LEAD NOW 2019

Leading from the Front: leadership training for teachers in Rwanda

We all own memories from our school days. They are often vivid, potent, and accompanied by anecdotal stories that open themselves up to embellishment and colourful distortion with time; but no outsider gets to amend or challenge our memories - because we were there – childhood school narratives stay with us forever.

Collected over time, day after day, we store up tens of thousands of visceral experiences which create a tapestry that informs, shapes, and impacts who we become in adult life. Our school days have a massive influence on every part of how we live: our lifelong relationship to learning, and who we become.

In 2019 a team from Emerging Leaders ran three leadership training camps in Rwanda for teachers, head teachers, and school inspectors; a total of 300. The aim was simple: to raise teaching standards and equip the teachers with the confidence to set up and run a Leadership Club for their students (10 -16 years) passing on the leadership principles they had first learnt for themselves.

It’s a surprising thing, but no matter where you go in the world, it’s always expected that teachers will somehow have developed into naturally good leaders and that somehow they will have learnt the principles and the qualities of good, strong, effective leadership, either by an act of birth or they will have acquired them during their excellent teacher training courses.

But we all know this is not what happens and we have our school day memories to prove it.

Every child wants to have a wonderful teacher (I certainly did). Teachers are holding positions of serious importance but - like the flipping of a coin - it can be a potluck business for a child. Teachers spend their entire lives leading from the front and it’s vital that they become the very best that they can be, so classrooms become places where children thrive; learning HOW to learn and not just WHAT to learn.

Our new Education programme, LEAD NOW, is designed primarily for teachers. Our aim is to invest deeply in the educators in charge of teaching the young people who will, one day, lead our communities and sit in positions of leadership.

LEAD NOW equips teachers with the motivation, mindsets and skills to LEAD their lives with greater focus, more vision and greater passions for their great calling (and there is no greater calling).

During the 5-day LEAD NOW training the teachers:

o   Re-connected with their own life-journey. This journey starts by looking at their own amazing potential (lifting self-esteem);

o   Realised the crucial need to confront their own hearts and characters (good leaders lift you up, bad leaders push you down);

o   Looked closely at the mindsets that keep potential from developing;

o   Learned to think like strong, effective leaders;

o   Discovered where they want to go (find a bigger ‘YES’ for their lives and set a vision);

o   Got serious about leading their money;

o   Started a project, small business or ignite an entrepreneurial dream

The impact data from the trainings showed us that teachers who started LEADING their lives, changed numerous aspects and behaviours in their personal and professional lives, they started:

·      Planning their lessons;

·      Getting to school on time and being ruthless about their own personal time keeping

·      Seeing their pupils differently as they saw that they too had amazing potential

·      Saving money with focused intent, budgeting and improved financial management

·      Starting Small businesses

·      Developing better problem-solving skills and courage to face challenges in their schools, such as poor school attendance, limited resources, poor infrastructure & sanitation, and hungry children etc

When the teachers started to see themselves as the leaders of their own lives, they started to lift up their heads, take responsibility, get focused, and become the change-makers in their schools. These too are the qualities and mindsets they then pass on to their pupils during their Leadership Club sessions using the 12 lessons provided. And even the children are encouraged to start a project, however small… to start developing their own leadership muscle.

Transformed teachers change the world around them… and that’s good news to the hundreds of children that are impacted by the teachers in their lives.

One teacher who attended the LEAD NOW training in August 2019 told his story:

“At our school we had a very disruptive boy. He was clever, but he would only attend school maybe 2 or 3 days every week, but despite this he still did well in exams. The head teacher and the other teachers were not happy with his attendance and insisted that the boy be kept down a year to punish him. The boy was furious and threatened to leave school for good. So, I decided to talk with him. This is not something I would have done before the LEAD NOW training. As I talked to the boy quietly and calmly, he told me about how angry he felt and I kept talking with him and discovered that he was an orphan and was often hungry and alone. So I said to him, I have a job for you in the holidays and I will pay you. Come to my house and design and make a garden for me to grow vegetables. And after sometime I started to care for the boy….and now he is doing well and he’s like an adopted son. He is bright and is doing really well in school now and is happy. He’s a changed boy’”