Literacy class finishes

4 months of Monday to Friday lessons and our first 11 students have finished the literacy course. The students have been committed. In 79 days of class not a single student was late or absent. We even had students sitting in class shaking with fever from malaria! Upon finishing each primer we would give the students a reader to take home and it was a common sight to see them sitting around the village with their readers, reading to themselves.

Our classes ended up being 2 1/2 hours long each day. That’s an incredible investment of time on the students’ part. We’re very pleased with their progress. At the end of the course we have taught all the syllables necessary for writing in the Kovol language, as well as Tok Pisin. The top students are reading stories they have never seen before at about 30 words per minute and the struggling students reading 2-5 words per minute. With practice, of course, everyone can do a bit better. Hand writing has improved across the board and we introduced some creative writing.

The last question on the final day of class was “what did you do this morning?” The students had to write the answer in their own words. The top students wrote perfect sentences, with struggling students giving it a go, but not writing a legible sentence. Our students started with varying levels of previous school experience which mostly explains the difference in level. The course is done, but all that means is that every syllable has been introduced. A lot of practice is still needed.

We encouraged all of the students to attend the follow-up course starting next week which offers graded tasks to practise and level up their reading and writing. We told them that it is now in their hands. If they don’t practise they will forget and lose the ability they now have, but practice will cause them not just to hear the sounds of the words, but to hear the story as they read.

As the class has progressed we have seen a number of ways to improve the course material. Some spelling mistakes have been pointed out and we’ve seen the stories that don’t flow very well. The entire curriculum has been revised and will need to be reprinted for next time. On the whole, though, the alphabet we devised seems to have been accepted well. We still have our eyes on the way we spell some words. We’re hoping our graduates grow in confidence, continue reading and eventually start telling us when they have come to a consensus on how to spell certain words.

One outstanding event is to present our students with their certificates. The community have told us that they want to have a meal to celebrate this big event. We expected this as it is a cultural thing to do. Invitations have gone out to all 7 Kovol villages, plus a Pal language village. Literacy and Bible teachers from our neighbouring tribe will be coming! Already people have been gathering food for the party. This involves setting traps to catch rats for meat. Initially the idea was that perhaps we would fly rice in with the helicopter so there could be “good” food, but we pushed back at that. We’re thinking of subsequent class graduations and we don’t want to be on the hook to provide the expected food down the road! Several shelters have been erected around the classroom as well.

The plans are for people to arrive on Thursday. At 3pm on Thursday food preparation will start, running all the way through the night. Then at 8am on Friday we go into the classroom. We will present the certificates, each student will read a little in public and then there will be many speeches followed by going outside to eat. It is all carefully choreographed, the only problem being that we missionaries are barely aware of “the proper way to do things” and so we’re sure to miss a few beats!

The rest of the weekend will be for resting and recovering from the all-night food preparation before the practice course starts on Monday at 9am. I’m interested to see how everyone progresses with the tasks. The students will all be working at their own speed. I’m already starting to think about when to start the next literacy class to enrol a new group of students. Part of that equation is inviting some of our graduates to start to train as literacy teachers. We’ll need to set a certain ability level, but we don’t yet know what would be a suitable level. Then we need to figure out who really wants to teach and who is just getting swept along with the momentum. Who will gladly volunteer 15 hours of their week to run literacy classes for others? It’s exciting to think about becoming coworkers with the Kovol people and this will be our first experience of a student/mentor/discipleship dynamic.

For now the biggest impact for me is that I no longer have literacy class to attend in the afternoons. I’m more of a task-orientated person and attending literacy class in the afternoons didn’t feel that satisfying to me. I wanted to be at the computer getting the next bit of Bible translation finished, or the next Bible lesson drafted. The post-literacy class starting on Monday morning is probably very good for me. It’s good to make sure I’m spending time on people as well as projects. As I start to think “who can I take under my wing to train as a teacher?” my attention will shift from programmes, curriculum and materials to investing in people. That’s probably a very healthy thing for someone as task-focussed as I am.