I (Jean) found that my assignment is not actually focused on working with three to five year olds. Since I have taught people who will become teachers (in Central Kansas) and college mathematics, the headmistress at the House of Learning wants me to teach the oldest students.
They are in the QT class, which means that they are preparing to take the Qualifying Exam for something. I can’t yet understand what they are hoping to qualify for, but I’ll find out in the coming weeks.
The eight students are between 12 and 19 years of age and have had very little schooling. They learn by copying paragraphs off the blackboard and later repeating it for the exam. My partner, Melissa, is a primary school substitute teacher in CA, so she is delightful to work with and has many ideas. She and I didn’t expect to be asked to teach anything today, but were. We scrambled, decided to use our time to learn what these students already knew and be creative as we moved onward.
Therefore, we began by reviewing the alphabet song with our students, who were proud to show us that they knew some English. We then asked them to help us list words that began with certain letters of the alphabet (F, R, L, M and G). Then we had them make very, very simple sentences which contained a pronoun and a verb. For nearly an hour Melissa helped the nursery teacher with the youngest students, so I taught English by myself. We were exhausted after having stood on our feet for the entire morning! I haven’t done that since leaving Kansas City!
At the end of the morning, we talked with the headmistress again and have decided to break the morning schedule into three parts: English, math and geography. We’re going to see if that works. If not, we’ll try something different
It looks as though Kirk will be able to use the wonderful teaching materials that some of you sent with me. But I’ll let him tell all of you about his work assignment in tomorrow’s message.
I greatly appreciate the philosophy of House of Learning, where I am volunteering. A previous volunteer who just left Tanzania has set up a web site to explain more about it. Go to www.thehouseoflearning.net to read some of the stories of young people who are in our classes, to learn about their philosophy and to see some terrific pictures of where I work. It is a wonderful outreach to very marginalized children. (If that web site doesn't work for you, try www.houseoflearning.net, but I think I have the right address above.)
After lunch Kirk and I went downtown to an Internet Café to enter the blog posts for the last four days. After 1 ½ hours of internet time, I’m not sure that they are available for you to read. Christopher is helping me see if they are available. If not, I’ll enter them again.
Tonight we’ll be going to dinner at a local theater where we will have dinner and watch a performance of native dances and acrobatics. Kirk has said that he will write about it in tomorrow’s blog.
By the way, I am now known as Mama Jean. It turns out that in Tanzania, the Swahili word that is used for Grandmother is BiBi. I’ve asked about Nya Nya and have been told that in Tanzania, Nya Nya is used for Great Grandmother. No one has suggested that I be called Nya Nya! Thank heavens! I could be called Mama Chris because a Tanzanian woman is often called Mama followed by the name of her first child. So, for me that is Mama Chris. However, everyone seems to think that Mama Jean is also good. I’m comfortable with that.
I am going to let Kirk tell you about tonight’s entertainment when he writes tomorrow’s post.
We both send our greetings to you from dry and dusty Moshi and hope you are having a good week.
Mama Jean and Babu Kirk
No comments:
Post a Comment