Muzabimenya!

Or, in English, “You all will know it!”  Also the title of the secondary project myself and a few other science volunteers are kicking off and getting rolling.  This blog post is actually from a week ago but, 1) I was too lazy to write it and 2) Ihangane…be patient, everything gets done…eventually.

So, last week a meeting was held between myself and 3 other science teachers- Lucy, Mason and Scott.  We met up in Kigali (mostly for the free housing of the Case de Passage, the Peace Corps owned hostel for PCVs) to grade our bajillion exams and have what Scott so dutifully calls our “Kick-Off Meeting” to brainstorm ideas and set a foundation for the project.  We accomplished many things over the weekend; exams were graded (but not finished by any means), good food was cooked by all and Project Muzabimenya took form.  And of course, like any project, it had to have a cool name.  We decided on Muzabimenya because the whole idea of the secondary project is, well, so that students will know.

Allow me to explain the basis of our brainstorm.  Originally, we had the idea to translate all sorts of Rwandan Science National Exams from many different years.  So physics, chemistry, biology, maybe maths.  We thought this would be a good idea because Rwanda just switched to English and previous years everything was in French…French past exams are not helpful to study, they’re in the wrong language!  Ideally, we wanted to create a good, edited resource of past exams for students to study, take practice tests, see what the exams look like, etc.  Unfortunately, that idea got vetoed for a number of reasons, the main thing having to do with MINEDUC, the hierarchy and not wanting to piss any of the wrong people off.

Onto Plan B…which we didn’t really have at the beginning but ended up becoming a great new plan.  After discussing many ideas, we decided that Project Muzabimenya would be to create a resource (or two) for students and teachers to help students learn and practice test taking skills.  It was determined that a big problem is purely from the students difficulty in English.  Thus, this resource will be to aid and prepare students for taking an exam in English and succeeding.  We want to focus on things like understanding questions, answering what the question asks and not something else, knowing common vocabulary, how to properly write an neat and organized answer key, etc.  Things like that.  And, right now at least, it will focus on succeeding on the National Exams for Chemistry and Biology.  This is with the idea that later on down the road, it will be possible to develop other guides for other subjects.

All in all, we were happy with the results we came up with and are looking excited to get working on it.

And, like I said, the weekend was full of great successes…another being food.  Friday, Lucy and I made delicious tuna melts, with REAL (albeit mild) cheddar cheese and tomatoes with a salad full of the colors of the rainbow.  The boys came back to the hostel a little later and made a beef roast that smoked everywhere but smelled delicious.  Saturday lunch resulted in mozzarella, basil, tomato panini’s with another pretty looking salad.  We topped it off with a celebratory dinner at Zen, an Asian fusion restaurant that was actually more Thai but…whatever it was still good.