Quick Trip to Dakar, Senegal

Did you miss me? Ah, you might not even have noticed I was gone. But last Saturday I caught a plane up to LaGuardia, took a cab over to JFK, and did an overnight flight that landed in Dakar on Sunday morning. I was there to spend two days with the new teachers at Dakar Academy, a network of schools and co-ops in West Africa helmed by my longtime friend and colleague Robb Warfield. The photos above and below are from the roof of the apartment house where I stayed.

The group was a delight to spend time with, as we explored how we undertake the agency required in order to be those who cause learning for our students, not merely "teach" them. Then, we examined the implications for how we plan for that learning to make it not just possible, but exceedingly likely...and not just for our better students, but especially mindful of the needs of those who might struggle.

Several years ago, I got to do a few trainings of aspiring principals in the local school district here, and we were hosted on several occasions by the Winston-Salem Foundation in their large conference room space that actually overlooks the house here.

It was rather a different view out the windows of my teaching space in Dakar at the start of the week. A jailed opposition leader, and then the outlawing of that opposition party, got pushback from small bands of roving protestors creating random havoc in isolated spots around Senegal's capital city.

That included a non-descript intersection on the busy thoroughfare that passes outside the Academy's Central campus walls. While the workshop participants were in a group discussion task, I walked over to the library's windows because of the horn-honking and then the strange beating noises. Three men had tried to park a bus across the road and one was taking a baseball bat to the windows of it. I at first thought there was a minor traffic accident, and this was an angry motorist. Once they had beat it mercilessly, they set it afire.

Of course, once the view out those windows filled with black smoke, I found it difficult to keep the attention of my group, even though they still engaged in the activities at hand.

We shifted to ordering pizza in at lunchtime, rather than people heading out; once the authorities finally arrived, it took a while to get the bus moved out of the way.

Whether we needed the excuse or not, Robb and I did not mind treating ourselves to these ridiculous desserts at the Chocolate Bar my final night there. Of course, since the government shut down the cell phone network, we initially could not access that trendy QR code to look at the menu!