School!!

On Thursday morning, I got to go to the primary school for my first teaching experience. Remember how all the schools in Pommern were supposedly closed? Well, apparently Standard IV and Standard VII remained in session while the rest of the students were on holiday. Primary school in Tanzania is comprised of seven levels, called standards. (Recall that secondary school consists of six more levels, called forms.) Students begin Standard I at age 7, after attending Kindergarten (at a separate location) for at least a couple of years beforehand. National exams are given in Standard IV, Standard VII, Form IV, and Form VI. Students must pass these exams in order to move on in their education. Primary school is free and mandatory, while secondary school is optional and typically requires tuition. I was told that only 7% of students nationally go on to secondary school. In any case, since Standard IV and Standard VII had national exams approaching, they were kept in session for three of the four weeks of vacation for extra practice. Standard VII students will be taking their national exams in September, so their preparation is of utmost importance right now.

Edward escorted me that first day the half-mile or so down the red dirt path to the school. The path took us downhill past a couple of homes, through several small cornfields and a sunflower field, past several chickens along the way, and across the soccer field at the grounds. Having had a tour a couple days earlier of the secondary school, I knew roughly what to expect for the set-up of the primary school. Again, the building formed a large rectangle around an open courtyard. The classrooms were therefore able to have windows on two sides, providing the only light in the classrooms in the absence of electricity.

One of the many cornfields in Pommern. I can't believe I actually bothered to take a
picture of a cornfield...as if I'd never seen one before!

Sunflowers!

A panorama of the primary school courtyard that looks VERY fishbowl-like.
It wasn't nearly as huge as this picture makes it look. (By the way, you can
click on any image in this blog to see a bigger view of the picture.) The door
to the Standard VII classroom is at the far right, where the person is standing.

Edward introduced me to a young male teacher whose name escaped my understanding even though I asked for it be repeated at least a couple of times. Later that evening I asked Edward to write the name down for me and finally got it figured out -- Pendael. (Pronounce the vowels the same way you would in Spanish, and you'll have Swahili pronunciation pretty much figured out.)

Pendael had been in the middle of an English class with the Standard VII students when I arrived, so he fairly quickly showed me into the classroom, and Edward followed. As the three of us entered the classroom, the whole class stood and said, "Good morning, teachers," in unison, then waited to be told to sit before resuming their seats. The classroom was simple. There was a wooden teacher's desk and a wooden chair at the front of the classroom and a blackboard along the front wall. There were about 24 student desks of varying sizes and lengths, but no more than 3 or 4 feet from end to end, all with benches attached. Approximately 70 students sat in these 24 desks, often crowding 3 or 4 or even 5 people into each one. The students wore uniforms consisting of a reddish/orange-ish sweater over a white collared shirt, with blue pants or shorts for the boys and blue skirts for the girls. Some students wore only the white shirt or wore the sweater over a different shirt, but each student wore at least one of the two top pieces along with the required blue bottoms.

Inside the Standard VII classroom. Notice the windows on both sides
and what the desks are like.

Pendael and myself inside the classroom on that first day. You can also see
what the students' uniforms look like (photo taken by Edward).

Upon prompting from Edward, I briefly introduced myself, speaking slowly so the students could understand my English. I went to write my name on the board for the students....and promptly broke the first piece of chalk I touched! In an American school, I would've been sunk from that moment on, but not here. I would be called "Teacher Karen" or "Madam" while I was at school. Or for that matter, later on I could hardly walk anywhere in the village without hearing someone call out, "Teacher! Teacher! Teacher Karen!" Unlike students here who seem to run and hide in mortal fear when they see a teacher in public, there it was kind of like being a celebrity.

Me, writing my name on the board. The students hadn't been instructed to sit yet.
(Photo taken by Edward.)

Anyway, Edward left shortly after I introduced myself, and the students continued on with their lessons. Pendael had written 15 English grammar sentences on the board with a blank (which they called "dash-dash") in them, along with 4 multiple choice answers each. (If you enlarge the picture above, you can kind of make out some of the sentences.) The students were copying down the entire sentence and all of the answer choices in their madaftari (notebooks), then recording their answers. The students seemed to stay on task well with a buzz of activity in the room. It seemed they were expected to do their work without assistance, as I never saw once in two weeks a student ask for "help" from the teacher the way a student would here. A positive of this was that the students' answers would be their own work, not their teacher's work. On the other hand, a student had no opportunity to get an explanation where he or she may have legitimately needed it or would benefit from it.

As the students began to finish their work, I made an answer key and then walked around marking (i.e. checking or correcting, another British-ism) the students' answers. They were eager to hand me their madaftari, and their abilities seemed to vary widely. A few students got all of the questions correct, while some missed almost all of them, and most were somewhere in between. No scores on the in-class assignment were recorded. Simply, the correct answers were given so that the students would presumably have something from which to study.

An example of the English grammar exercises from a practice exam (click photo to enlarge).

While the students had been working on their English exercises, I prepared a lesson with Pendael on finding the area of triangles. Though typically just an English teacher for several standards, Pendael was responsible for both math and English classes for Standards IV and VII during this break time at the school.

Despite the universal nature of mathematics, there were still a few differences for me to learn. For example, in Swahili the label goes before the number, so a triangle that has two legs measuring 5 meters and 8 meters would be labeled "m 5" and "m 8." Also, they write their decimal point up higher than we do, more like where a dot representing multiplication would go for us. That led to much confusion for the students when they didn't see my low decimal point. Like Teo had showed me the day before, students were expected to show all of their work, and keep labels in their work throughout. They also had to routinely work with decimals and fractions and had no aid of a calculator. Though as the two weeks went on, I certainly saw academic weaknesses, their computation abilities were definitely stronger than those of most American students.

My "lesson plan" for area of triangles (click photo to enlarge).

I wrote two examples of finding the area of a triangle on the chalkboard, followed by 5 exercises for the students to complete (pictured above). Again, they copied everything from the board meticulously into their madaftari and then went back to complete the exercises, showing their work carefully as they went. In a school where there are no textbooks for the students, and even the teachers only have access to very limited resource books and materials, the notes that students keep in their madaftari are the only written resource they will have. This time as the students finished they brought their madaftari to the front of the room and collected them in a pile, as the class period was nearly over.

Teachers change rooms in Tanzanian schools, while students remain in the same room all day, so when the period was over Pendael and I took the completed madaftari to the teachers' workroom and marked the answers there. Students who hadn't been finished when we left brought (or sent with another student) their madaftari to the workroom. When the marking was finished, Pendael asked me to make answer keys for several other sets of English exercises, which I did, and then I returned to the mission house for lunch.

The teacher workroom

After lunch, I returned to the primary school expecting (as I had been told) to meet with some secondary students and their teacher, who would be coming over to one of the primary school classrooms to work. Well, remember "T.I.A.," and that didn't really work out so well. Just a few Form IV students were there, no teacher, and I truly had no idea what to do. I talked with the students a little but was relieved to be "rescued" by Pendael, who wanted me to go back and do another English lesson with the Standard VII students. Kendra showed up in the meantime and kept me company, and my "teaching" consisted of writing 15 more sentences on the board, similar to the morning exercises, and marking the students' work when they were finished.

Kendra outside the teacher workroom. Waalimu means "teachers." (Mwalimu means "teacher.")

The afternoon session was a little smaller than the morning -- "only" about 50 students instead of 70 or more. Interesting how fast one's perspective changes! As the students were finishing, I spotted the last kid still working getting his answers from 2 kids sitting in front of him. They got a "look" from me and an "I'm watching you" comment, all lightheartedly (after all, the scores from the exercises weren't recorded and, besides that, it wasn't really up to me to maintain discipline in the classroom when the regular teacher was there, too), but the students reacted in an appropriately sheepish manner, not at all unlike how my students here would respond in a similar situation. It was neat to learn over the course of the two weeks what kinds of things were universal in education and what kinds of things were not.