Teachers to Learn Story Writing, Storytelling

Education Development Center (EDC) is supporting the Rwanda Education Board (REB) in organizing its initial Writer’s Workshop at Nyamata, Bugesera.

More than 30 primary school teachers will attend the Workshop to improve their creative writing skills and produce engaging stories for use in classrooms across Rwanda.

The three-day event begins Monday, April 2nd and will be the first of its kind in the country.

As part of the Ministry of Education’s “Rwanda Reads” campaign, language specialists from REB, the Curriculum and Pedagogical Materials Department, VSO volunteers, and representatives from EDC’s Language, Literacy and Learning (L3) Initiative will assist teachers in learning the fundamentals of powerful storytelling and how to instill a love of storytelling in students.

Workshop participants will eventually receive copies of all the stories created, so they can begin building a library of read-aloud books for their classes.

By organizing this Writer’s Workshop and future ones like it, EDC hopes to nurture a culture of self-sufficiency by training teachers and communities how to produce low/no-cost instructional materials for literacy.

Participants will learn the importance of storytelling in helping students understand texts and create their own – both inside and outside the classroom. It is expected that new public-private partnerships will be made to publish and distribute these reading materials, benefiting local economies.

With greater access to written works, literacy rates will improve as Workshop graduates continue to encourage a culture of reading among other teachers, students, and the public at large.

The first Writer’s Workshop will be held at Cafe de Nyamata, with all 36 participants sponsored by the EDC/L3 Initiative. Head teachers and P1/P2 English and Kinyarwanda teachers from Butereri, Kindama, and Rugarama Primary (in Ruhuha sector); Rugando, Ngenda, and Kigarama Primary (in Nyarugenge sector), and the two sectors’ education officers will attend.

Over three days, Workshop facilitators will guide educators through the five steps of the writing process – from generating ideas and producing a first draft, to revising and polishing it for publication.

The end result will be more than 30 original stories already written, and many more appearing in the future as teachers pass these lessons along to their students and help them become authors.