Room to Read Blog

Finding Miss Gilchrist: Guest Blog from South Africa

Lisa Ellis, Room to Read Director of New Country Operations, visited our staff and projects in South Africa last week and met a teacher who personifies the values of Room to Read -- dedication to students and a love of learning.

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One of the most motivating teachers I ever had was my third grade teacher, Miss Gilchrist. She not only made learning fun and interesting by using pictures, books, and other materials in the classroom, but she very obviously loved teaching, and learning as well.  Her enthusiasm was inspiring as it was infectious -- even to an eight-year-old.

Imagine my happy surprise when I found a carbon copy of Miss Gilchrist teaching in a poor, rural primary school in the Eastern Cape, where Room to Read South Africa got its start. I was visiting the area last week for various meetings, but the highlight of the trip was a visit to one of our schools.

The road to the small village was dotted with cows and goats grazing on the hillside and near the road. We turned off the main road and travelled a few kilometers down a winding, pot-hole filled dirt road. Our destination was Makhazi Primary School whose student body included approximately 300 children and whose staff included an amazing teacher, Mrs. Vuyiswa Dlephu.

 Mrs. Dlephu had been trained as a librarian by Room to Read staff in 2007. She spoke passionately about all of the things she had added to the library since it first opened, such as  a corner section with current newspapers and magazines,  and a room filled with artwork made by the children and local posters about hygiene.  She described the assistance she gave the other teachers on how to test the children on what they learned from the books and other materials in the library.  Room to Read had not just found a teacher to train as a librarian, but we had presented a motivated teacher with the resources and professional development  to inspire her entire school -- teachers and students alike.

When I asked her how long she had been teaching, Mrs. Dlephu proudly told me 20 years -- it’s the only job she’s ever had.  She explained that while she had received her teaching diploma years and years ago, she had only recently finished her bachelor’s degree in education. She was then pleased to tell me she had just applied for a master’s program and planned to do her research thesis on needed improvements to the education system, especially as it relates to her community.

With a big smile on her face, she said, “I want to be a role model for my children and for all the children who have been through this school.  You can never stop learning!”  She went on to say, “I have always been a teacher and I always will be, no matter how much education I get. I will never leave this community!” 

I left that school hoping that the community realized what a tremendous, encouraging, motivating, and committed teacher they had in Mrs. Dlephu, the Miss Gilchrist of South Africa.

Read more about our work in South Africa on our website.

A Picture Book is Worth a Thousand Words: CEO Erin Ganju Responds to The New York Times

We’ve long dreamt about the day the front page of The New York Times runs a story on children’s books (read it here: Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children).  Children’s books are what we live and breathe at Room to Read because of what they contribute to the development of a child’s literacy and learning skills.  It’s what we believe has the power to change the world and entire generations of communities living in poverty, particularly in the developing world.

Unfortunately, The New York Times’ story wasn’t exactly what we had envisioned, as it centered on the loss of retail sales of picture books.  In a down economy, that’s not surprising. What was surprising is that the decline in sales isn’t because children are no longer drawn to colorfully illustrated tomes; rather because parents are no longer recognizing the value picture books have in catalyzing their children’s literacy skills development.

Apparently, parents have begun pressing their kindergartners and first-graders to leave the picture books behind and move on to more text-heavy “chapter books.” One children’s book publisher noted a 35 percent drop in the number of picture books published in the last few years. The primary reason, according to those in the industry, is pressure from parents who are very mindful of increasingly rigorous standardized testing in schools.

We’ve actually seen the opposite hold true in developing nations, where picture books (or story books) remain a crucial tool in laying a solid foundation for literacy and life-long learning among children. In places like Sri Lanka, South Africa and other countries where Room to Read works, many children come from largely oral storytelling traditions and the shift to the written word is a difficult transition. Many of these children have never been read to aloud, and they find it difficult to relate the “spoken” word to the “written” word.

Picture books help bridge this gap because they give children the opportunity to explore, discover, learn, and imagine through stories and characters. Books inform and transfer knowledge, and are critical to the development of a child’s reading skills -- including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Picture books kick-start that journey because they combine visual and verbal narratives, often presenting imagery from children’s everyday lives which helps them connect life experiences to the pictures, information, events, and text. Even more, by discussing what they see in story books, children ask questions  -- which also helps develop their speaking skills, a key component of literacy. 

Literacy experts quoted in the news article were quick to point out that picture books are not for dummies, and they praise the genre for helping develop a child’s critical thinking skills. As a mother of a four-and-a-half-year-old, I couldn’t agree more.

My daughter Julia loves to use picture books as the basis of inspiration for story time with her captivated audience of stuffed animals. We’ll make a day of going to the library next to the park, and she will spend as much time selecting her next 10-15 books for the week as she does running around the playground. She loves books with lots of pictures because it gives her a sense of independence to “read” the story through the pictures. Now, at bedtime, Julia often wants to read me a story, and it’s my greatest joy to see her develop an enjoyment of reading -- reading is not a task or something she has to do, but something she does for play. And that’s key because the path to creating lifelong, independent readers starts when children see reading as fun and pleasurable on their own.

At Room to Read we’re committed to education, and so obviously, it’s a wonderful thing that children are able to read chapter books at an early age. But if you focus on just the skills part and prematurely force children to get to a certain level, it may be at the cost of developing good habits of reading. So we caution well-intentioned parents against hurrying to clear their kids’ bookshelf of story books, because in doing so, you’re clearing away the potential for a connection to books that children will cherish their entire lives. Instead, let’s work to develop a generation of independent readers who love to read, and read to learn.

Read more about our Local Language Publishing program on our website.

 

Celebrating World Teachers' Day: A Teacher in India Transforms a Library

On October 5, we honor the men and women around the globe who have dedicated their lives to the noble profession of educating the world’s children. At Room to Read, we have an important bond with the teachers who work in our School Room and Reading Room programs because they are the critical link to educating the next generation. The following story about one of our teacher-librarians in India is an example of the extraordinary commitment that teachers make in our schools. Room to Read is equally committed to providing the resources and training these important individuals require so that they can be as effective in their work to educate the next generation of eager learners.

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Being a widow in India carries with it more than the loneliness of no longer having a spouse. Because a woman’s status in many regions of India is solely tied to her husband, the loss of a spouse can mean complete ostracism from family and community for the grieving wife and her children. The widow is often viewed as bad luck and blamed for her husband’s death -- and in the end, she finds herself suddenly cast into the position of being a non-person in society.

Some women, primarily those who are educated, are able to rise above cultural norms. Bharti Devi is such a woman. After the death of her husband, Bharti was rarely able to leave her home. But being the determined woman that she is, she finally convinced her in-laws that she should work as a teacher in the nearby school.

However, when Bharti started teaching at the government middle school in her small village within the Indian state of Jharkhand, she quickly realized there was not a lot of interest in innovative teaching plus students were not being given proper attention, resulting in poor academic progress. As fate would have it, shortly after Bharti's arrival, Room to Read began making plans to establish a library at her school. This was thrilling news to the new teacher, for she saw this as a great opportunity to build a fun learning atmosphere in the school. When a library training was announced for teachers at the school, Bharti jumped at the chance to attend and, once the library opened, Bharti was put in charge of running it!

Though she was initially nervous about her new role and received little support from the other teachers, she began by opening the library early, before the morning assembly, so that children had time to come and check out books. She decorated the library with colorful posters and paintings made by the students, and made the library a very welcoming place to read and learn.

With encouragement from Bharti, the other teachers soon recognized that the library was an important resource for learning and could actually help them teach more effectively in their classrooms. Older students helped younger students by reading stories to them, and other activities such as word games, poetry reading and drawing became very popular in both the library and the classrooms. The atmosphere in the school started to charge, and, before long, many teachers shared Bharti’s enthusiasm.

Bharti still has a lot of work ahead of her as she continues to promote the library and its value within the school environment and for this, she continues to return every morning, two hours before school begins, to welcome hundreds of eager children into her special world of books.  On World Teacher's Day, we salute Bharti and her commitment to educating her students and shaping the learning environment.

Read more about our programs in India and our Reading Room program.