Day 3 Appendix
The long, precarious walk down the muddy road from the school gave the headmaster and I a chance to discuss some of the differences in the school systems in Canada and Tanzania. In particular, I was curious as to the seemingly nonchalance of everyone with respect to the late arrival of teachers and subsequently the classes that just seem to get tossed out the window.
The headmaster explained that the teachers needed a fair bit of “encouragement” to do their jobs properly. Many of them were not fully qualified teachers but simply those who had graduated from Form VI and needed work. He said that in many fields, employment opportunities were limited (unemployment here is extremely high) but there was always a need for teachers so many people slid into the “profession” without really having any desire to teach.
This contrasted with my experience in Ontario where nearly all of my classmates, and especially all of those who were planning to get a job teaching next year, were dedicated to the profession and the welfare of the students.
Adding to the problem is the low salaries of the teachers. Dedicated teachers are less motivated to work for poor wages, not to mention those who don’t really want to be teaching at all. All of this translates into teachers who are lackadaisical about showing up on time, getting to class on time when they are there, or doing other work such as preparing exams that need to be submitted to the regional education office. When I asked if there were disciplinary procedures for negligent teachers, the headmaster replied that there were, but they were long and drawn out since, while there were regional education offices, the hiring and firing of teachers was conducted by a national office. Thus, it’s very difficult to have a teacher fired. Furthermore, doing this would simply leave him without the teachers he needs to teach the students.
Tanzania has a serious shortage of teachers, qualified or otherwise, and this stems in part from a directive issued last year by the national government that each ward build a new school (to deal with the shortage of schools for the growing number of students). It’s a fine idea, but it’s important to note that the government only funds 50% of the schools’ construction and operational costs, while the rest must come from the community (which isn’t always possible). The result is new schools with little more than the bare classrooms built (i.e. staffrooms, lunchrooms, toilets incomplete) that are seriously lacking in materials and supplies as well as the teachers necessary to teach all the classes. The headmasters are left to find teaching staff whichever way they can.
If all this isn’t bad enough, I read today in the newspaper that the teachers union has decided to postpone to July a strike that was to start tomorrow. The bone of contention is the government’s failure to pay the salaries of many of the teachers, most notably those of the temporary and lower-qualified teachers. There are accrued arrears of billions of shillings. Indeed, the headmaster said that despite it being the end of the month, he’d had no notification of his salary going in to his bank account. In any case, it’s a good thing for me that the strike is not on; otherwise my internship would have been up in the air!
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Rain, mud and tossed classes
Day 3 – April 30
This morning it took us over an hour to get to school today. The rains started early, around 5:00am, and didn’t let up at all through the morning commute. We arrived at school just a few minutes after 8:00am to find no teachers there. However, the headmaster had been expecting this; many of the teachers come from far away and, just as for us, the rainy conditions make getting to the school a long and arduous process as it usually means choosing each step carefully as you walk down a long, slippery, muddy route. The headmaster said that on days like this the first two periods are often lost as teachers don’t show up until mid-morning.
Neither of the English teachers was there so I sat for a while in the staff room reading a book on planning lessons with no resources. Just into 3rd period, the headmaster came in and asked me if I wanted to observe a math class (I had asked earlier). He showed me to the Form IIB class where Mr. Nzara was teaching a lesson on quadratic equations. With heavily overcast skies outside and nothing more than the windows to light the room, it was very dark inside. The low-quality blackboards were very hard to read in such light and I wondered how students with less-than-great vision and the visual learners were managing with the board work. In addition, the pattering of the rain on the sheet aluminium roof made what the teacher and the students were saying almost impossible to hear.
The teacher was going very quickly through the lesson, checking every so often if the students were grasping the concepts with a perfunctory, “Ok? All together class,” to which the students replied in unison, “Yes.” The responses were drone-like and only led me to wonder if they were actually getting it. Some were, certainly, as evidenced by correct answers to certain questions posed by the students, but I’m sure others weren’t and there was nothing really done to check either way.
After the class I went back to the staff room. One of the English teachers had arrived but she was sitting at her desk doing work even though she was scheduled to be teaching the Form I class. I didn’t know what to make of it and didn’t know what to do, but the headmaster wanted me to accompany him to town anyway so he could introduce me to the regional education officer, so we headed off. I still feel a little out of place there and am not sure at all how things work.
The situation was made a little clearer for me by the headmaster as we started our trek into town. The first part was a precarious walk down a long road made slippery with mud by the rains. What we could have walked on a paved road in 15 minutes took us one hour and it was clear to me the amount of time wasted in a headmaster’s day by having to move around on roads like these, without a vehicle to boot. After the walk we packed into a over-stuffed communal bus for the 10-minute ride into town.
Our shoes caked with mud, the headmaster decided to get his cleaned by a shoe-shine guy on the side of the street. As we waited, he called a carpenter, who came to join us and talk about building desks for the students with the donations I had brought.
After a good half hour, we continued on to the Regional Office and were lucky to get a short sitting with the education officer. It’s a good thing we did, too, as after my introduction he proceeded to tell the headmaster that the government should have been advised of the internship before my arrival. He advised the headmaster to write a proper letter of introduction right away and deliver it on Friday. For me, however, he had a big smile and thanked me for coming. He also asked me to encourage other friends to volunteer here, as they very much need the help in the school system.
Our short meeting there finished, we went to a café to have a drink and wait for a teacher from the school to bring copies of the drawn up term examinations that had to be submitted to the regional education office by 3:30pm that afternoon. Originally, the principal was to have brought them with him, but a number of the teachers had shown up late (as mentioned above), and didn’t have their work completed when they did eventually show up. So we waited an incredible amount of time before the teacher finally showed up and when he did, it seems he didn’t have the examinations for all the subjects and so the headmaster could not submit them anyway. By this time it was 3:00pm and the whole day, to me, seemed an exercise in wasted time. After another café stop and chat with the vice-principal from Malewa SS, we headed home.
This morning it took us over an hour to get to school today. The rains started early, around 5:00am, and didn’t let up at all through the morning commute. We arrived at school just a few minutes after 8:00am to find no teachers there. However, the headmaster had been expecting this; many of the teachers come from far away and, just as for us, the rainy conditions make getting to the school a long and arduous process as it usually means choosing each step carefully as you walk down a long, slippery, muddy route. The headmaster said that on days like this the first two periods are often lost as teachers don’t show up until mid-morning.
Neither of the English teachers was there so I sat for a while in the staff room reading a book on planning lessons with no resources. Just into 3rd period, the headmaster came in and asked me if I wanted to observe a math class (I had asked earlier). He showed me to the Form IIB class where Mr. Nzara was teaching a lesson on quadratic equations. With heavily overcast skies outside and nothing more than the windows to light the room, it was very dark inside. The low-quality blackboards were very hard to read in such light and I wondered how students with less-than-great vision and the visual learners were managing with the board work. In addition, the pattering of the rain on the sheet aluminium roof made what the teacher and the students were saying almost impossible to hear.
The teacher was going very quickly through the lesson, checking every so often if the students were grasping the concepts with a perfunctory, “Ok? All together class,” to which the students replied in unison, “Yes.” The responses were drone-like and only led me to wonder if they were actually getting it. Some were, certainly, as evidenced by correct answers to certain questions posed by the students, but I’m sure others weren’t and there was nothing really done to check either way.
After the class I went back to the staff room. One of the English teachers had arrived but she was sitting at her desk doing work even though she was scheduled to be teaching the Form I class. I didn’t know what to make of it and didn’t know what to do, but the headmaster wanted me to accompany him to town anyway so he could introduce me to the regional education officer, so we headed off. I still feel a little out of place there and am not sure at all how things work.
The situation was made a little clearer for me by the headmaster as we started our trek into town. The first part was a precarious walk down a long road made slippery with mud by the rains. What we could have walked on a paved road in 15 minutes took us one hour and it was clear to me the amount of time wasted in a headmaster’s day by having to move around on roads like these, without a vehicle to boot. After the walk we packed into a over-stuffed communal bus for the 10-minute ride into town.
Our shoes caked with mud, the headmaster decided to get his cleaned by a shoe-shine guy on the side of the street. As we waited, he called a carpenter, who came to join us and talk about building desks for the students with the donations I had brought.
After a good half hour, we continued on to the Regional Office and were lucky to get a short sitting with the education officer. It’s a good thing we did, too, as after my introduction he proceeded to tell the headmaster that the government should have been advised of the internship before my arrival. He advised the headmaster to write a proper letter of introduction right away and deliver it on Friday. For me, however, he had a big smile and thanked me for coming. He also asked me to encourage other friends to volunteer here, as they very much need the help in the school system.
Our short meeting there finished, we went to a café to have a drink and wait for a teacher from the school to bring copies of the drawn up term examinations that had to be submitted to the regional education office by 3:30pm that afternoon. Originally, the principal was to have brought them with him, but a number of the teachers had shown up late (as mentioned above), and didn’t have their work completed when they did eventually show up. So we waited an incredible amount of time before the teacher finally showed up and when he did, it seems he didn’t have the examinations for all the subjects and so the headmaster could not submit them anyway. By this time it was 3:00pm and the whole day, to me, seemed an exercise in wasted time. After another café stop and chat with the vice-principal from Malewa SS, we headed home.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Meeting the students
Day 2 – April 29
The commute to the school is not an easy one, especially when it has rained. We left the house just before 7am, walking along a few neighbourhood roads. In no time, our shoes were caked in mud and the cuffs of our pants stained red. At a certain point, we trudged carefully on a shortcut path through a bean field, leading to a nearby hospital. From there, we caught a collective bus for a kilometre or so. When the weather is nice, the bus will often go right near the school, but on wet days like today it turns around early because the roads are too muddy. So, we continued on foot, walking for another 20 minutes or so, the last of it through coffee plantations and corn fields. The air wasn’t extremely warm, but the humidity is incredibly high, so it doesn’t take much to sweat early in the morning.
Just before 8:00, we arrived at the school and two students approached us and took our bags from us and carried them into the office ahead of us. I felt that I had all eyes on me as I walked with him through the schoolyard, but the students were all smiling, and a few of them even ventured a “Good morning, sir.” They wear wine-coloured uniforms; the boys wear pants; the girls, skirts, and both wear white shirts and maroon sweaters.
The school grounds are quite small. There are 4 rough, brick buildings that are each divided into two classrooms. The classrooms are as spartan as can be imagined, containing two old blackboards and the desks for the students. The walls are still raw brick and the roof is sheet aluminium. There is no glass on the windows and there are no lights in the room (the school has no electricity).
What will be the headmaster’s office is currently being used by all the staff as construction on the staffroom (a separate building) has only just begun. However, even for the staff there are not enough desks and chairs for everyone.
The headmaster told me that classes start at 8:00am. However, while all the students were there at that time, only two teachers were present. Apparently the wet weather (it wasn’t raining but had rained) makes transport a lot more difficult and much more time-consuming.
So one of the students rang the bell (literally, a hand bell), and the headmaster addressed all the students in the open ground between the classroom buildings. They were all abuzz about the new foreigner. The headmaster was firm in telling them to be quiet, but friendly when addressing them.
It seems that their English is already quite good. Swahili students begin learning English as a subject in grade one, so by Form I (grade 8, the first grade of high school), the students can already read well and understand spoken English quite decently. In addition to this, since Swahili uses the same alphabet as English, they are already proficient in writing the language.
The headmaster introduced me to all the students and then I spoke very briefly to them myself. When he asked them where Canada was, no one could reply correctly. Most thought it was a country somewhere in Africa. It’s evident that they know as little about North America as North Americans know about Africa.
After our brief assembly, the headmaster showed me the classrooms and the kitchen, a roofless half-building where an old woman had a large cauldron over a wood fire, camp style. We then saw the two English teachers coming up the walk, so we greeted them and then I went inside to talk with them a little about what would be happening with the classes. Both teachers are quite young women, but very friendly. They showed me the syllabus for Form I-IV, which was a fairly thin booklet. I told them that I would like to observe classes for a couple of days to see exactly what they teach and exactly how they teach it, and they seemed fine with that.
We then left the school and visited a neighbouring (literally) high school. While Chief Sabas SS has been open for only a year, Mawella SS was built in 2000 (still pretty recently!). The difference was clear though, in the buildings that had been painted, dedicated staff and department rooms (however primitive), and electricity in selected rooms of the school. A few of the buildings bore plaques stating that they had been built with financing from American and Canadian relief efforts. This school also had a computer lab containing old computers, likely donated from Europe or the United States. Their library is scheduled to open sometime in July; the building is built, the shelves are inside and they have plastic patio furniture for chairs and tables. The books, mostly donated through organizations like Books for Africa, will be logged and shelved over the course of the next few months.
Teachers here earn little. Their take-home pay for one month is about $140 USD, and the headmaster, surprisingly, makes no more than the regular teachers. Given the relatively high cost of living here (a bottle of beer is $1), I can’t understand how they make the money stretch a month.
Tomorrow I will have more of a chance to interact with the students as I observe the classes.
The commute to the school is not an easy one, especially when it has rained. We left the house just before 7am, walking along a few neighbourhood roads. In no time, our shoes were caked in mud and the cuffs of our pants stained red. At a certain point, we trudged carefully on a shortcut path through a bean field, leading to a nearby hospital. From there, we caught a collective bus for a kilometre or so. When the weather is nice, the bus will often go right near the school, but on wet days like today it turns around early because the roads are too muddy. So, we continued on foot, walking for another 20 minutes or so, the last of it through coffee plantations and corn fields. The air wasn’t extremely warm, but the humidity is incredibly high, so it doesn’t take much to sweat early in the morning.
Just before 8:00, we arrived at the school and two students approached us and took our bags from us and carried them into the office ahead of us. I felt that I had all eyes on me as I walked with him through the schoolyard, but the students were all smiling, and a few of them even ventured a “Good morning, sir.” They wear wine-coloured uniforms; the boys wear pants; the girls, skirts, and both wear white shirts and maroon sweaters.
The school grounds are quite small. There are 4 rough, brick buildings that are each divided into two classrooms. The classrooms are as spartan as can be imagined, containing two old blackboards and the desks for the students. The walls are still raw brick and the roof is sheet aluminium. There is no glass on the windows and there are no lights in the room (the school has no electricity).
What will be the headmaster’s office is currently being used by all the staff as construction on the staffroom (a separate building) has only just begun. However, even for the staff there are not enough desks and chairs for everyone.
The headmaster told me that classes start at 8:00am. However, while all the students were there at that time, only two teachers were present. Apparently the wet weather (it wasn’t raining but had rained) makes transport a lot more difficult and much more time-consuming.
So one of the students rang the bell (literally, a hand bell), and the headmaster addressed all the students in the open ground between the classroom buildings. They were all abuzz about the new foreigner. The headmaster was firm in telling them to be quiet, but friendly when addressing them.
It seems that their English is already quite good. Swahili students begin learning English as a subject in grade one, so by Form I (grade 8, the first grade of high school), the students can already read well and understand spoken English quite decently. In addition to this, since Swahili uses the same alphabet as English, they are already proficient in writing the language.
The headmaster introduced me to all the students and then I spoke very briefly to them myself. When he asked them where Canada was, no one could reply correctly. Most thought it was a country somewhere in Africa. It’s evident that they know as little about North America as North Americans know about Africa.
After our brief assembly, the headmaster showed me the classrooms and the kitchen, a roofless half-building where an old woman had a large cauldron over a wood fire, camp style. We then saw the two English teachers coming up the walk, so we greeted them and then I went inside to talk with them a little about what would be happening with the classes. Both teachers are quite young women, but very friendly. They showed me the syllabus for Form I-IV, which was a fairly thin booklet. I told them that I would like to observe classes for a couple of days to see exactly what they teach and exactly how they teach it, and they seemed fine with that.
We then left the school and visited a neighbouring (literally) high school. While Chief Sabas SS has been open for only a year, Mawella SS was built in 2000 (still pretty recently!). The difference was clear though, in the buildings that had been painted, dedicated staff and department rooms (however primitive), and electricity in selected rooms of the school. A few of the buildings bore plaques stating that they had been built with financing from American and Canadian relief efforts. This school also had a computer lab containing old computers, likely donated from Europe or the United States. Their library is scheduled to open sometime in July; the building is built, the shelves are inside and they have plastic patio furniture for chairs and tables. The books, mostly donated through organizations like Books for Africa, will be logged and shelved over the course of the next few months.
Teachers here earn little. Their take-home pay for one month is about $140 USD, and the headmaster, surprisingly, makes no more than the regular teachers. Given the relatively high cost of living here (a bottle of beer is $1), I can’t understand how they make the money stretch a month.
Tomorrow I will have more of a chance to interact with the students as I observe the classes.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Finally in Tanzania!
Day 1 – April 28
After 72 hours in transit, finally arrived in Moshi today. Mr. Moshi, the headmaster of the school came to pick me up and take me to his home, where I will be staying for the next month.
I haven’t seen much of Moshi yet but there are foreigners about, as there is a fair bit of volunteer work going on, not to mention a large international school and all the hikers who start from here to climb Kilimanjaro.
Tomorrow I will visit the school with Mr, Moshi, have a tour, and greet the students and the staff. I think I’ll get down to the teaching part on Wednesday. The rise is early, 6am. We leave at 7am and school starts at 8. However, it finishes at 2:20, so that’s a plus.
After 72 hours in transit, finally arrived in Moshi today. Mr. Moshi, the headmaster of the school came to pick me up and take me to his home, where I will be staying for the next month.
I haven’t seen much of Moshi yet but there are foreigners about, as there is a fair bit of volunteer work going on, not to mention a large international school and all the hikers who start from here to climb Kilimanjaro.
Tomorrow I will visit the school with Mr, Moshi, have a tour, and greet the students and the staff. I think I’ll get down to the teaching part on Wednesday. The rise is early, 6am. We leave at 7am and school starts at 8. However, it finishes at 2:20, so that’s a plus.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
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