144 students
2 trainings
4 sessions for each training
36 students for each session
3 hrs for each session
6 hours total instruction time per student
48 hours of total instruction time for teachers

Our microenterprise training program to teach necessary business skills as a means of tackling poverty is starting to materialize. We’ve already hashed out the overall logistics for our program that will train 144 people who are leaders of their HIV support groups and Village Aids Committee (VAC). In order to spread out our material, we will be requiring them to come here to St Gabriel’s Hospital twice. They will come once next week (the week of July 12th), and once more the week after next (the week of July 26th) for 3-hr training sessions each time. Since they will be doing a considerable amount of traveling to get to the hospital, we will be providing them with soda and biscuits, and we are strategically avoiding having to feeding them lunch (considerably more expensive) by positioning the sessions right before and after lunch.

Since we have limited amount of time, and 6 hours of total instruction time, we are going to have to select the most crucial content that we developed last semester. Because almost all of our students have only primary school education, we will have to make things simple, REAL simple. We will have to take out extraneous concepts that are too abstract, and make sure to provide lots and LOTS of real-life examples to back up every concept that we do decide to teach. We will have to provide simple definitions that are easy to remember, as well. These are all things that Casey Nesbit emphasized from her experience in teaching during her 5 years here in Malawi. (Casey is the mom of Elizabeth Nesbit, who is a current Global Health Senior at Rice, and we are SO glad to have her experience and feedback)

We will present our revamped lesson plans tomorrow to Alexander (community healthcare worker liaison and palliative care nurse) and Angela (HIV support group liaison), and they will provide feedback. They will then translate the lessons into the local language (Chichewa), and we will update the lessons plans with the translations and make PowerPoint slides in Chichewa.

I never knew teaching could be this challenging. It seems like I’m constantly trying to stretch my brains out in different ways to try to understand how our students (with primary school education) will be thinking, and to determine the best way to get a point across. I guess nothing really could have truly prepared me for this challenge besides being in the environment itself. Imagine trying to teach business skills to a 3rd grader. How hard could it be! (sarcasm)

Okay, back to lesson planning!