Literacy and libraries

Literacy and libraries

IU faculty help teachers in Rwanda with literacy training.

Produced by IU Newsroom

One of the primary tenets of Indiana University’s Books and Beyond has been access to books. Research has shown that when children are given a choice of what to read, it improves academic performance and attitudes toward reading and learning.

As Books and Beyond grew, starting a decade ago in 2008, it became clear that access to a library and training teachers in English language instruction would be key to creating a model of literacy to support the students at Kabwende Primary School in Musanze, Rwanda.

Enter Michael Courtney, outreach and engagement librarian with IU Libraries. Courtney joined the Books and Beyond Advisory Board in 2012, and the library project began in 2014. The dream was realized in earnest with a former classroom at Kabwende turned into a dedicated library in 2015.

The library started with about 400 donated books and currently has about 1,200 books that all students and staff can take advantage of. Donations are being gathered for a planned shipment later this year; books desired include early literacy reading levels, along with books in English, French and Kinyarwanda.

“The Kabwende library for me has been not just expanding and increasing literacy in this school but really working toward developing a reading culture,” Courtney said. “The students are reading and engaging with information in the classroom, and I wanted to make that available to them outside of the classroom, whether that’s in a children’s book, whether that’s in a nonfiction book, or access to these things.”

Courtney taught a two-day workshop for 50 teachers at Kabwende that focused on the fundamentals of library and information science, classification and organization of library resources, and information literacy in the classroom.

The two-day workshop was part of a certificate program combined with a three-day English language workshop. Teachers who completed all five days received a certificate of completion that codified their participation and skills building.

“There is a larger goal of training teachers in the importance and use of the library in their school,” Courtney said. “This is central to the larger mission of building a reading culture and tying library resources to classroom literacy instruction.”

Along with the drought of reading materials at Kabwende School in 2008, when Books and Beyond was starting its work in Rwanda, the government changed Rwanda's official language from French to English.

The switch was an effort to help Rwanda become part of the global economic community, but finding a sufficient number of teachers who speak English has been difficult. Because the local Rwandan language, Kinyarwanda, is primarily spoken, Books and Beyond implemented teacher training into its three-week student literacy camp.

Betty Dlamini, a senior lecturer in the IU School of Global and International Studies’ Department of African Studies, traveled to Rwanda this year to take part in the intensive three-day workshop as part of the English as a Second Language teacher training. A native of the Kingdom of Eswatini, Dlamini is a singer, actress, playwright, poet, and fiction writer who teaches southern African languages (IsiZulu) and cultures at Indiana University. The experience in Rwanda was personal for Dlamini.

“To have this experience is very important for me, because first of all, I’m African,” she said. “But this is the first time I'm in an African region outside my home country.”

Dlamini incorporates performance into English language instruction, which she said has been a successful strategy she uses in her own classes at IU. She taught the three-day workshop to Kabwende teachers on English language instruction.

“The strategies that we employ in training teachers in English instruction, we use pleasurable ways of accessing the language via songs, games, and ways their students engage,” Dlamini said. “For the Kabwende teachers, they have the challenge of speaking English as a second or even third language, with many of the group speaking Kinyarwanda and French, and now needing to know English. I enjoy helping them learn because for me, English was my second language as well.”

Having an interest in using performing arts to address social issues, Dlamini has always wanted to do work in Rwanda. During her time at Kabwende, she incorporated various mediums into the instruction using the communicative approach, in which the English learners get the grammar in context. But above all, she made it fun.

“This is a safe space for these teachers to speak in English and make mistakes; whether it’s pronunciation or grammar, it is OK,” Dlamini said.