Spring 2009 Potomac Term - Potomac School

News On Campus
Teacher Profile:
Cindy Cheadle
Potomac Sponsors Exchange to Kenya
When Potomac offered second-grade teacher
Cindy Cheadle the opportunity to travel to Kenya
last summer on a teacher exchange program,
she jumped at the chance. Sponsored jointly by
Potomac and the Children of Kibera Foundation,
a nonprofit group founded by Upper School history
teacher Ken Okoth, the exchange program
sent Cheadle to Kibera, one of the world’s largest
slums, to share her knowledge and teaching
methods at the Red Rose School.
Cheadle spent time in a second-grade
classroom at the elementary school, helped with
computer lessons, attended field trips to the
National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi, and helped
with other school events. She also visited the
families of four high school girls whose continuing
education the foundation is sponsoring. It was
“tremendously uplifting,” says Cindy, though also
mentally hard at times to see so many people
living in such poverty. She was moved by the
resourcefulness and basic survival instincts of the
kids she got to know.
Potomac welcomed Emmily Minayo, Red Rose
kindergarten teacher and head teacher in charge
of academics, for two weeks in April to complete
the teacher exchange. While here Minayo
observed classes, met with learning and resource
specialists, and gave presentations at assemblies
and in classrooms. In addition, the Lower School
Community Service Committee worked on a
project to benefit Red Rose.
Ken Okoth, along with Potomac alums Merrell
Redway Cherouny ‘82 and Michelle O’Hara Levin
‘93, founded the Children of Kibera Foundation
after leading a Potomac Upper School trip to
Kibera, where Okoth grew up. The group took
much-needed books to the pre-K through fifth
grade Red Rose School, beginning a relationship
that developed into a partnership with
Potomac. The foundation has since built a new
fifth grade classroom and supplied books,
computers, uniforms, and other materials to
this and other schools in the area and has
started a high-school scholarship program.
Visit www.childrenofkibera.org for more
information on the foundation.
[ above ] Second-grade teacher Cindy Cheadle works
with a student at the Red Rose School during her visit
to Kenya last summer.
[ top ] Red Rose teacher Emmily Minayo completed
the exchange in April.
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