Lagos State Principals Presentation

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Hello everyone. Day 4 here in Lagos, and it was a big task before us—to present to 60 principals and teachers employed in the public schools in Lagos Sate, this region in the far southwest corner of Nigeria, which contains the city of Lagos.

On our way there we saw a bunch of people looking in at one of the many high barred gates that line the roads here. We asked the driver what was going on, as we passed by. He said that someone had tried to rob the store during the night, and that they had tied him up, so that what all the people were looking at. This got us thinking about many questions: why would tying him up solve the problem? Would the thief be turned over to the police? How did our driver know this was the commotion? What were all the people looking at the tied man? Who tied him? Is this a frequent occurrence? We did not get any answers as we buzzed through smog and motor bikes on to our venue for the day.
Our venue was a large stone hall on the upper floor of a complex of buildings the true purpose of, I could not determine. Let me just say it was about 8 buildings of various sizes and shapes with only dirt paths surrounding all of them, rosters, many tall and leafy trees (these were a welcome site).
Our hostess, Femi at APEN had to bring everything from her school: tables, chairs, projector, screen, podium, banners, handouts, sound system. She had also arranged for catering for both morning tea as well as lunch.

My three sessions were—1) background on US education and GYLI; importance of total education in and outside of the classroom, and a bit of the GYLI philosophy of experiential ed. 2) the collaborative leadership process, complete with communication and trust activities, and 3) storytelling and the 5C’s.
It was great to see that these GYLI elements worked so well in Nigeria has they did in India, as they do in the US. It seems that teachers all over the world hunger for these pieces of reflected conversation that really value and celebrate the participants and that reflect the out highest aspirations about what education can be.

Random observations:
1. The teachers arrived on a bus with clearly identifying them as Lagos State Teachers—haven’t seen this in any other country just yet.
2. Torrential rains do help cool the temperature near the equator—when the day starts out quite hot!
3. Everyone loves playing games and then applying the games to their learning
4. Some of the teachers today have 140 students in their classroom. Wow. How do we deal with that.

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