St. Mulumba....

Yesterday we visited a Zambian school for the hearing impaired, the visually impaired and the intellectually impaired. And...oh my goodness... it was awesome! This school was the nicest school that I have seen so far! We arrived right before the tea break...so we got to see many of the classrooms while they were having class. The teachers have a very hard job, but most of the students were very attentive. The deaf class was learning how to play volleyball--i guess this was their gym class. It was interesting to watch the teacher interact with the students. He would show them what to do and then point to each child individually, like the ball was coming at them, and they would demonstrate what technique they would use to hit the ball back over.

The students in the visually impaired classroom were taking a math test. They would feel the math problems in brail on a piece of paper and then they would take a board with small square pegs and align the pegs in such a way to make the appropriate answer to the problem. The teacher would then check the answer and the student would move to the next problem.

The teachers in the intellecutally impaired classroom had a very, very challenging job. All of the students were on different levels of intellectual progress, so whenever the students would show an adequate improvement they would move up to the next level. The students in this classroom all came up and gave us hugs and shook our hands as we walked into the room.

The school also teaches the students agricultural traits, as well as, gives them musical and artistic opportunities to compete with other children across the world. The school was very proud of their three silver medals, which they won in the Special Olympics when they came to the U.S. a few years back. We spoke with the head of the school and he gave us a tour and introduced us to all of the teachers. Many of the teachers had visual and hearing impairments themselves. And one of the students, who recently graduated from the intellectually impaired classes, is using his traits and skills that he has learned to help his fellow students with their intellectual struggles in learning.

The Japanese are big supporters for the school's financial program, so today a Japanese group is visiting the school to put on a dance for the students. The head of the school invited us back to watch the dance, as well as, watch the Zambian children perform a traditional Zambian dance! I'm so excited to see them and I can't wait to show you pictures! Until later....

Blessings.... :)

Hopefully there will be more pictures posted....many times it takes way too long to display pictures on the blog, therefore I am not able to post many pictures to view. I will try to post more pictures this week!