My Nine to Five

Despite most of my blog posts, I am actually working here in Haiti, I don’t just sit around and think about economics.

I had a very productive meeting yesterday with Pastor Evans, Pastor Wisner, Pastor Pierre, and Altenor Phillips about the progress of the vocational school. The vocational school is in a great place and the progress made since I’ve been gone is impressive. Right now we have three vocational technologies being taught to the students: Welding, Masonry, and Electrical work. We are looking to put in a carpentry program, a plumbing program, and possibly and auto mechanic program. These are all vocations that are in high demand and professions that could yield a steady income for the graduates.

I sat in on the masonry program today and Pastor Wisner, the teacher, did a very good job teaching the students. He started by putting notes on the board, and then continued to have a discussion with the students and gave them sample problems to work out. Despite Haiti being worlds apart from America in some areas, effective classroom management in Haiti is similar to my school days in the US. Pastor Wisner is engaging and expects respect from the students. In return he has a well-managed class and the students seem to be learning and enjoying themselves. He does a good job to get the students talking about what they are learning, and he forces them to work out problems thoroughly with him, as well as on their own.

Right now what I want to focus on is getting the entire program to be scalable. I want to make sure that when I come back to Haiti in 10 years, this program is still around. The first step to this is to develop a course outline. This will be a combination of two things: (1) a curriculum for what will be taught in the class and what the students will be capable of achieving when they are finished with the course (2) a list of requirements for managing the class. The curriculum is already written. The teachers have written some of the curriculum, and the Haitian government has written example curricula as well. Most of these trades have some sort of licensing exam, and for some of the trades there is a prescribed curriculum written by the state and designed for the exam. Some of the teachers are adding other skills that will benefit the students, as well as those needed to pass the qualification exam. For other trades there are no formalized curricula, but there are still licensing exams. This is the case with the masonry program, and Pastor Wisner has done an impressive job putting together a comprehensive curriculum. 

The second part is a set of requirements set for the management of each program. These are more general guidelines than course requirement, things like the number of students in each class, the length of the overall program, expected income upon graduation, etc. Pastor Pierre has helped me compile a list of questions I will ask each teacher and mentor. In the coming weeks I am going to be sitting down with every teacher and mentor of the program, to see what they are doing and make sure the program is working for them. From these conversations I hope to develop a guide to mange the administration of each discipline. 

I will be putting these course outlines together for a few reasons. The first reason is that this will also hopefully give some consistency to the classes and tell prospective students what to expect. I also hope this this outline will make the course a little more formal for the teachers and the students. Right now the program is in kind of a beta testing, and we are working out the kinks, and this document will make sure the kinks we work out get formalized and that the teachers have a structure to rely on when teaching future classes. This guide will also be a resource to any new teachers who come in to teach, giving them a premade formal structure to each discipline.  The teachers are very involved in the production of this outline, so hopefully it will give them a guide for any questions they might have in the future.

Another important reason for these course outlines is to document the program for people who want to donate to the school. When I was home talking about the program, I was asked be many people how they could help with certain initiatives of the school. I spoke with men who had or were currently working as carpenters and wanted to help a few Haitian carpenters. This course outline will be something I can give to prospective donors, allowing them to see what exactly it is they are supporting.

One of the biggest benefits to this is that it allows me to develop a budget for each discipline. Right now the program doesn’t cost anything from the students, but as it grows, we will want to charge some tuition. The tuition will either be covered by sponsors from the US, by up front payments by the students, or by a loan program where the students pay back their tuition loan once they complete the program and start working. Getting a budget set is not easy, but putting together a course outline is a necessary step.

I wasn’t very familiar with the trades when I was assigned this project, but I realized that the value I would add to the mission would be managing the project from beginning to end. I would need to do the bigger picture things, like making sure each discipline had a structure to it. This course outline is just one of the many things needed to ensure the sustainability of this program, but it is great way for me to give back to the mission.