How else can I describe our first day of the Educator and Leadership Institute? We are off to an amazing start with 600 teachers, 200 children, and 50 university students ... and 30 Canadian educators! All on a relatively small urban school campus. This was our first year hosting ELI at this new school - although they have been a foundational partner since the beginning. And we were unsure how it would all work since it is a smaller, more urban campus than where we have been the past three years.
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| Opening session but what can't be seen in this picture are the dozens of teachers who were at the back and out the back doors of the auditorium. |
It was incredibly hot - with humidity it felt over 100 Fahrenheit - but our first day was amazing. Our Haitian participants were engaged. Through the sweat, our Canadian instructors demonstrated student-centered, active learning. Children were laughing as our Laurier university students supported interactive lessons. And the Haitian university students commented on multiple occasions how much they valued the English as a Second Language support.
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| Preparing supplies for classrooms including USB memory keys where participants will have access to all of the ELI materials, compliments of a donation from 360Insights, one of our Canadian partners |
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| STEAM camp supported by a generous donation by Gay Lea Foundation |
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| Leadership course participants |
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| How do you feed 600 people? One step at a time! |
Perhaps the biggest wow factor today was the "unveiling" of a common vision statement that our Haitian and Canadian participants developed this past May. One of our Laurier students developed it into an art piece and I used it as a key component of an opening talk I gave this morning.You can see the French version of the vision statement in the picture below.
A quality education for a
sustainable and positive change.
Wow.
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