Chesapeake Family Life June 2019

Connect rwanda Local teachers pair with Rwandan educators to bring technology into the classroom.

BY ANN LEVELLE

O

n a lovely May Day in Annapolis, the students in several classes from St. Mary’s High School gathered to greet a group of visiting teachers from Kigali, Rwanda. The teens were able to ask the teachers questions like “What kind of music do you like?” (answer, Hip-hop like Jay-z and Chris Brown) and “What kinds of pets do you have?” (answer, chickens —dogs are only outdoor animals used for protection) “What types of food have you tried here?” (crabs, hot dogs, baked ziti, and a real surprise, they had never tried grapes before!).

The kids were inquisitive and some even used their French skills to ask questions of the visiting teachers, who would probably answer the same types of questions quite a few times over the next two weeks of their visit to the U.S.

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JUNE 2019

The five teachers were here with Connect Rwanda, a local nonprofit dedicated to helping Rwandan teachers learn about and use technology in their classrooms.

In addition to visiting schools in Annapolis, the group of educators took a trip to the beach, which they had never seen before, and to Washington, D.C. and New York City.

Connect Rwanda evolved out of Steve Hays’s family’s year in Rwanda. His wife, Claudia, a local OB/GYN was given an opportunity to spend a year in Rwanda through the Clinton Foundation. Hays’s daughter attended high school there that year, and Hays ended up teaching English as a second language in an orphanage. He had been playing a lot of soccer while he was there and one day, another player came up to him and said “You know, I inherited this school from

Top: Students from Annapolis High School with Connect Rwanda teachers; and, above, Connect Rwanda teacher Consolee shows off her newly donated laptop.