At last - a school health workshop
on Sabrina and Geoff Slide in Kamwenge (Uganda), 20/Feb/2010 11:10, 34 days ago
Richard demonstrating how to make a tippy tapGeoff wishes that he got this much concentration when he used to do assemblies!A practical first aid demonstrationHeadteachers working together to think of ways to improve health in their schools.After weeks of planning and a few headaches due to funding issues, it was the day of our new training workshop, entitled‘The Health Promoting School’. Although Sabrina has been working on health related issues in schools since we arrived and we have carried out several HIV/AIDS training workshops, this was the first 2 day training course for head teachers and teachers on health issues. The concept of ‘Health Promoting Schools’ is a fairly new one here and we had been concerned about how it would be received.We are pleased to say the training went well and the teachers seemed to be interested and participated well. They all thought of ideas of improving the environment in their own schools and seemed to take on board the information about the importance of providing some sort on hand washing facility in school. One of our more motivated head teachers demonstrated how to make a tippy tap and told the participants how they worked in his school.We talked about the importance of providing enough water to drink and making sure that children have enough food. Half of the children in our schools go all day without water or food because the school does not provide it and there is little at home. Anita, one of our colleagues from Kampala, came to talk about how to set up a school garden and we are hopeful that some communities will work together to provide some food, at the very least for the orphans and vulnerable children.We also held sessions on a variety of health related topics and Geoff presented a session called‘Guidance not Violence’ to give teachers some ideas on how to manage children in school without using corporal punishment. Although caning children is illegal in Ugandan schools, it is widely used as teachers have never known about other ways of managing behaviour. They seemed fascinated in Geoff’s information about ‘a child centered approach’ and ‘rewarding good behaviour’ and many asked for more information at the end.It will of course be interesting to see how much of the information they take back to their schools and whether practice will change. As well as holding more workshops, we will be visiting schools to help head teachers implement what they have learnt.