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Teaching Haiti's Kids to Read Starts with the Right Tools

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PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti -- Education can help children think critically and solve problems. But tose abilities are greatly needed in Haiti where the literacy rate ranges from 57 to 64 percent.

There's not even a word for "literacy" in the Creole language.

"Most of the teachers here don't know how to teach reading and many of them don't know that you actually can teach reading because its all memorization, recitation. So if you can memorize all the words, you read," Dr. Bobbie Solley, director of International Education Development for Healing Hands International, explained.

Giving the Right Tools

A few times a year Solley brings a group of American teachers to Haiti. Their mission: to help the teachers there teach literacy more effectively.

"Reading is the most important thing we can teach children. Without reading, children will never be successful, without reading they can never better their lives, without reading they will always stay right where they are," Solley recently said at a seminar for Haitian teachers.

In Haiti, the methods of education are considered outdated and ineffective. Teachers often call out words and the children recite them back; they learn memorization rather than reading and comprehension.

"Teachers tell us who their high readers are so we go and listen and, yea, they're reading fluently and reading all the letters. And then we ask what they're reading and they can't tell you. They're not comprehending at all," Solley said.

Solley has been coming to Haiti since 2012. She and her team of teachers serve as examples of what it takes to teach literacy and then they work with the Haitian teachers to try the methods with their students.

"I try to tell them every time, 'This is not going to be easy, this is going to be hard because you've never seen it before,'" she explained.

But there's usually three or four at every school who's willing to learn, who want to learn, who takes in everything we say and tries it immediately," she continued. "For those teachers they see the benefits and they begin to see the benefits very quickly."

The Language Barrier

A big challenge facing the Americans is that two languages are spoken in Haiti: French and Creole.

"Creole is the native language, French is the language of power," Solley explained. "Everybody thinks that children when they enter school should immediately start learning how to read French."

But I know through research in the states and all over the world children are going to learn to read if they read in their native language first," she continued. "So the children that we're working with come from native Creole speaking homes, they don't speak French."

"And then immediately in kindergarten they start speaking to them and talking to them and writing words up on the board that are French. They've not a clue and so they memorize," Solley said.

While their task seems overwhelming at times, they're encouraged by Haitian teachers who care deeply and truly want their kids to learn.

Teachers like Madeline Joseph.

Since meeting her over a year ago, Solley has taught her what she needs to know about making a difference to others. Joseph will now work with teachers to help them put the new methods into practice

"I think that's how you sustain a country, I think that's how they learn to depend on themselves," Solley said. "People from the outside, they're never going to learn to depend on themselves to know things if I'm always coming in here to tell them. I want them to have confidence in what they know."

Joseph said she's passionate about this new approach and knows it can lead to a better future for Haiti.

"When I was in school they didn't teach me the way they should but now that I understand I want the kids to as well. If I can teach the teachers then the kids will learn in the future," she said.

If Haiti's children and young adults are educated, they can slowly begin to impact their communities and even their country. For more immediate change, the adults must learn as well.

Operation Blessing Helps

Operation Blessing International also started offering a class for adults in one of their communities outside of Port Au Prince after parents of the children attending their school requested it.

"We want the parents to be able to help the students with their homework and just support them with very basic things, being able to write their own names, counting how many children and cousins and family members they have here," Operation Blessings's Dora Nemere said.

And most of the women here, they do their little businesses, they sell fish or other (things) so we also teach basic math that they can benefit from," she said.

"I want to read the Bible and I want to read the songs and when the kids come home from school I can check what they do in school. They can't lie to me anymore," one adult student said.

The first class of 32 students recently graduated and there are now 27 new students going through the program.

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About The Author

Caitlin Burke Headshot
Caitlin
Burke

Caitlin Burke serves as National Security Correspondent and a general assignment reporter for CBN News. She has also hosted the CBN News original podcast, The Daily Rundown. Some of Caitlin’s recent stories have focused on the national security threat posed by China, America’s military strength, and vulnerabilities in the U.S. power grid. She joined CBN News in July 2010, and over the course of her career, she has had the opportunity to cover stories both domestically and abroad. Caitlin began her news career working as a production assistant in Richmond, Virginia, for the NBC affiliate WWBT