Promote a love of reading in rural Swaziland

Ncamsile Motsa is a preschool teacher in rural Swaziland, Southern Africa. Ncamsile is a passionate, dedicated educator who had no formal training as a teacher when she started training at Vusumnotfo. Ncamsile has always had the raw material she needs to be an amazing teacher. Now, after a year of intensive, in-service trainings she is gaining the skills she needs to back up her passion, dedication and love of children. Ncamsile has transformed her classroom, her schedule, and her approach to teaching.

The change in Ncamsile’s classroom becomes particularly clear at story time. A year ago story time wasn’t even on the program and Ncamsile rarely read to the kids. Now she uses her limited supply of books everyday. After recess all of the kids crowd around to hear Ncamsile energetically read, interpret, and act out a story. Ncamsile engages the students in the story and they excitedly jump up and thrust their hands in the air so that they can answer her questions.

Vusumnotfo’s philosophy is that the best way to teach reading is to inspire a love of books in children from an early age. When a child learns to love reading their world expands.  Ncamsile’s students have multiple chances to read throughout the day and they are beginning to treasure these times. Something magical has happened in Ncamsile’s classroom; reading has been transformed from a chore into a treat. Because of this Ncamsile’s students will have a huge advantage over their peers. They will be more likely to read, have better reading skills, have a broader knowledge base and are more likely to get jobs and attend university (Snow et al. 16)*.

Ncamsile’s story is typical for the teachers with whom Vusumnotfo works. Literacy rates are fairly high in Swaziland but reading for pleasure is extremely rare. Without this vital part of literacy most children never move past a basic competency with reading and never master reading to learn.

Vusumnotfo approaches this problem by helping rural preschool teachers develop a love a books and pass that on to their students. We teach storytelling, bilingual reading, and try to share our passion for books. Our level based approach meets each teacher at their starting point and helps them improve their teaching incrementally, giving all of our teachers the opportunity to become world-class educators.

None of the teachers that Vusumnotfo works with have a lot of resources. The walls of Ncamsile’s classroom, for example, are made mostly of cardboard and there is little space to move in the building because of the 20 some benches left there by the church that uses the building on weekends. Other teachers hold class on top of mountains, down roads that wash out every time it rains, or in buildings made of mud and sticks. None of the teachers are able to purchase toys, art supplies, or learning aids. However, all of the teachers are learning to see these limitations as assets. They use their limited resources to create, toys, books, and games. In doing so they are teaching their students that they do not have to be limited by circumstance or money and that anything is possible with a little ingenuity, some hard work, and a lot of creativity. These teachers are demonstrating that great teaching is not about money or resources. Great teaching is about skill and passion and the teachers have this by the boatload!

Swaziland faces a myriad of problems: the world’s highest rates of HIV, rampant unemployment, and gender inequality to name a few. The seeds of solutions to all of these problems lie in education and one of the keys to ensuring high quality education to at risk populations is inspiring a love of reading in the youngest of children.

Because of this and because we have already received a very generous donation of 5,000 ­­­­­­books from Books for Africa your donation will go directly out library and training programs. Your donation will help us further our training of teachers, create an inspiring library space, and support our teachers as they grow the readers and leaders of tomorrow.

*Snow, Catherine E., M. Susan Burns, Peg Griffin, eds. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington DC: National Academy Press, 1998. Print. 

Our thousands of books have arrived and we’re thrilled (and buried!) They’ve gone through several sorts already, in preparation for registering and tagging.

First we checked to make sure that the content and reading level were appropriate for our preschoolers.  Books that were too high for preschool were shared with a local primary school.  After the initial sort, we began categorizing by topics that coincide with our educational programming. The groups include educational “themes” like animals, transport, community helpers, and food as well as concepts that highlight Learning Standards.

Our Learning Standards approach sets a framework for schools to provide support for the holistic (emotional, social and value, cognitive, language, and physical) development of children. This means that children are taught about self-control, problem-solving, argument resolution, persistence, and empathy in addition to the more typical schedule of colors, shapes, numbers, and writing. 

For library organization, we’ve decided to forgo the Dewey Decimal system. Instead, each topic grouping has its own color label for shelving.  The books covering “cognitive” concepts, like sorting, patterns, and time have red tags. “Social and value” books that address topics such as appreciating diversity, working together, and solving conflict will have blue tags.  With colors, teachers can easily find the topics they are looking for as they plan their lessons.

Thanks to generous donations, we’ve been able to purchase FileMaker Pro, which is software that allows us to build databases. This is where we register our books to keep inventory and how we’ll check them out.

The teachers are thrilled at the prospect of being able to check out more books.  Due to our limited supply before, we restricted checkouts to 3 books per school.  As teachers are now reading EVERY DAY to their children, they’re often asking to bend the rules in order to rent more at a time.  It’s terribly difficult to limit voracious readers, so we’re proud that we’ll soon be able to offer class boxes of 30 books at a time!