Teacher Training in Rwanda - Our International Partnership

This month, we want to highlight Brenda Custudio and her work in Rwanda. Brenda recently participated in our Global Perspectives trip to Rwanda and coordinated a teacher’s training for local educators. A retired teacher herself, Brenda first visited Rwanda during our 2019 trip and has had a life-long passion for teaching. When provided the opportunity to tour a coffee making plant, she chose to visit a local school instead. The school, Indashyikirwa College, is a secondary education institution with approximately 300 students. Roughly half of the students live at the school, while the rest of them commute by foot. When she visited the school, Brenda met with several staff members and was given a tour by Simeon Bimenyimana, an English teacher. During her tour, she noticed a computer room that was padlocked shut. When she asked why access to these computers were limited to students, Simeon told her that the school did not have internet access, so the computers were useless. This inspired Brenda to raise money for the school. Upon her return to the United States, she organized an international film festival fundraiser. Brenda also brought Simeon over to the United States where he spoke at our Refugee Integration Conference, at Brenda’s film festival, and at the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) conference. After returning home, he reached out to Brenda and invited her to conduct a teacher training in Rwanda. He needed help addressing a major educational barrier: English. Since Rwanda’s independence, French was the official language of Rwanda that was required to be taught in all secondary schools. In 2008, the national language was switched to English. This has posed a series of issues, as many teachers only studied French and have low English proficiencies themselves.

After receiving Simeon’s invitation, Brenda decided to travel to Rwanda for a second time through our Global Perspectives Program. With the help of Kathy Jimenez, a teacher in Columbus, she organized a training on best practices for teaching English. Kathy brought several thousand photocopied pages of materials to pass out and Brenda brought other supplies such as pens and pencils. Ninety teachers attended the training, despite the holiday season (it was New Year’s Day) and dismal traveling conditions (almost all of them had to walk miles to attend the training). Brenda and Kathy taught them “sheltered instruction,” a common but effective strategy in TESOL, and focused on four key components of language-learning: building background knowledge, vocabulary, non-verbal strategies, and administering tests. Brenda and Kathy used the picture book “What Do They Do with All that Poo?” to aid instruction. The book was helpful because it did not have a lot of words per page, and it had animals that the teachers were familiar with. They also played bingo with the different animal names and vocabulary words, in addition to a fly swatter game in which participants competed to swat the correct word that fits a given description.

Brenda’s training was a huge success that positively impacted the local Rwandan community. Who would have guessed a lucky encounter would evolve into a strong, international partnership?  Brenda hopes to continue working with Simeon and the school, and has already started brainstorming more ideas, such as college study abroad programming and coordinated book drives for Rwandan teachers. Her story is a great example of sustainable volunteerism; it only takes one person to make a huge difference in the lives of many. We hope Brenda’s experience encourages more individuals to get involved with our international trips and follow in her footsteps by transforming ideas into practice.