The students started off the morning going through the alphabet over and over, like a chant "capital letter a, small letter a" throughout the whole thing, about 10 times. When they are going through the alphabet or event numbers, one student stands at the chart with a stick pointing to the letter and shouting it out, then the entire class shouts out the letter or number. So, they do this until the teacher is ready to start morning devotional, which is what really starts class, then after devotional they go through it another 10-15 times. I think it's a great way for them to learn the alphabet, but at the same time so many of the children aren't participating in these exercises and the teacher can't tell as much because the ones that are participating are shouting at the top of their lungs. I'm not sure what a better way would be for the teacher to get all of the children involved though, when there are 45 students in the class room and if one struggles another shouts out the answer, it makes it difficult for them to be able to know where the child is at without testing them...which they don't do.
I started out my lesson by teaching them "my name is..." and "I am .... years old" that way I would be able to learn some of their names and also figure out the age range in the classroom. I was really surprised to find that some of the children don't know how old they are, nor does the teacher (I asked in English and Kiswahili.) From what the teacher told me and what we have learned from CCS, some families don't know the month or day that their children are born, sometimes they know the year or the season. So, that makes it difficult for them to know where a child needs to be...they end up deciding based on the height of the child. I was able to figure out that the children in my classroom average 5-7, there are a couple of 3 and 4 year olds, as well as a 2 year old.
Once we got introductions out of the way I had them go through the alphabet and do the letter-word association (I don't know the teacher terminology) and tried to figure out what they were saying. For instance they say "T is for totois" which I couldn't figure out for the life of me, so I asked the teacher to draw it...it was a tortoise! We went through each of the letters a couple of times, until I felt like I had an understanding of what the words were, then I tried seeing if they knew any other words that started with various letters...they didn't. So, I tried saying "A is for apple...or A is for ant" but they didn't really understand it, so I found a book that had the pictures. What I did then was to walk around the classroom and show the kids the picture of each thing and have them say it back to me, at first they were really quiet and would whisper the word...but then when one boy shouted out ant and got a high five, all of them were shouting. There were some letters that were really difficult for them to say new words with because of the way they say the letter or how they see the picture. It took a really long time to get through the entire alphabet, but once they did I had them all stand up and sing songs for a couple of minutes.
After the songs I wanted to see what they think the word they're saying means, for instance "u is for umbrella" I had a girl come draw an umbrella on the blackboard...she drew a box. When they would draw something wrong or not know how to draw it, I would draw it (very poorly) and tell them this is an elephant or an umbrella, just whatever the word was, and then the student would redo it and tell the class "this is an umbrella" and the class would respond with "that is an umbrella." Having the kids draw really got them energized and wanting to participate and be the first one to have their hand up to draw. At one point I drew an elephant I think and all of them were laughing and telling the teacher in Swahili that I was funny, which made my day!
Probably the best part of the day at the school was getting the little 2 year old to talk and smile. The teacher old Emily and I yesterday that this little girl comes in every day and sits in the corner with her head on the desk and they can't get her to do or say anything. So, I made it my goal today to at least get her to smile. She is really too little to be in the class that she's in but they don't make the children go to the proper class, if they don't want to go to the class they are supposed to be in, they can just stay there and be quiet. So, this little girl just stays quiet all day, she doesn't stand up when they do prayer, dance or sing along with the songs, or even eat the porridge they serve. I decided to just make funny faces at her until I got a reaction...it took a solid 10 minutes to even get her to crack a tiny smile. Once I got her to smile and wave I started tapping my fingers in a pattern on the desk and she would copy me. Later on when I was teaching the letters and words I would go to her desk just like the others and ask her to say the word and then give her a high five even if she didn't get it right. Then when I was finished with teaching I sat down at the teacher's desk, which is where this little girl sits and she just started jabbing away and playing with my hair...at one point she grabbed my arm, licked it, and then bit me! This kid has like shark teeth...they hurt! Luckily she didn't bite hard enough to make me bleed, but I did get after her as much as I really could, by telling her no and making her keep her hand in her lap for a few minutes...essentially timeout. All in all it was a really positive day at the school.
Once we finished at the school and had had lunch we had a man come and talk to us about the Tanzanian education system...which I must say, is a very bad system. So, all of the people here belong to a tribe and the kids learn and speak the tribal language until they start school. When they start school, it is conducted in Kiswahili, a language they have never heard. Until they are 14 they are taught completely in Kiswahili except for 80 minutes a week, when they learn English. Then they have to take a test to see if they will get to go on to secondary school or, if they fail the test, not be allowed in public school. When they go to secondary school, everything is taught completely in English, except for 80 minutes a week where they learn Kiswahili. So, this system is setting their
students up to fail and not be able to go to college because they never have a chance to master a
language. The speaker talked to us about how the students just get to a point where they don't care about school because it gets too confusing. He was a teacher here in Tanzania for 12 years until he was fired in 2003 because he wrote a letter to the Minister of Education explaining the struggles that kids face and how confusing it for them to have to relearn everything at each level. He feels that the government needs to change the system so that children are strictly taught English in school, that way they have a chance to master the language. Which in all honesty I have to agree with.
After the education talk we had the opportunity for free time or to go into town. me and I decided to skip town and end up going to a pool not too far from our home base with another girl. We just sat by the pool and relaxed for a couple of hours...it was so nice. The pool was really nice for this part of the world and it was a great way to get out of the heat! The three of us had a blast doing nothing :)
I have to say, I don't know how tomorrow is going to beat the day I had today!!
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