In Global Voices Amy Bracken writing for The World in Words:
More hereMatenwa is also bucking the norms of Haitian education. At the start of an all-school assembly, students stand up and share what’s good and bad — a lesson they enjoyed, or how they didn’t like the behavior of other students or even teachers. In class, students sit in a circle, following the school’s philosophy that children should be seen, heard and treated with respect.
There's another essential part of the school's method, the staff says: teaching in the students’ native language, Creole, instead of French.
Only an estimated 5 percent of Haitians are fluent in French, but it's still the language of government-funded textbooks. “When I was in school, I never really learned French,” says Calixte’s mother, who calls herself Madame Frantz Calixte. When I ask how she succeeded in school, she laughs. “I didn’t really pass my exams,” she says.
But of her sons? ”They’re learning better than I did,” she says.
