Teachers Seminar

We decided to try having a teachers seminar this year to address the need for more intellectual continuity among Christian teachers. It was a little intimidating since neither Mike nor I have teaching experience. We decided a two day seminar would give us a good gauge of both our capacity to host such a thing and also the interest for it in the community. 

Our goals were to equip teachers with better understanding of the issues and to consider answers to the questions of humanism and socialism. Also, to encourage a more disciplined learning environment. 

Pursuant to those goals we had the following subjects:

-The Christian Worldview (by Tony Jean)

- Student Discipline (Tony Jean)

- Classroom management (Moïse Oscar)

- Science and the Bible, can the two agree? (Matthew Morhart)

Tony Jean is a man who was instrumental in developing a new curriculum for Christian schools in Haïti, called Mwen Kapab. Currently the other books available are written from a evolution/humanism perspective and most of the teachers don't even realize what is at stake. The state creates the exams for 6th, 9th, and 12th grades and naturally they correspond with the secular content of their curriculum. 

It was a Godsend to meet Tony just a few weeks before the seminar when we went to check into using this curriculum in our own school. He understands the dichotomy in which the Christian teachers work and think and had already done some teaching on worldview. 

Moïse is the pastor's son and works in educational development. He has visited many schools and probably seen it all. 

Matthew Morhart is from the far NW corner of Haïti. He has translated a number of materials from Answers in Genesis and has mastered Creole making him a valuable speaker in the areas we were considering. He was the only non-native that we had speak this year. 

It's always difficult to gauge the effectiveness of a training of this kind, however I do think that the 90 some teachers and school directors that attended have been made to acknowledge the tendency to crawl out of their sacred box and into their secular box on Monday morning as the head off to work. They now have more exposure at least to the issues and hopefully a few tools to deal with them. 

Lidios Delouis having devotions at the start of the day. 

Pastor Matthew Morhart. 

Small morning refreshment. 

Mike takes care of registration and all the badges and certificates that are absolutely culturally essential. 

The schedule. 

A local school administrator filling out a worldview survey that Matthew used during his discourse. You can take the free worldview test here: http://www.worldviewweekend.com/test/register.php

Matthew explaining the difference between Science Historique and Science Experimental with the five stones on the floor.