Day 17 – May 20
My busiest day so far today with three double periods of Form IIs. That means teaching six of the nine periods of the day. There wasn’t much time for pause until almost 1pm, which is fine by me because I tend to get a little bored when the class load is light.
Today I was doing my Canada introduction with the two classes that I did not see yesterday. Sometimes the way the students act here is a little bizarre. Today I had to tell two students who were not part of the class I was teaching to go back to their proper classrooms. They had come into the class to covertly help their friends with the answers to the Tanzania-Canada introduction I had prepared. It’s true that it’s very hard for me to be sure if any given student is in one class or another because I have trouble telling them apart, but I was somehow able to pick them out – having no notebook with them was a dead giveaway. Other students had borrowed the notebooks of friends in the class that did the exercise yesterday. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t a test; it was just a fun class to compare the two countries and yet they felt they needed to have all the answers to Canada before I even presented it. Of course, it made for a much less interesting lesson when they were able to spit out exact figures for Canada’s population and distance from east coast to west coast, facts that they simply wouldn’t know without borrowed answers.
Nevertheless we had some good classes. In one of them the students asked me to sing the Canadian national anthem, which I did, but not before getting them to sing the Tanzanian anthem. Of course, it was easy for them as a group to belt it out while I had to suffer 45 pairs of eyes on me as I sang to them.
In the class that had done the introduction yesterday, today we were talking about computers and the internet, so I brought my laptop to show them. They were fascinated and pressed around me (almost to the point of discomfort) as I showed some of the things I could do with it. Most of them know what a computer is, but few had seen a laptop and there were oohs and aahs as I pulled it out and they saw how small and thin it was.
Other than the positive classes, it was once again somewhat disheartening to see very few of the teachers in their scheduled classes. I returned to the staffroom for a very short break after my first class and saw the staffroom full – all the teachers were there. According to the time table, this is physically impossible since there are 5 different classes in the school learning various subjects at any one time, and there are only 7 teachers in total, not including me. Thus if I’m not teaching, I should never be in the staffroom with more than two other teachers. Alas, this is rarely the case. Poor kids. And the quality of the education they get obviously has a long-term impact on the development of the country. And yet the teachers complain about the problems in Africa and the politicians. People in glass houses…
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
Should have been taking notes during McGyver way back when
Day 16 – May 19
It rained almost all weekend and more again early Monday morning, so the commute to school was a muddy one. Teachers were late, as usual, but only one period was sacrificed to the weather as opposed to the two or three in my first week. Whether this has anything to do with the staff meeting last week, I can’t say. The one teacher who was a no-show all day, however, was the Form I English teacher. After she sat around for two weeks doing nothing while I taught her classes (she didn’t even bother to watch them), the first day back that she has to teach them, she didn’t show up, and so the Form Is went without classes. I felt horrible for them and wanted to step in to teach the classes but I had to prepare my own Form II classes for today.
Since the Form II English teacher had been absent for the last few days of last week, I hadn’t been able to find out until this morning what I was supposed to be teaching, and so had to do the prep this morning before the class just after break time.
The Form II class went well, although I never actually got to the course material since we spent longer than I expected on the Canada intro. I don’t think it’s critical, since they go into term exams next week and the exams have already been set. In any case, the intro to Canada was good for them as these students know precious little outside their small world here. It’s to be expected, I suppose, since nearly all of these kids have no computer and many of their houses can’t even afford a TV. And even if they can, little of the stuff that I’ve seen on the Swahili channels talks about anything outside of sub-Saharan Africa. It wasn’t a huge surprise then, that when I taped a map of the world to the blackboard and asked a student to locate Canada, she couldn’t.
We did a little comparison exercise of the two countries. Between all the students, they were able to come up with most of the correct information for Canada, including the most popular sport. They were really shocked when we started comparing prices of things here and in Canada, and also when I told them average salaries. We followed that with a Q&A session and we surprisingly filled the last forty minutes with their very good questions about dominant religion, major industries, climate, school life, etc. Poignantly, one student asked whether corporal punishment was practiced in schools in Canada, and they all laughed when I told them that a teacher would probably be taken away in cuffs if he or she beat a student with a stick.
The two periods following my class today, periods 8 and 9, the last two of the day, are set aside every Monday for a “weekly test,” according to the timetable of the school. I was told that the students write two 40-minute tests and the subjects rotate from week to week. However, I have yet to see any testing actually go on during this 80 minute period. Today was no different as after period 7, the day seemed to be over. The students got their lunches from the cookhouse, ate, and started cleaning the school. The only difference I see in Mondays is that everyone treats it as a day to move things up by 80 minutes and go home earlier!
With the headmaster away this afternoon, the teachers all took off before the normal 3:30 quitting time. The away time of the headmaster seems quite ridiculous to me. I never kept track of how much the principal was in school during any of my practicums, but it must have been more than the 15-20% that the headmaster is here this month. It seems every morning at breakfast he says, “I have to go into town today.” In my first week I thought, “Okay, he’s got a lot to do this week,” but now that it’s 4 out of every 5 days that he says this, it’s starting to seem a little ridiculous. What’s more, the “work” he is doing is mostly that of an errand boy: collecting this letter, delivering that letter, buying chalk, etc. To boot, instead of heading from home to town, doing what he has to do, and getting back to school by mid-morning, he travels one hour to school (the opposite direction from town), stays for an hour or 90 minutes, and then heads to town and is gone for the rest of the day. I don’t know whether to chalk it up to the faulty system and its lack of resources or whether it’s a matter of poor administration and time management on the part of the headmaster. Likely it’s both. Still, it’s a bit frustrating, even from an observer’s point of view, because he complains about the teacher’s not being present and doing their jobs, but he seems to make little of the required effort to be present at the school to preside over its smooth running.
As for me, as I mentioned above, term exams begin next week. This was popped on me as a bit of a surprise, especially so because when I discussed my schedule at the school with both the English teachers and the headmaster just three weeks ago, all of them agreed happily to my teaching the Form Is for the first two weeks and the Form IIs for the second two weeks. None of them mentioned that my final teaching week would be taken up with term exams. So instead of teaching, I will be invigilating exams. Unfortunately, it means the Form IIs miss out on a week of my teaching, and they already expressed a little displeasure in the disparity between them and the Form Is. As it is now, I will have just three double periods with each of the Form II classes.
This week’s lessons will really feel the pinch of the lack of resources. The topic in the curriculum is something like “extracting information from the media,” and the curriculum lists television, radio, newspaper and internet as the examples of media to be used. HA! This proves extremely hard to teach when you have no media resources whatsoever. Internet, television and radio are out of the question as the school has none of these resources – not even the electricity to power them! And you can’t ask students to do anything at home because most of them don’t have televisions or radios or even power there either! Even with the newspaper, it’s very difficult to teach concepts and techniques when you can’t even make copies of the same document (or display it in any way) so that everyone is talking about the same thing! I have about 45 students in each class and will have to figure out some way to each information gathering techniques without the benefit of a common example (short of copying an entire newspaper article on to the board!)
Maybe with a flashlight and a pair of glasses from a student I can McGyver some kind of overhead projector?
It rained almost all weekend and more again early Monday morning, so the commute to school was a muddy one. Teachers were late, as usual, but only one period was sacrificed to the weather as opposed to the two or three in my first week. Whether this has anything to do with the staff meeting last week, I can’t say. The one teacher who was a no-show all day, however, was the Form I English teacher. After she sat around for two weeks doing nothing while I taught her classes (she didn’t even bother to watch them), the first day back that she has to teach them, she didn’t show up, and so the Form Is went without classes. I felt horrible for them and wanted to step in to teach the classes but I had to prepare my own Form II classes for today.
Since the Form II English teacher had been absent for the last few days of last week, I hadn’t been able to find out until this morning what I was supposed to be teaching, and so had to do the prep this morning before the class just after break time.
The Form II class went well, although I never actually got to the course material since we spent longer than I expected on the Canada intro. I don’t think it’s critical, since they go into term exams next week and the exams have already been set. In any case, the intro to Canada was good for them as these students know precious little outside their small world here. It’s to be expected, I suppose, since nearly all of these kids have no computer and many of their houses can’t even afford a TV. And even if they can, little of the stuff that I’ve seen on the Swahili channels talks about anything outside of sub-Saharan Africa. It wasn’t a huge surprise then, that when I taped a map of the world to the blackboard and asked a student to locate Canada, she couldn’t.
We did a little comparison exercise of the two countries. Between all the students, they were able to come up with most of the correct information for Canada, including the most popular sport. They were really shocked when we started comparing prices of things here and in Canada, and also when I told them average salaries. We followed that with a Q&A session and we surprisingly filled the last forty minutes with their very good questions about dominant religion, major industries, climate, school life, etc. Poignantly, one student asked whether corporal punishment was practiced in schools in Canada, and they all laughed when I told them that a teacher would probably be taken away in cuffs if he or she beat a student with a stick.
The two periods following my class today, periods 8 and 9, the last two of the day, are set aside every Monday for a “weekly test,” according to the timetable of the school. I was told that the students write two 40-minute tests and the subjects rotate from week to week. However, I have yet to see any testing actually go on during this 80 minute period. Today was no different as after period 7, the day seemed to be over. The students got their lunches from the cookhouse, ate, and started cleaning the school. The only difference I see in Mondays is that everyone treats it as a day to move things up by 80 minutes and go home earlier!
With the headmaster away this afternoon, the teachers all took off before the normal 3:30 quitting time. The away time of the headmaster seems quite ridiculous to me. I never kept track of how much the principal was in school during any of my practicums, but it must have been more than the 15-20% that the headmaster is here this month. It seems every morning at breakfast he says, “I have to go into town today.” In my first week I thought, “Okay, he’s got a lot to do this week,” but now that it’s 4 out of every 5 days that he says this, it’s starting to seem a little ridiculous. What’s more, the “work” he is doing is mostly that of an errand boy: collecting this letter, delivering that letter, buying chalk, etc. To boot, instead of heading from home to town, doing what he has to do, and getting back to school by mid-morning, he travels one hour to school (the opposite direction from town), stays for an hour or 90 minutes, and then heads to town and is gone for the rest of the day. I don’t know whether to chalk it up to the faulty system and its lack of resources or whether it’s a matter of poor administration and time management on the part of the headmaster. Likely it’s both. Still, it’s a bit frustrating, even from an observer’s point of view, because he complains about the teacher’s not being present and doing their jobs, but he seems to make little of the required effort to be present at the school to preside over its smooth running.
As for me, as I mentioned above, term exams begin next week. This was popped on me as a bit of a surprise, especially so because when I discussed my schedule at the school with both the English teachers and the headmaster just three weeks ago, all of them agreed happily to my teaching the Form Is for the first two weeks and the Form IIs for the second two weeks. None of them mentioned that my final teaching week would be taken up with term exams. So instead of teaching, I will be invigilating exams. Unfortunately, it means the Form IIs miss out on a week of my teaching, and they already expressed a little displeasure in the disparity between them and the Form Is. As it is now, I will have just three double periods with each of the Form II classes.
This week’s lessons will really feel the pinch of the lack of resources. The topic in the curriculum is something like “extracting information from the media,” and the curriculum lists television, radio, newspaper and internet as the examples of media to be used. HA! This proves extremely hard to teach when you have no media resources whatsoever. Internet, television and radio are out of the question as the school has none of these resources – not even the electricity to power them! And you can’t ask students to do anything at home because most of them don’t have televisions or radios or even power there either! Even with the newspaper, it’s very difficult to teach concepts and techniques when you can’t even make copies of the same document (or display it in any way) so that everyone is talking about the same thing! I have about 45 students in each class and will have to figure out some way to each information gathering techniques without the benefit of a common example (short of copying an entire newspaper article on to the board!)
Maybe with a flashlight and a pair of glasses from a student I can McGyver some kind of overhead projector?
Friday, May 16, 2008
Delivery!
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The new desks have arrived! No more sharing!Day 15 – May 16
I didn’t have any morning classes today so I was finally able to get to work on going through and putting up some of the posters that I had brought. The headmaster had purchased tape the previous day, so I was all set to go.
There were wall maps and a periodic table for each of the classrooms, but today’s focus was the load of other science wall charts that I had brought. They covered everything: biology, chemistry, physics, geography, etc. There were so many that the headmaster decided that we should put them up in one of the unused classrooms and henceforth call that room the science room. When the school had the money, they would now use that room to build their lab stations. Until then, the teachers could use the room when they wanted to teach material with the aid of the reference posters. They are immensely handy since currently, the only diagrams the kids see are the ones that are drawn on the board by the teachers that they must then copy into their notebooks.
As I began to put up the posters and charts on the wall, students began to filter in to see what was going on. They were excited and in groups immediately started looking at everything, pointing and chatting. It was great to see. By the time I had finished, the walls were covered and the room looked a little more like a classroom. At break time, there was a throng of students in there all looking…and learning!
I taught my class in the early afternoon and just as I was finishing, the carpenter’s truck pulled up. Loaded in the back were the 15 new desks and 6 new bookshelves that he had made for the school. We unloaded the desks and shelves into the new science room (they have to be stencilled with a number on Monday). With the desks and shelves and the posters all in one room, it was already the finest looking room in the school! The kids were so happy! Just wait until I put the other charts up in their classrooms!
I didn’t have any morning classes today so I was finally able to get to work on going through and putting up some of the posters that I had brought. The headmaster had purchased tape the previous day, so I was all set to go.
There were wall maps and a periodic table for each of the classrooms, but today’s focus was the load of other science wall charts that I had brought. They covered everything: biology, chemistry, physics, geography, etc. There were so many that the headmaster decided that we should put them up in one of the unused classrooms and henceforth call that room the science room. When the school had the money, they would now use that room to build their lab stations. Until then, the teachers could use the room when they wanted to teach material with the aid of the reference posters. They are immensely handy since currently, the only diagrams the kids see are the ones that are drawn on the board by the teachers that they must then copy into their notebooks.
As I began to put up the posters and charts on the wall, students began to filter in to see what was going on. They were excited and in groups immediately started looking at everything, pointing and chatting. It was great to see. By the time I had finished, the walls were covered and the room looked a little more like a classroom. At break time, there was a throng of students in there all looking…and learning!
I taught my class in the early afternoon and just as I was finishing, the carpenter’s truck pulled up. Loaded in the back were the 15 new desks and 6 new bookshelves that he had made for the school. We unloaded the desks and shelves into the new science room (they have to be stencilled with a number on Monday). With the desks and shelves and the posters all in one room, it was already the finest looking room in the school! The kids were so happy! Just wait until I put the other charts up in their classrooms!
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After we had finished, the headmaster and I went into town to get the money to pay the carpenter. He will continue working on the furniture for the staffroom over the next week and a half, and should have it finished before I leave the school. It will be great to see the staffroom better equipped and teachers sitting at worktables rather than squeezed into student desks.
Once again, a big thanks to all who donated!!
Once again, a big thanks to all who donated!!
Thursday, May 15, 2008
The centre of attention
Day 14 – May 15
Very little to report today on the school front, as my classes went off without incident. Nevertheless, it was a bit of a breakthrough day. Around noon I was heading back to the staffroom from the toilets and there were some Form II girls sitting on a step studying. I asked them what they were studying, and so started a whole conversation.
My contact with the Form II kids has so far been limited to “hello” and “good morning, Sir” in the schoolyard since I’ve been teaching the Form Is for the last two weeks. Thus there hasn’t been much of a relationship and frankly, I thought that they were somewhat indifferent, but today showed me different. I started talking with the girls about this and that, subjects, languages, school, etc., and before long, there was a whole circle of students around us. As we continued, more came out of their classrooms (as usual, they weren’t doing much in there anyway), and the throng of students continued to grow. They were asking all sorts of questions about me, my family, Canada, and everything else.
It went on for over an hour all very naturally. It was great to develop a bit of a rapport with the Form II students and will make the start of teaching them next week that much earlier…although they’ve kind of stolen my self-introduction bit!
Very little to report today on the school front, as my classes went off without incident. Nevertheless, it was a bit of a breakthrough day. Around noon I was heading back to the staffroom from the toilets and there were some Form II girls sitting on a step studying. I asked them what they were studying, and so started a whole conversation.
My contact with the Form II kids has so far been limited to “hello” and “good morning, Sir” in the schoolyard since I’ve been teaching the Form Is for the last two weeks. Thus there hasn’t been much of a relationship and frankly, I thought that they were somewhat indifferent, but today showed me different. I started talking with the girls about this and that, subjects, languages, school, etc., and before long, there was a whole circle of students around us. As we continued, more came out of their classrooms (as usual, they weren’t doing much in there anyway), and the throng of students continued to grow. They were asking all sorts of questions about me, my family, Canada, and everything else.
It went on for over an hour all very naturally. It was great to develop a bit of a rapport with the Form II students and will make the start of teaching them next week that much earlier…although they’ve kind of stolen my self-introduction bit!
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Please.......send........photocopier!
Day 13 – May 14
Today started off with an impromptu staff meeting…that lasted 3 hours! Given all the recent problems with the teachers, the headmaster had decided to have a meeting to remind them of their duties, and had brought along a copy of the ministry directive on teacher conduct. The whole meeting was conducted in Swahili, so I wasn’t really able to follow, but here and there I caught the gist of what was going on. It was later in the day, after talking to Mr. Nazari, that I found out a few more of the details of the meeting.
According to Mr. Nazari (and he’s a very nice, fair, and likeable guy that I trust), the headmaster was extremely long-winded and drew out issues that could have been covered in half the time. Although there had been some serious issues to talk about, he also made mountains out of other molehills. He also made numerous negative references to a teacher that wasn’t present (he has been in the capital for the last 10 days asking for a transfer!). I agreed with Mr. Nazari that even though the teacher isn’t a particularly good employee, it was not appropriate for the headmaster to talk about him to other staff in his absence.
One of the other issues that came up was that of lunch. Of this the headmaster and I had talked about in previous days, as he had been telling me that the teachers were complaining that the school didn’t provide them with lunch. Talking afterwards with Mr. Nazari, I explained that I was of the opinion that if the school wanted to offer the teachers lunch, it was nice, but that I saw no reason why it should be obliged to. Teaching is a job like any other (for this discussion, anyway), and there few professions where employers pay for employees’ lunches. In fact, not even the students had their lunch served free; their parents paid a fee each year for them to have their midday meal each day. What surprised me on the lunch issue was that there really was no time built into the schedule for it. That teachers are supposed to be at school from 7:30am to 3:30 pm and the only time built into the schedule for break is a scant 20 minutes after 5th period is, quite frankly, ridiculous. How can the school expect teachers to work properly if they haven’t had anything to eat in 7 hours? I supported the idea of the teachers partaking in the same lunch as the students get for a nominal charge each day. This is the system that I experienced in both France and Japan, where the teachers got a hearty lunch for just a couple of dollars, and everyone was happy.
In fact, as I found out during the discussion, this is exactly what had been decided on at the end of the meeting. Teachers will now pay 5000 shillings a month ($4.50) and get a meal at the end of each school day. That works out to 25 cents a day and, though still proportionally higher than in Japan or France, a reasonable fee for a teacher who makes about $4.50 on the day.
What I found the most shocking about this 3-hour meeting was that it was conducted during class time and, once again, the classes were tossed out the window and the students were left to their own devices. The amount of missed periods over the weeks that I have been here has been incredible. The headmaster tells me that all missed periods are to be made up by the teachers during the students’ scheduled “private study” periods, but not only do I doubt the teachers are even trying to do that, but I also doubt that it’s even possible! At the end of every lesson, the class monitor presents the teacher with a book of the class’ course timetable and the teacher must sign-off that they’ve taught the lesson in class. Lately, I’ve been looking a bit more at this book as I sign it myself, and have been shocked to see that the majority of the lessons go untaught. Often my signature is the only one on the page at the end of the day!Anyway, I wasn’t about to miss my classes to sit through a meeting that was all garble to me, so I left at the two hour mark to teach my classes.
Today’s lesson involved studying a dictionary entry. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a dictionary for each student or, failing that, a photocopy of an entry? Nope, not here. I had to copy the entire entry out of the dictionary on to the board and then the students had to copy it into their books. After we’d completed the teaching part of the lesson, I wanted them to do an exercise using another dictionary entry so that they could apply what they’d learned. Of course, this involved copying another entire entry from the dictionary on to the board. That’s a whole lot of writing in one class on a board that’s rough and with chalk that’s cheap. By the end of the class, I had a serious case of chalkboard arm (it actually hurts most in the shoulder). AND THEN I HAD TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN FOR THE OTHER CLASS!! Someone send a photocopier, please!
Today started off with an impromptu staff meeting…that lasted 3 hours! Given all the recent problems with the teachers, the headmaster had decided to have a meeting to remind them of their duties, and had brought along a copy of the ministry directive on teacher conduct. The whole meeting was conducted in Swahili, so I wasn’t really able to follow, but here and there I caught the gist of what was going on. It was later in the day, after talking to Mr. Nazari, that I found out a few more of the details of the meeting.
According to Mr. Nazari (and he’s a very nice, fair, and likeable guy that I trust), the headmaster was extremely long-winded and drew out issues that could have been covered in half the time. Although there had been some serious issues to talk about, he also made mountains out of other molehills. He also made numerous negative references to a teacher that wasn’t present (he has been in the capital for the last 10 days asking for a transfer!). I agreed with Mr. Nazari that even though the teacher isn’t a particularly good employee, it was not appropriate for the headmaster to talk about him to other staff in his absence.
One of the other issues that came up was that of lunch. Of this the headmaster and I had talked about in previous days, as he had been telling me that the teachers were complaining that the school didn’t provide them with lunch. Talking afterwards with Mr. Nazari, I explained that I was of the opinion that if the school wanted to offer the teachers lunch, it was nice, but that I saw no reason why it should be obliged to. Teaching is a job like any other (for this discussion, anyway), and there few professions where employers pay for employees’ lunches. In fact, not even the students had their lunch served free; their parents paid a fee each year for them to have their midday meal each day. What surprised me on the lunch issue was that there really was no time built into the schedule for it. That teachers are supposed to be at school from 7:30am to 3:30 pm and the only time built into the schedule for break is a scant 20 minutes after 5th period is, quite frankly, ridiculous. How can the school expect teachers to work properly if they haven’t had anything to eat in 7 hours? I supported the idea of the teachers partaking in the same lunch as the students get for a nominal charge each day. This is the system that I experienced in both France and Japan, where the teachers got a hearty lunch for just a couple of dollars, and everyone was happy.
In fact, as I found out during the discussion, this is exactly what had been decided on at the end of the meeting. Teachers will now pay 5000 shillings a month ($4.50) and get a meal at the end of each school day. That works out to 25 cents a day and, though still proportionally higher than in Japan or France, a reasonable fee for a teacher who makes about $4.50 on the day.
What I found the most shocking about this 3-hour meeting was that it was conducted during class time and, once again, the classes were tossed out the window and the students were left to their own devices. The amount of missed periods over the weeks that I have been here has been incredible. The headmaster tells me that all missed periods are to be made up by the teachers during the students’ scheduled “private study” periods, but not only do I doubt the teachers are even trying to do that, but I also doubt that it’s even possible! At the end of every lesson, the class monitor presents the teacher with a book of the class’ course timetable and the teacher must sign-off that they’ve taught the lesson in class. Lately, I’ve been looking a bit more at this book as I sign it myself, and have been shocked to see that the majority of the lessons go untaught. Often my signature is the only one on the page at the end of the day!Anyway, I wasn’t about to miss my classes to sit through a meeting that was all garble to me, so I left at the two hour mark to teach my classes.
Today’s lesson involved studying a dictionary entry. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a dictionary for each student or, failing that, a photocopy of an entry? Nope, not here. I had to copy the entire entry out of the dictionary on to the board and then the students had to copy it into their books. After we’d completed the teaching part of the lesson, I wanted them to do an exercise using another dictionary entry so that they could apply what they’d learned. Of course, this involved copying another entire entry from the dictionary on to the board. That’s a whole lot of writing in one class on a board that’s rough and with chalk that’s cheap. By the end of the class, I had a serious case of chalkboard arm (it actually hurts most in the shoulder). AND THEN I HAD TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN FOR THE OTHER CLASS!! Someone send a photocopier, please!
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Reminder: You're not in a Canadian school
Day 12 – May 13
I’m sometimes quite surprised by the difference in the two Form I classes that I have. The 1A class is attentive, hardworking, and generally gets things quickly while the 1B class is much more distracted, chatty and slow. Though I taught the same lesson to both classes today, things were a lot tougher going in the 1B class. But I suppose that can happen anywhere.
Unfortunately, the lasting memory of this day will be the displeasure I had of witnessing a caning. Well, I didn’t quite see it with my eyes, but it happened just outside the open staffroom door (2m from where I sit), so I heard it loud and clear and it was unmistakeable. I could have got up to watch it, but just didn’t want to. It felt horrible sitting there as I heard each whap followed by the high-pitched yelp of the student. Five times, I think. The tool was a sturdy branch from a tree outside.
It’s not at all pleasant to go through that (and I’m not even the student) knowing that your hands are tied and there’s not much you can do. Here it’s still quite accepted in the school system. It’s not like it happens every day, but even once is enough for me. Later I had lunch with another Tanzanian friend, and when the incident came up in conversation, I was surprised to hear that he supported corporal punishment in the school – and he’s a peace and conflict lawyer that travels internationally!
It was, in fact, the second form of punishment I had witnessed that day. Early in the morning, the 1B class was punished by the headmaster for not carrying out their water-fetching duties properly yesterday. First he made them kneel on the ground for about 10 minutes. Then he made them all frog hop to the other side of the yard and back, twice. The kids couldn’t touch the ground with their hands though…all legs. They did it with a half smile on their face because, admittedly, it did look a little ridiculous, but all the same some were struggling through it. Again, you just can’t imagine a principal in Canada ever doing that to students.
So those two events made up the lowlights of the day. On a positive note, my classes with the Form Is today involved using the new dictionaries brought with the donated monies. The kids were eager and excited to get their hand on them, and it was nice to see.
I’m sometimes quite surprised by the difference in the two Form I classes that I have. The 1A class is attentive, hardworking, and generally gets things quickly while the 1B class is much more distracted, chatty and slow. Though I taught the same lesson to both classes today, things were a lot tougher going in the 1B class. But I suppose that can happen anywhere.
Unfortunately, the lasting memory of this day will be the displeasure I had of witnessing a caning. Well, I didn’t quite see it with my eyes, but it happened just outside the open staffroom door (2m from where I sit), so I heard it loud and clear and it was unmistakeable. I could have got up to watch it, but just didn’t want to. It felt horrible sitting there as I heard each whap followed by the high-pitched yelp of the student. Five times, I think. The tool was a sturdy branch from a tree outside.
It’s not at all pleasant to go through that (and I’m not even the student) knowing that your hands are tied and there’s not much you can do. Here it’s still quite accepted in the school system. It’s not like it happens every day, but even once is enough for me. Later I had lunch with another Tanzanian friend, and when the incident came up in conversation, I was surprised to hear that he supported corporal punishment in the school – and he’s a peace and conflict lawyer that travels internationally!
It was, in fact, the second form of punishment I had witnessed that day. Early in the morning, the 1B class was punished by the headmaster for not carrying out their water-fetching duties properly yesterday. First he made them kneel on the ground for about 10 minutes. Then he made them all frog hop to the other side of the yard and back, twice. The kids couldn’t touch the ground with their hands though…all legs. They did it with a half smile on their face because, admittedly, it did look a little ridiculous, but all the same some were struggling through it. Again, you just can’t imagine a principal in Canada ever doing that to students.
So those two events made up the lowlights of the day. On a positive note, my classes with the Form Is today involved using the new dictionaries brought with the donated monies. The kids were eager and excited to get their hand on them, and it was nice to see.
Monday, May 12, 2008
When the cats are away.....wait a minute: are the cats ever even here?!?!
Day 11 – May 12
Today was both a rewarding and bewildering day.
Rewarding because I had the students of the Form I classes stand up in front of their classmates and talk about their daily routines, and they pulled it off fabulously. A week ago they had neither the skills nor the confidence to stand up and do something like that, and today they performed really, really well. They were happy and so was I.
After a double period with 1B, I went to the 1A class to find about 12 of my 38 students there. Virtually an empty room. “Where are they all?” I asked.
“They’ve gone to fetch water,” was the reply.
“During English class?!?! When will they be back?”
To this question, I got replies ranging from 12 o’clock to 4 o’clock to 10 o’clock. That’s because the Swahili clock works on a totally different system from everywhere else in the world. Our 7:00 is their 1:00, and so if a student says that she takes a bath at 4:00, you have to know that she means 10:00. It’s pretty bizarre and difficult for a Westerner to get used to, but similarly the Form I students, in their first year of using English full-time, are also having to cope with the change in clocks – especially confusing since they work on Swahili time at home.
In any case, the message that came out was that the water was far away and that the students would not be back for quite some time, likely not before the end of my double period. That was disappointing as I had wanted them all to have a chance to speak about their daily routines, but I had no choice and had to improvise. We played a few English games before I got them practicing their routines and then I had them come up and say them to their classmates. Again, they did incredibly well.
Returning to the staffroom after almost 3 hours of teaching, I found it empty but for one teacher. Where had all the other teachers gone? By the din emanating from the classrooms, I could tell that none of them had any teachers in them. The only teachers left on the grounds were me and another, newly arrived temporary teacher. I knew only that the headmaster had gone into town in the morning to get supplies for the students’ lunch.
I had finished my classes for the day, and the other teacher diligently carried on with hers during the periods scheduled, but aside from that, the kids were running amok with absolutely no supervision. I kept thinking about how such a situation could never possibly happen in a Canadian high school. Imagine: an entire high school full of kids with no principal, no VP and just one foreign guest teacher and a newbie substitute. Imagine what would happen if word were to get out about that or someone were to walk in and find this.
Today, in fact, during the chaos that reigned, there was a visit from a parent that was returning with her child after a short bereavement absence. She had a lot of difficulty finding anyone to talk to. The vice principal from neighbouring Mawella Secondary also popped in when I was sitting alone in the staff room. “Where are all the teachers?” he queried.
“I have no idea,” is all I could say. And he just chuckled and left.
It makes for an amusing story, but it’s sad really. Of course, kids being kids, they’re going to play when the teachers are not around, so you can’t blame them. But they’re not getting any sort of the education they should be because of the neglectful teachers here.
Later, after talking to the headmaster, I found out that he had allowed two of the teachers to go into town to visit the Regional Education Office to enquire about pay issues. “Fine,” I said, “but couldn’t they have gone at the end of the day…or even somewhere towards the end? Why did they leave at 10:30 in the morning?” He didn’t really have an answer for that and had no answer for where a couple of the other teachers had gone. Clearly, he’s got a tough situation at this school and he’s likely the most dedicated person there, but for a principal, even he certainly could be cracking the whip a little more. Things are supposed to get better when the second mistress (vice principal) returns from maternity leave in a week. Then, there will always be someone in the administration that is always around and keeping an eye on……the teachers.
Today was both a rewarding and bewildering day.
Rewarding because I had the students of the Form I classes stand up in front of their classmates and talk about their daily routines, and they pulled it off fabulously. A week ago they had neither the skills nor the confidence to stand up and do something like that, and today they performed really, really well. They were happy and so was I.
After a double period with 1B, I went to the 1A class to find about 12 of my 38 students there. Virtually an empty room. “Where are they all?” I asked.
“They’ve gone to fetch water,” was the reply.
“During English class?!?! When will they be back?”
To this question, I got replies ranging from 12 o’clock to 4 o’clock to 10 o’clock. That’s because the Swahili clock works on a totally different system from everywhere else in the world. Our 7:00 is their 1:00, and so if a student says that she takes a bath at 4:00, you have to know that she means 10:00. It’s pretty bizarre and difficult for a Westerner to get used to, but similarly the Form I students, in their first year of using English full-time, are also having to cope with the change in clocks – especially confusing since they work on Swahili time at home.
In any case, the message that came out was that the water was far away and that the students would not be back for quite some time, likely not before the end of my double period. That was disappointing as I had wanted them all to have a chance to speak about their daily routines, but I had no choice and had to improvise. We played a few English games before I got them practicing their routines and then I had them come up and say them to their classmates. Again, they did incredibly well.
Returning to the staffroom after almost 3 hours of teaching, I found it empty but for one teacher. Where had all the other teachers gone? By the din emanating from the classrooms, I could tell that none of them had any teachers in them. The only teachers left on the grounds were me and another, newly arrived temporary teacher. I knew only that the headmaster had gone into town in the morning to get supplies for the students’ lunch.
I had finished my classes for the day, and the other teacher diligently carried on with hers during the periods scheduled, but aside from that, the kids were running amok with absolutely no supervision. I kept thinking about how such a situation could never possibly happen in a Canadian high school. Imagine: an entire high school full of kids with no principal, no VP and just one foreign guest teacher and a newbie substitute. Imagine what would happen if word were to get out about that or someone were to walk in and find this.
Today, in fact, during the chaos that reigned, there was a visit from a parent that was returning with her child after a short bereavement absence. She had a lot of difficulty finding anyone to talk to. The vice principal from neighbouring Mawella Secondary also popped in when I was sitting alone in the staff room. “Where are all the teachers?” he queried.
“I have no idea,” is all I could say. And he just chuckled and left.
It makes for an amusing story, but it’s sad really. Of course, kids being kids, they’re going to play when the teachers are not around, so you can’t blame them. But they’re not getting any sort of the education they should be because of the neglectful teachers here.
Later, after talking to the headmaster, I found out that he had allowed two of the teachers to go into town to visit the Regional Education Office to enquire about pay issues. “Fine,” I said, “but couldn’t they have gone at the end of the day…or even somewhere towards the end? Why did they leave at 10:30 in the morning?” He didn’t really have an answer for that and had no answer for where a couple of the other teachers had gone. Clearly, he’s got a tough situation at this school and he’s likely the most dedicated person there, but for a principal, even he certainly could be cracking the whip a little more. Things are supposed to get better when the second mistress (vice principal) returns from maternity leave in a week. Then, there will always be someone in the administration that is always around and keeping an eye on……the teachers.
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