“The leaves of the trees and the waters of the seas are not sufficient to share our sentiments with you.”

“We must continue the education missions because education is the key of instruction and with education all doors are open…The children are the real winners from this School Mission.”

“Come back in order to enrich the knowledge of the teachers so we can instruct the little children to become better citizens in the future.”

These are some of the words of thanks from the St. Paul’s School teachers to our School Mission team who went to Petit Trou de Nippes in October. The five of us put together a first-time-ever mission focused entirely on supporting and recognizing the dedicated teachers of St. Paul’s School. It was a wonderful, rewarding experience for us.

Pat Peterson was the Co-Leader of the School Mission, together with Judy Reid, a long-time Konbit sponsor whose last trip to Petit Trou was in 2004, when she taught in “classrooms” held under the trees, with blackboards propped against the tree trunks! Other team members were Bev Robinson, a 25-year veteran French teacher, and Jamie Hilton, a semi-retired teacher in the Cherry Creek School system, who brought special expertise in math and geography teaching methods. Pat, Bev, and Judy were all former French teachers and so they were in their element! Jamie and I had three fine translators always at hand, and my rusty high school French returned a little more each day.

These four teachers spent the week leading afternoon seminars in creative math instruction, world geography, and world culture; French phonetics and pronunciation, poetry and songs. They observed and taught four different 3rd – 6th grade sessions during the week. They worked very hard each day, reviewing and preparing each night, based on the day’s experiences. Hard work never seemed so exhilarating, because we were pioneering the first teaching mission as we went along! It was an exciting time for all of us, knowing we were making a real difference in what the teachers could share with their students. Teachers worked together with teachers toward the common goal of better serving the children of St. Paul’s.

From Judy Reid:

We went in order to lead some teacher training workshops with the 14 teachers there. We had only a general idea of what they might like us to help them work on—standard French (as they are Creole speakers and learn French as a second language), math, geography and other topics dealing with the rest of the world. We found, to our delight, that the teachers are enthusiastic, wonderful, talented people who share our goals—to improve the lives of the community through the education of the children. We were pleased to find that the children are studying math at the same level as