By Adama Kone, Teacher Project Manager
Boulaye Diawara is a French teacher at Mali Rising’s Jade and Gabe Mellor Middle School. Mr. Diawara recently attended one of our new Intensive Teacher Trainings and provided us with great feedback about the experience. Spoiler alert: he thought is was great.
Mr. Diawara has taught at our school for six years. In addition to French, he teaches history and geography. He likes to work with his colleagues because he has great relationships with all of them. Even more than his colleagues, he enjoys working with students. He says, “I have many funny students, and very often they make me laugh and feel happy.”
Mr. Diawara — the French teacher at Mali Rising’s Jade and Gabe Mellor Middle School — says, “To get better results for my students I really must try my best and continue to improve.”
Mr. Diawara regularly has more than 100 students in a classroom, which can feel overwhelming. With so many students and so few resources like textbooks, Mr. Diawara realizes, “To get better results for my students I really must try my best and continue to improve.”
That’s why Mr. Diawara attended our Intensive Teacher Training recently at his school. He told me he found the training very useful and said, “Trainings are the best ways to help teachers improves because it gives a chance to actually see ourselves in the mirror and judge ourselves as teachers. WE learn from the trainers and from ourselves, and it makes us think about how to apply what we learn while teaching.”
Mr. Diawara believes the recent training was one of his best trainings ever thanks to Mali Rising Foundation’s partnership with his school.
Mr. Diawara is married to two wives (one with him in Sequessona and one in the capitol city of Bamako) and is the father of six children. During holidays, Mr. Diawara usually reads textbooks and travels but during his last vacation, he helped supervise a group of masons that built a new house for his family in Seguesona where Jade and Gabe Mellor Middle School is. He and his family moved into it then he does not have to pay any rent anymore. Mr. Diawara likes to be around his family at his new house, especially when his second wife pays them a visit so the whole family is together.
