Language Learning; Assumptions and Imagination.

While learning Kope, I am organising my own daily language classes. In these approximately hour long sessions, I use a variety of approaches, but one of my main tools is pictures. I have a collection of old calendars from PNG, as well as series of pictures that make up a story, and sketches of life in PNG. Using these pictures we describe things, ask questions and tell stories. Along the way, I have discovered that my imagination and assumptions work differently to women I am sitting with and learning from.

One picture I intended to use to learn the phrase for ‘The boy is reading’. I got many phrases, but not that one. The boy was lying on the mat, the boy was looking at the camera, the boy was holding the book, the boy was looking at the pictures (of which there were none) and the boy wanted to read, but at no point was the boy reading. I was both frustrated and fascinated by our different assumptions. My teacher thought the boy was too young to read, so would not describe him as reading. He was also clearly looking at the camera, not at the book, so couldn’t be reading.

Reading? From SIL PNG 2014 calendar, June.
Photo by Catherine McGuckin.

Another time, I had been learning the many ways to say ‘go’, depending on who was going and when. I then wanted to switch to saying come, but hit a road block, because whenever I wanted to elicit the phrase for ‘we will come from X’, I was told that we had not gone there. After that I got extra practice with the phrases for going, as first we had to go before we could come. I was being abstract in my approach to language, but they were being much more concrete.

 A tiny picture of a frog chasing a snake
chasing a gecko that was the basis of a
fun story we made up.

I have been using a number of picture books to learn how to tell stories. The first time I gave the book to someone and asked them to tell a story, but they quickly got stuck. The next time I stumbled my way through the book, being corrected every second word, then asked them to tell the story. Most people would tell the story very much how I told it. Only one or two people would add their own colour to the tale. I wonder if this reflects a culture which values being able to remember and retell traditional tales more than it does being able to create new ones.

Pictures are a wonderful tool for language learning, but they still require common assumptions for the learning process to work.

Language Learning; Assumptions and Imagination.

While learning Kope, I am organising my own daily language classes. In these approximately hour long sessions, I use a variety of approaches, but one of my main tools is pictures. I have a collection of old calendars from PNG, as well as series of pictures that make up a story, and sketches of life in PNG. Using these pictures we describe things, ask questions and tell stories. Along the way, I have discovered that my imagination and assumptions work differently to women I am sitting with and learning from.

One picture I intended to use to learn the phrase for ‘The boy is reading’. I got many phrases, but not that one. The boy was lying on the mat, the boy was looking at the camera, the boy was holding the book, the boy was looking at the pictures (of which there were none) and the boy wanted to read, but at no point was the boy reading. I was both frustrated and fascinated by our different assumptions. My teacher thought the boy was too young to read, so would not describe him as reading. He was also clearly looking at the camera, not at the book, so couldn’t be reading.

Reading? From SIL PNG 2014 calendar, June.
Photo by Catherine McGuckin.

Another time, I had been learning the many ways to say ‘go’, depending on who was going and when. I then wanted to switch to saying come, but hit a road block, because whenever I wanted to elicit the phrase for ‘we will come from X’, I was told that we had not gone there. After that I got extra practice with the phrases for going, as first we had to go before we could come. I was being abstract in my approach to language, but they were being much more concrete.

 A tiny picture of a frog chasing a snake
chasing a gecko that was the basis of a
fun story we made up.

I have been using a number of picture books to learn how to tell stories. The first time I gave the book to someone and asked them to tell a story, but they quickly got stuck. The next time I stumbled my way through the book, being corrected every second word, then asked them to tell the story. Most people would tell the story very much how I told it. Only one or two people would add their own colour to the tale. I wonder if this reflects a culture which values being able to remember and retell traditional tales more than it does being able to create new ones.

Pictures are a wonderful tool for language learning, but they still require common assumptions for the learning process to work.

Flight of the Blackboards

Loading the cargo, including
the blackboard collection (H.Schulz)

Before my most recent flight to the village, I had packed two blackboards (90cm x 120cm) and sent them ahead to Aviation. They were wrapped in plastic, ready for their canoe ride after landing. When I arrived at Aviation I was surprised to see a pair of boards, without their plastic wrap. I need that wrap for the boat ride! Looking closer I saw a pile of personal sized blackboards beside it and remembered that the Kasua team was sending out literacy supplies. Looking more closely again, I saw that it was labelled for the Kaluli team. It was the flight of the blackboards! Two for Kaluli, two for Kope, six big boards for Kasua and piles of small boards too.

While amused by the collection it was a clear reminder of the importance of literacy in the work we do. Here were three different teams putting together supplies to ship them to remote locations for the local community to use in their vernacular literacy programmes. The blackboards are a sign that other literacy efforts are in place. Local teachers have been trained, books have been written and printed, curriculums have been developed, but more resources are always needed.

Day one using the blackboard (H.Schulz)

Who pays for these resources? Most often it is the expat translator working with the language community. Often the community will contribute, but the expat carried the bulk of the expense. Where do we get our funds from? Mostly it comes from family and friends at home who believe in the work we do and support us financially*. The Kasua team had a special fundraising effort to pay for these literacy materials. There are some project funds available for literacy, but they are for specific things such as printing books. The purchase and the flight costs of blackboards are not usually covered.

Sometimes there is funding that comes from local government to support local literacy efforts. I had been speaking with a friend about this happening in her area the day before my flight. Sadly, hers was a tale of corruption and vanishing funds. Large amounts had been given, but not been received at the community level. Changes in the committee managing the funds had only made things worse. Currently she is choosing not to go to her language area until the problem is sorted out, to keep herself as far from the mess as possible. I am sure there are other circumstances where the government funds reach the village literacy programme and are used well, but not in this case. It makes me sad when the government has the will to help, but the help is not received and people continue to struggle with literacy.

My blackboards are for translation rather than literacy
and allow everyone to read and contribute to the
draft as it is written. (H.Schulz)

Literacy is a skill that opens the world to people, giving access to many things. Starting to learn to read and write in the language people are most familiar with is the best foundation. Once they have learnt these skills, they can then take on new languages, new ideas and the whole world in a whole different way. As we fly blackboards across the country, we do so to help the remote and forgotten people have access to the world beyond their village. We are also doing it to let them know that their language and culture is just as worthy of writing as any other language in the world.

 *If you would like to support my work in Bible translation (including literacy) with the Kope people, please contact Wycliffe Australia or the Lutheran Church ofAustralia

School Supplies

Canoes rafted up outside Karati Primary school. 

This is the Gulf equivalent to the school bike rack.

One day while I was in the village, a group from the Provincial Department of Education arrived with school supply packs. These were funded through one of the companies doing development as part of their community contributions.

The teachers had been asked to present an accurate roll of enrolled students. The students were told they had to be there to receive their packs. I’m not sure so many students have been in attendance on one day before or since!

As the packs were handed out, students were given a form to be taken to their parents and have signed, to say that they had indeed received their supply pack. These forms were to be taken back to the provincial office and filed away as evidence that the supplies had reached the students.

Paddles planted in the ground at Karati Primary

The supply packs came in different categories for the different grades. The youngest children received slate boards and chalk to practice writing on, packs of coloured pencils and big blank paged books for drawing in. They also received pencil sharpeners, which was a pleasant change for me, as watching small children use razor blades to sharpen pencils makes me edgy. Older kids received lead pencils or pens and different size exercise books. Each pack was colour coded for the school grades it was intended for.

At the literacy school the next day it was lovely to see the children using their new supplies to practise writing and to do some drawing. They each sat on the floor working hard. It was the quietest I’d ever seen that class. In the evening, our house was filled with teenagers doing their homework. They sat writing out their lessons, each with their own supplies. As my solar power system was giving light to the house, we became the study centre. I’d never seen the teenagers so studious!

Level playing field? Where’s the fun in that!

These students live in a very remote and under-resourced area. Rarely could it be said that they are on a level playing field. These school supply packs, full of basic but essential things, made a big difference. I was pleased to see the immediate impact they had, as well as the evidence of the system of companies providing community assistance through government agencies working as it should. Hopefully the system continues to work and the next delivery of supply packs comes before these ones are exhausted.

9 ways to make a child smile… or cry

There is a fine line between a child's smile and their tears, and it is a gamble which one you will get.

1. Smile

Scenario: child is staring at you, so you smile at them.

Response:

J She smiled at me! I’ll smile back!

L Look at those teeth! Surely she wants to eat me. Wah!!!

photo: ywamships.org.au

2. Speak language

Scenario: you try out the little language you know and say ‘Good morning, my name is…”

Response:

J Ha ha ha! She sounds silly!

L  She knows our language… she must be a returned spirit of our ancestors and now I’m scared. Wah!!!

3. Help with steps

Scenario: toddler is standing at the top of steps they can’t climb down crying for someone to help them, so you help.

Response:

J Yay! She helped me and I got to zoom through the air!

L She touched me! Wah!!!

4. Children and knives

Scenario: small child wants to play with big sharp knife and you let them…

Response:

J I got the knife! It’s what I wanted!

L I cut myself! Wah!!!

…or you take it away from them.

J(eventual) safe child, no wounds, finds another toy

L (initially) she took my toy from me! Wah!!!

5. Immunisations

Scenario: Medical ship comes to town and you help with immunisations.

Response:

J (eventual) Child does not get seriously ill from a preventable disease.

L (initial) She stabbed me! Wah!!!

immunisation tears (photo: ywamships.org.au)

6. Lolly

Scenario: you give the child a lolly

Response:

J Sweet! Yummy!

L (eventual) rotten teeth, very limited access to dentists, and ongoing pain. Wah!!!

7. Literacy Testing

Scenario: you help with literacy testing as part of ongoing research into what helps and hinders literacy in the region.

Response:

J (eventual) Child grows up literate, gets work and helps their family.

L The white woman is asking me questions. I thought I knew what that mark on the page meant, but now my mind has gone blank with fear. Wah!!!

How does class size and resources affect literacy levels?

8. Walk through the village

Scenario: As you walk from the house to the toilet and back, you pass a child.

Response:

J Yay! The reality TV star just walked by and made life interesting.

L She’s a ghost, I’m sure of it! Wah!!!

                True story: there was one child of about 3 years of age who cried every time I walked past his house. One time as I passed by he was playing with his bow and arrow. In fear, he froze, pointing it at me and crying. I was a little concerned that fright would turn into fight and that I was about to get an arrow in my leg! Thankfully he remained frozen and I continued on my way.

Shooting practice…just don’t aim at me!

9. Make eye contact

Scenario: yet another child is staring at you, and you briefly make eye contact.

Response:

J She’s real! She’s friendly!

L The ghost lady noticed me! All sorts of bad things could happen now! Wah!!!

The longer I am in the village, the more that children are familiar with me, the less fear I create and the more smiles I receive, but the tears are still there sometimes.

Robbie and the Cards

When making new cards becomes an
impromptu private lesson (Photo: D.Petterson)

A common interchange while in Gulf Province went:

‘Is Robbie ready?’

‘He’s just sorting/making/organising his cards’

‘Oh.’

Don’t get me wrong, we love Robbie and his literacy flashcards, but the consistency with which they emerged was amusing.

Robbie has made it his personal mission to improve literacy in the province, including through uniskript. His enthusiasm for these things meant that in every place we went, we would meet with the community to discuss literacy. It was a meeting that generally ended in a uniskript teaching session.

In village after village, we would hear parents express their concern about their children’s education. We would emphasise the advantages of learning to read in the vernacular first, as then children have the advantage of already being fluent speakers of the language. Learning to read in a language you are still learning to speak is a much bigger challenge. This was illustrated as trying to walk on two separate logs at once. It is hard to take a step on the new language log while also taking a step on the reading log. If we first walk on the reading log, it is then easier to step across to the new language log and concentrate on that.

 Teaching the teachers in Maipenairu

Parents easily caught Robbie’s enthusiasm for uniskript as they quickly learnt to recognise the symbols for their language. Introducing the symbols was done by combining sounds, hand signs and flashcards. These were the cards Robbie was always producing, as he would leave a set behind in each place and create a new set for the next place. We left a trail of flashcards in our wake. Soon parents and teachers were able to use the cards to build words and to recognise words that Robbie built.

We also did some uniskript sessions with school children. They too were quick to catch on, and enjoyed the process. It is our hope that these students will use their new skills to help the younger children learn.

 Ara’ava kids and cards (Photo: D.Petterson)

Just as a bush knife can be used to build a house or to cut someone in anger, uniskript is a tool which can be used poorly or well, and we saw both things happening. In one school, uniskript was mixed in with other unhelpful teaching methods and became just as unhelpful. In another school, the teacher was using uniskript well and the kids were learning quickly. The good thing in this situation is that they have someone, Robbie-of-the-cards, who is willing to keep providing training and resources so that the tool may be used well in more and more places.

I was also able to drop in on Ara’ava, the village where we first introduced uniskript over Christmas. It was encouraging to see the trainee teachers we’d worked with running their classes and the kids clearly learning and enjoying doing so.

The true impact of this approach to literacy will only really be seen in the longer term, but it is encouraging to watch and participate in the first steps.

Teaching parents uniskript at a community meeting (Photo D.Petterson)

Songs of Faith

For a long time, my faith has been shaped by the songs I’ve sung. When something is on my mind, it is usually a tune that occurs to me, not a Bible verse, as truth with a tune is more memorable.

Growing up in the Australian Lutheran Church I have grown up with the All Together song books. Many of these songs are written by members of our denomination. Now that I live and worship in a multinational and multidenominational community, I find I miss these songs. They have shaped my faith, but others here do not know them at all.

Another source of music that has shaped me is Taizé. Their simple, Biblical and repeated songs are words that soak deep into my soul. Like a dripper that waters a root deeply, these songs soak truth to my depths.

Rebekah checking sound levels while
the musicians practice in Maipenairu

Having had music shape my own faith, I am always pleased when in a village I find PNG communities worshipping in their own language with their own music. As part of our time in Gulf province, we were able to encourage communities in this by recording their vernacular worship songs for them. These were then burnt to CDs or SD cards and left in the community for them to share and enjoy. Eventually these will hopefully be joined by song sheets, for singing a familiar song, or listening to it, while reading the words is a good literacy tool.

Village recording is very different to studio recording. Rebekah was in charge of recording and clearly knew what she was doing, but was faced with many challenges. First we had to find a good place for people to gather. Thankfully, bush roofs are good at absorbing sound in the same way a recording studio is designed to. In one place we used the covered market, in the other we used the church building.

Other people are a challenge when recording. As usual, our activities were the centre of attention and we drew a crowd, a crowd that needed to keep quiet. At the beginning and end of each recording Rebekah would count down from five on her fingers, indicating the silence was starting or ending. People would slowly settle in this time, hushing others. Some people would always be clear in the need for silence and police others. Some people never quite seemed to grasp the concept, and were forever shuffling, coughing or whispering, yet we eventually got there.

Each time we planned to record, we prayed that it did not rain. That is a sound which cannot be edited out. The weather must be waited out. As we had a fairly tight schedule, we were thankful that wet season decided to work with our schedule and hold off at recording times.

Recording in Kope language in Ubuo village

The biggest recording challenge was roosters. We would try to chase them away. We would ask children to chase them away. Yet, with impeccable timing, they would still manage to crow loudly in the middle of recordings.

Most of the songs we recorded were translations of English hymns and spiritual songs, although some were written by locals. Translated hymns tend to take on a new form in a new place as rhythm and tempo are adjusted to local tastes. I could not always recognise the connection to the original.

With nine songs recorded in I’ai language in Maipenairu village and 26 songs in Kope language in Ubuo village, it was encouraging to see songs of the faith shaping the people in those places in the same way that they have shaped me.

Crowd Sourcing

Roy telling a story, using the pictures,
before the group writes it down.

‘Crowd sourcing’ is in fashion these days. It is done for finances and as well as for information and translation. Wikipedia is the classic example of a crowd sourced written work, where numerous people contribute and correct each other’s content. My friend Julien runs the Marco Polo Project, using crowd sourcing to translate Chinese websites into English, linking East and West online as well as in person. All sorts of projects, such as the Bella Journey, get funding through crowd sourcing.

It is rare for me to be fashionable, but when it comes to crowd sourcing, for once I am!

The money I live off in my work is effectively crowd sourced, although in my circles it is referred to as ‘partnership development’ as we partner with churches and individuals to sponsor our work. Yet it is not finance I am referring to in this blog post, but literacy.

While my nieces and nephews have piles of books around their homes and family who have been reading to them since they were babies, most of the languages in PNG have very few books. Learning to read in a language you already know is the best way to learn to read. Having books to read is a critical part of this process, so part of my work as a linguist/translator is helping communities to build up their local library by writing and translating books for beginners.

Debbie working with her small crowd.

There are a whole range of ‘shell books’ available for communities wanting to kick start their collection. Shell books contain a simple story with pictures, are available in the public domain and approved of by the department of education. They cover a range of topics and levels of difficulty. A community ‘just’ has to translate and print them. This is a whole lot harder than it sounds, as there are often few people in a community who are confident to translate and write in their own language, as well as few resources for printing.

This is where crowd sourcing comes in.

While on our recent trip to Gulf Province we spent time helping I’ae speakers in Maipenairu and the Urama speakers in Kivaumai translate shell books for their elementary schools. We did this by gathering together as a large group and telling a story. First one of my team would tell the story in English a few times, showing the pictures as we went. Then the locals would take turns telling the story in their language a few times. They kept telling the story until everyone was happy that it was a well told story.

Writing the story on the blackboard.

One good writer would then be nominated to write the story up on a blackboard, or on paper when a blackboard was not available, while someone else told it. This way a good storyteller, even if not literate, could still contribute to the translation. Those who could read and write their own language with confidence would help correct the primary writer. Those who were less confident would slowly read what was being written, building their confidence as they went. At the end, when everyone was happy with the story, they would read it out loud together and I would write it down in my notebook, as well as taking a photo of the blackboard.

In the evening, our team spent time writing these stories up, using the resources we had available with us in the village. This meant writing with coloured pencils onto the back of the printed pictures. Estimating font size, line spacing etc left little room for error and made me appreciate word processing computer programs. I also had to concentrate very hard on writing neatly. Those who know my handwriting know that it is better used in cryptography than literacy.

A hand written completed shellbook.

The first time we did the binding with dental floss and tape, the second time we remembered the stapler as well as the tape. We then gave these freshly produced books to the school teachers and watched with delight as they read their way through. Later, once reunited with power, computers and printers, these books are properly typed up, formatted and printed in bulk for the schools to use.

As I sat on the floor of the village meeting house at Kivaumai, I could see the king tide rising all around us, including seeing it come under us through the cracks in the floor. Cute but flea ridden puppies kept getting thrown out of the open sided building. Chickens eyed us off as a dry retreat from a very wet village. Pigs looked funny as they swam to higher ground. Around us, at least fifty people had come to work on translating shell books. Debbie, Catherine and I each worked with a separate group. In a nearby house Rebekah and Susie were doing tone analysis with another dozen people (they’d asked for two or three). Robbie was elsewhere working on a dictionary with yet another group.

The village edition of the
13 new Urama books.

We sure drew a crowd!

It was a crowd that between them managed to translate 13 new story books into their language. It is a far cry from what other crowd sourced translation might look like, but it is the same principle and had a wonderful result. The number of Urama books increased significantly that soggy Saturday.

Uniskript in action

Koriki Uniskript Alphabet

Teaching literacy to kids using a new alphabet in a language I do not speak was always going to be a full on but fun time… and it was! Over 18 days of classes, we played games, practised writing using water on the floor (finger painting!), built words with flash cards and read books to the class. We covered eight of the sounds in the alphabet and were working on building and recognising words, with surprising success. I had to leave before the summer school ended (Highlands meetings and transport challenges), so am still waiting to hear the final report from Debbie and Robbie who finished the sessions with my class.

The primary idea behind Uniskript is to make the connection between sounds and symbols easier for beginning learners to grasp. This is done through the bridge of what your mouth is doing and the shape of the symbol on the page. The Koriki Uniskript alphabet uses familiar shapes from local life.

Instead of talking about vowels, we taught about arrows. Other shapes were based on bows, fish traps and an armband. The number of arrows in a symbol reflects how wide open your mouth is when you say a sound. [i] is one arrow  as the mouth is long and skinny when you say [i], skinny enough to be covered by one finger and [e] is two arrows as it can be covered with two fingers. In teaching these sounds we taught the children to use their fingers to measure their mouths and used stories about one arrow in the ‘ivi’ (local fruit) to help make the connection between the [i] sound and the sounds in ‘ivi’. Along the way I learnt how to count to three in Koriki as well as assorted other helpful words. We also all ended up talking with our hands, as we mimed sounds and connected them to symbols.

Writing practise... or fingerpainting

We created sentence length ‘stories’ for all the letters, to hopefully help beginning learners build the bridge between sound and shape. The goal was to connect the item the shape was based on, the sound in the word and to sometimes include what the mouth is doing when it makes that sound. The prime example of this is the sentence which meant ‘When I put the mango on my lips, it got on my nose’. Ma’a is the word for mango and [m] is a sound (and a shape) made with the lips and the nose… a bilabial nasal for the phonetically inclined. These stories, and others we’d used in the teaching process, all came together in a locally illustrated book, created to encourage further reading and given out as a gift at the final graduation.

Home office... the generator must be off,
as all the people have disappeared!

We spent a lot of time creating books for the language group, as what point is literacy without reading materials? Most of the books we created were from a framework known as shell books. These come with illustrations and a story in place, we ‘just’ had to translate them. Robbie had several pre-translated books on file, but we also worked with our trainee teachers to translate, check and edit several more. The other books we made were the stories-for-teaching and an alphabet dictionary. As we worked on these books, we were incredibly thankful for the people behind shell books and clipart, as well as for software, laptops, scanners, printers and generators that made book production possible and fans that stopped us workers from melting down. In a few weeks we created over ten titles and several hundred printed books.

When working at a beginning level in a new programme, it can be hard to see what we achieved. We can count attendance days and books printed. We can record training hours for both our teachers and our students, but the long term impact on literacy in Koriki, and eventually in English, is as yet unknown. I can see great potential for Uniskript, as long as teachers continually make the symbol-sound-mouth connection that is the strength of this approach. If they do not, it is just another alphabet and justifies the questioning by those who ask how an additional step in learning can possibly by beneficial in becoming literate.

Weighed down by generosity

One benefit of Uniskript that I did not expect was the community pride in having their very own script and being the first in the country to have a Uniskript programme in place. This community from the jungle-swamp of Gulf Province held their heads up and their language in high regard.

One overwhelming thing, which cannot truly be measured, was the generosity of  the parents towards us. Melanie* and I were weighed down with gifts when it was time for us to depart. Bags, spoons, pineapples, coconuts, bananas, head-dresses, pig tusks… so many things that were given to us to say thank you for giving our time, skills and resources to helping their children become literate and their language be unique. It is a subjective assessment, but I think the parents liked what we did with Uniskript. The kids certainly enjoyed the books!

*Somehow I have failed to name Melanie until nearly the end. My fellow swimmer in the literacy/Uniskript deep end, she looked after one of the more advanced classes, mentoring trainee teachers and working long and hard on book production. She was the fourth member of our team, the people behind the ‘we’ in this blog post.

Uniskript: Educational Challenges

Writing practice

Uniskript is an innovative approach to literacy which makes the connections between sound, mouth and symbol more explicit and therefore easier to learn to read. It has been developed through the University of the Nations in Hawai’i and although apocryphal reports have been favourable, it has not been thoroughly tested. During December and January I was able to be part of one of the first significant trials of Uniskript, as we established its use in the Koriki language, a dialect of Purari, in the Gulf Province.

In July last year, two Koriki women accompanied the local translation and literacy workers, Robbie and Debbie Petterson, to Hawai’i to work on Uniskript in their language. I call the Pettersons local, for although they are from NZ, they have also been working in the languages of the Gulf region since 1984 and are the sort of people that locals know as Auntie Debbie and Uncle Robbie. Two men from another local language also went, to get Uniskript started in Urama. Together they worked on alphabets unique to their language, using iconographs relevant to their culture. This means that each alphabet is unique to the group it belongs to.

Arriving in Gulf to help with Uniskript, I was jumping in the deep end…as usual. We spent half a day training eight volunteer teachers before classes started. Over 100 kids turned up, to a summer school literacy programme during the official school holidays. I challenge you to find that enthusiasm for school in Australia! We started with four classes, based on their current literacy skills in English and Koriki using the ‘normal’ (Roman) alphabet. I ended up with the class that had never been to school before.

My job was to mentor the two trainee teachers assigned to my class. I have not officially studied education principles, but having collected several university degrees and been in various educational settings before, have a surprisingly strong skill set when it comes to teacher training. At the same time, I was helping the children to learn. We were not only teaching them literacy through Uniskript, but as the absolute beginners class, we were also teaching class room behaviour and all those skills which Aussie kids learn through kindy or pre-school, such as how to hold a pencil and which direction a book goes (left to right, top to bottom, which end is the front).

The students in my class ranged from 20 (the day there was a funeral in the village) to over 40. Most days attendance was in the mid 30s. Calling the roll was one of my many challenges, as kids had multiple names. It took me a few weeks to be smart enough to dismiss students one by one as I called their names. In doing so, I found one student listed three times under different names. Another girl had two different first names and three surnames, presented in varying combinations. Ages in the class varied from four and a half to ten. None of them had been to school before.

Our class faced most of the common educational challenges for village schools in PNG. The class size was too big. The teacher was undertrained. The teacher who was well trained (myself) did not know the language. The students did not know English or Tok Pisin. The classrooms were suffering from tropical fatigue (The stairs to my classroom had rotted away, so we had to come up the other stairs and through another classroom and an office to reach our room. I had planned on including outdoor games, but these were cancelled when getting outdoors meant disrupting another class). We had minimal resources (It surprising how many flash cards you can create from one 2min noodle carton and a black marker, and we nearly ran out of chalk). The teachers were volunteers, so sometimes did not turn up, as they had to go fishing to feed their family. A village incidents, such as  funeral or a fight,  interrupted schooling. Class started late after a rainy night that meant that everyone slept in and the path to class was muddy… and so on. In this context, the work we did was a reasonable test of the effectiveness of Uniskript for teaching literacy. Any good results had few other sources to be credited to.

Now that I have set the scene for our Uniskript teaching, I’ll point you in the direction of some photos and get to writing about how Uniskript works and how the students and community responded.

For photos, please visit my photojournalist friend Erin’s blog:

http://speaklifespeakup.wordpress.com/2013/12/11/Uniskript/

http://speaklifespeakup.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/Uniskript-part-ii/