By Kalan Gott

Today was our last day at Shine Zambia Reading Academy. It is hard to put into words the feelings I have gone through in a year. If you looked at my journal from last year I never thought I would be able to make this trip again. It was hard to encounter such poverty and so many children in need of so much. As the year went on I found myself longing to return. I wanted to be a part of The A to Z Literacy Movement and help make whatever difference I could. Now when you look in my journal all you will see is notes on how any moments I have with the Zambian people are moments I treasure. Yes, there are a lot of challenges facing the people of Zambia. However, I do not see those challenges on the faces of the educators we work with. Instead I see in these teachers a passion and dedication that I felt when I graduated from Illinois State with my teaching degree. It is pure passion. Not over thinking or analyzing what goes in to education, not worrying and focusing endlessly on scores and numbers, meetings and protocols. It is passion for children, growth, life long learning, and collaboration. This is the passion I thirst to remember and work to recapture thanks to the teachers of Zambia. The teachers here have fewer resources and less formal training and yet they demonstrate all of the qualities I seek to poses. Teaching love, persistence, creativity. Teaching-a life long pursuit. I don’t know what my next few hours, days, weeks, months, and years will bring, but I hope and pray they bring me closer to being the teacher I see when I visit these schools.

By Mariann Zimmerman

Several of the lessons I taught at Shine involved modeling a read aloud and then
having the students write about it. For a couple lessons in the Library I used
the Mercer Mayer book All By Myself. This lesson was very difficult to present
and to get the students to participate due to the fact that they rarely give
their own thoughts about something. They are usually repeating, copying, or
retelling. With the help of the Shine teachers translating, my anchor charts,
and my own completed example, the students were able to successfully complete
their own page telling about what they can do all by themselves. I turned their
work into class books which I presented to Naomi on our last day at Shine. She
was amazed that their students were able to complete such beautiful work. I
learned that most of the students are beautiful artists. Because they don’t
watch TV, they spend a great deal of time drawing. Naomi learned that this was
a great activity to do with the students during Library time and it would help
link the reading and writing. She is also going to keep the books in the
Library for the students to read each day. Hopefully, when we return next year,
we will see a new section in the Library dedicated to student made books.

By Anastasia Gruper

Last week as Kalan and I were waiting for Mal to pick us up in the blue Toyota Fun Cargo, a cab driver pulled up and asked if we needed a ride. I replied, “No, thank you.” He retorted, “Are you in the white or the blue car?” This was our first hint that the people of Zambia knew we were here.
On our second day at Shine the Muvi TV crew arrived to film the A to Z team in action. Prior to our arrival, they had been filming Shine and the new library. While walking through the mall later in the week, someone asked Mal if she was the lady on TV. Who would have thought we’d be televised so quickly in Africa?
On Thursday, Mal and I sat at the Internet Café as the rest of the team went to Shop Rite to pick up a few grocery items. The checker missed Kalan’s Fanta. The man between Kalan and Mariann in line said, “It’s alright just pass it to her partner.” Shockingly, Mariann asked, “How did you know we were partners?” Then man replied, “I have been working in Chumbe Valley. I hear you have been teaching and doing a great job. How was teaching today?”

By Mal Keenan

You wake in the dark and it’s cold.
You walk forty five minutes to school, dodging traffic on busy dirt roads.
You’re hungry but that doesn’t stop you from arriving to class on time.
You sit at a crowded table with your peers- trying to find space for your flimsy notebook.
You eat the same meal at school – fortified porridge – but never complain.
You are resilient.
You have courage.
And you’re the one giving me strength to keep moving forward.

By Kalan Gott

Today we visited Chishiko Community School in Chongwe Village. This school was born from a partnership between the community and the Give Life Project. It has been open for a month and consists of two classes. One preschool and one kindergarten. I am a middle school teacher and this was an enormous eye opening experience into the invaluable work of the early childhood educators around the world. They are given the huge responsibility of laying a foundation for literacy. The students in early childhood classes come to school with wide varieties of literacy experiences and levels. Their brains are starving for knowledge. They move constantly-figuring out their world and learning to interact with each other. It was amazing to watch Teacher Doreen and Teacher Bornwell work with their students. Thank you for your service and dedication. And to all of the early childhood and primary teachers thank you for continued work in sculpting and scaffolding the literacy lives of these little learners. Below is my Ode to Early Childhood Educators.

Ode to the songs you sing
the smiles you bring
the hearts you touch
for teaching so much

Ode to the paths you lay
the minds you stretch each day
the energy you exude
for delivering rich brain food

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ~Howard Thurman

By Mal Keenan
One of the goals of A to Z Literacy Movement is to ship books to vulnerable children in impoverished communities. We have sent thousands of books to schools, Peace Corps volunteers, camps for kids, and orphan homes. Thanks to generous donations from people who believe in our mission, we now have plenty of high quality books to send.
The process isn’t complicated. A to Z volunteers gather books – picture books, easy readers, nonfiction, and chapter books. We sift and sort through them, deciding what’s appropriate for kids in Africa and what books will remain in the states for kids needing books locally. After being carefully sorted, the books are boxed and prepared for shipping. The boxes of children’s books are brought to the post office, where patient employees like Linda, spend a minimum of forty-five minutes weighing the boxes, processing the forms, and putting each box into an M-Bag. (Yes, I’m the person you don’t want to be standing behind in line.)
On Monday, we spent almost five hours at Every Orphan’s Hope office unpacking the books we sent earlier in the year. It was a wonderful experience going through the books once again, commenting on books we love, talking about favorite authors, and discussing how certain books have moved us. Six hundred eighteen books were numbered and catalogued for the seven (soon to be eight) orphan homes in Chongwe, ready for check out, ready to be enjoyed by children.

By Ann Yanchura

That’s a good question. Let’s examine this, particularly in the face of some minor but pointed criticism of our mission of building literacy in another country when our own home has many struggling readers and writers. We are blessed to have the opportunity to make global literacy connections that will benefit those with whom we work here in Zambia, those with whom we work in America and, certainly us individually.
A to Z Literacy, founded by Mal Keenan, Michelle Rentzsch, and Stephanie Brown, is a fledgling movement to share the love and skills of literacy with people everywhere. Through missionary friends, Mal felt called to work in Lusaka, Zambia, and her work is growing the literacy support community in Crystal Lake. Eventually, this work will grow to more outreach at both the international and the local level with your support and the small successes we are experiencing today.
Being out of our comfort zone here in Zambia helps us to grow professionally, personally and spiritually. We will carry our learning back to Crystal Lake, Illinois, where, for the other 50 weeks of the year, A to Z volunteers are working to build the literacy culture exactly where we live. We are all the better for our work here in Zambia. From America to Zambia and back again.

By Kalan Gott

One of our goals this year is to model the importance of letting the students talk to each other. As people we know that when we brainstorm with others we come up with more and better ideas. The saying goes five heads are better than one. Last year when Mal and I were here we spent all day in the same classroom getting to know one group of students. We strengthened our relationship with the students, staff, and school. However, this year there are five in our group. With five women working together here is some of what we have accomplished this year: modeling reflection, professional discussion, incorporation of reading, writing and speaking into lessons, questioning to guide deeper comprehension, collaboration among teachers and library staff leading to more deliberate instruction, incorporating a system of checks and balances, and planting the seeds to grow a professional learning community. Week one afforded us the opportunity to work with eleven inspiring educators. I look forward to seeing what week two brings!

By Ann Yanchura

The focus of my lessons for children (and their teachers) in Zambia is the use of academic language. It’s something many of us who are reading and writing this blog take for granted because we know the words to use when you summarize, describe, question, etc. In my lessons at Shine Academy in Kalingalinga, we are comparing and contrasting schools in Zambia and schools in America. After reading a wonderful book called WHERE IN THE WORLD IS HENRY? by Lorna Ballan, we talk about where in the world we live. Blow-up beach ball globes were easy to pack, and the kids love seeing our two countries on them. When we created a t-chart to compare our schools, we found that we have reading, writing, good teachers, and books in common. Some of our differences are that we have school gymnasiums in America, and they have vegetable gardens where chickens wander at schools in Zambia. Lucky for us we all love school, reading and teachers – we actually have a lot more in common than we have differences.

By Anastasia Gruper

*People walking out number the people driving.
*I am perplexed and amazed at the weight people are able to carry on their heads.
*A rooster and I compete to be the first one to see the sun rise.
*I stand in awe of one of the Seven Wonders of the World while being drenched.
*Baboons walk next to me, and I fear may even take the sunglasses out of my hand.
*I plan by headlamp every night while the power is out.
*A power outage is a celebration of the night sky.
*My bright white legs look tan from the dirt embedded in my skin.
*It takes me an extra five minutes to figure out how much everyone owes for a dinner that costs k2,553.00.
*There are no strollers to be seen; chitenge anyone?
*Speed bumps appear out of nowhere…
*Nshima makes a delicious utensil for picking up other parts of my meal.
*Morning tea is not an option, no matter what, everything else can wait.
*Old tires make great toys.
*AM and PM do not exist; it is 14:33.
*100km is an average speed on the highway as opposed to 2km in the compound alleys.
*Wi-Fi is a luxury; a means of communication rather than entertainment.
*It is not necessary to eat and move at the speed of lightening; everything will get done whenever it does, relax…
*It is not a good idea to call home to Crystal Lake when it is noon Zambia; it’s only five am there.
*A routine police check point is a time for pleasantries.
*The cow on the side of the road may be saying, “after you madam.”