Jan Brown is a childhood education expert whose “meaningful retirement” project has taken on the dimensions of a life’s work. Although her roots are in Pennsylvania – she graduated from Penn State main campus in 1970 and moved to the Lehigh Valley in 2006 – she has spent long periods of time in Rwanda over the past 20 years as the founder and president of TEACH Rwanda.

Brown has been a teacher and has instructed other teachers through the National Association for the Education of Young Children. She worked at Crayola until her retirement in 2009, helping teachers develop creative curricula. Now, a team of students from the project’s flagship Bright School, in a suburb of Kigali, Rwanda – calling themselves Future Hopes – is preparing to compete in an international robotics contest in March.

TEACH Rwanda began when Rwandan preschool teacher Louise Batamuriza opened Bright School and invited Brown, who had been her mentor, to bring research-driven, culturally relevant educational practices to the school.

“I thought I’d go there two or three times,” Brown recalls, “set up the school, and say goodbye. Now it’s almost impossible to say goodbye.”

A typical Rwandan primary school classroom has 100 students and is run according to very strict rules. By contrast, Bright School’s preschool classroom has 20 students and two teachers, and its classes through sixth grade have 20 to 25 students with one teacher per class. Bright School teachers encourage learning through play, using children’s natural interest in exploration to build problem-solving and analytical skills. Students have access to books, globes and maps, in addition to the new robotics team materials.

In addition to Bright School, TEACH Rwanda’s major project is educating new teachers with the goal of spreading evidence-based teaching practices and, when appropriate, certifying entire schools as exemplary practitioners of world-class early childhood education. Although it is not currently possible for the program to subsidize learning materials at schools where teachers are being mentored, TEACH Rwanda does work with the teachers to show them how to find and build manipulatives from the natural environment at low or no cost.

The robotics team began through a partnership with Burundi native Eric Biribuze, an engineer at glass and materials science firm Corning. Biribuze founded STELA (Science Technology Entrepreneurship Leadership Academy) to bring high-tech education to underserved global communities, and chose Bright School as his first location. Brown is quick to point out that the students are learning much more than how to use technology.

“It’s structural engineering; it’s teamwork; it’s gracious professionalism,” she explains. “It’s bringing a whole new vision of what it’s like to build a better future.”

Passionate about their project, the children on the robotics team come to school on weekends and during holiday closures.

STELA is providing materials and transportation money for the robotics team. Toymaker LEGO Group’s Foundation has also given support to the project as part of its “Learning through Play” grant program. Still, TEACH Rwanda is continuously looking for funding for its major projects, as well as future endeavors.

Over the next five years, Brown says, the group plans to finish construction of the Bright School campus. Longer-term goals include creating a facility to train teachers and starting a secondary school for students who complete sixth grade at Bright School. Increasing the number of teachers trained in the evidence-based methodologies of TEACH Rwanda is crucial to the group’s vision of transforming education in Rwanda.

For many years now, her possessions and those of her husband could fit into a couple of suitcases, but Brown is overwhelmingly positive about the way she has spent her retirement.

“The rewards of doing this, of seeing lives being changed,” she says, “it’s not a sacrifice to be there.”

More information on the work of TEACH Rwanda and how to become involved in the project is available online at TEACHRwanda.org.