecturers in conjunction with the governmental bodies, the National Curriculum Development Centre and the Examinations Council of Lesotho. An important dual delivery where they would provide the theory and I would provide the practical…..great in theory….not so great in practice. As I waxed lyrical about the necessity for modelling good practice in order to understand how to teach a child-centered integrated curriculum, my highly energized, participatory activities were stagnated by dry 2 hour long commentaries about the syllabus, always descending into open argument and debate….in Sesotho, so I sat there excluded and without purpose!

By Wednesday I wondered why exactly I was here and I pondered if there really was any point in my wider professional concerns regarding helping LCE and the education system! Catastrophizing aside, I genuinely left the workshop on Wednesday wondering if I should go home for good in April!! However, by Thursday the tides had changed and the day went brilliantly. I was back in my comfort zone leading activities on Assessment for Learning and engaging a lot more with individuals and debating concerns that actually could be answered rather than arguing about semantics and political struggles between organizations.

Friday followed suit and we closed the workshops with a confident smile and genuine applause as we all now embark on the next step….rewriting and re-structuring the courses at LCE to ensure Primary Education students are ready to work with the new curriculum when they go out on teaching practice in 2015. A big job but I no longer feel like I’m tackling it on my own!!