It’s amazing how the days get shorter once you settle into a place and you know where you are going, seeing familiar faces, on the morning walk.
(The construction workers made me take their photo every time I passed by!)
I have three groups of teachers to train this week. The volunteer teachers are from Harvard University’s World Teach programme and around half of them are from the US and the other half are Tanzanian graduates, which is great. They’ll be mixed with local teachers for the orientations. I have to train them up to be able to teach Genki English starting next week.
Why?
The primary schools here are all in Swahili. Then in high school it switches to English medium. All the high school exams and everything are also in English (just like the ones you’d see in England!) so in this district there is an abysmal 3% pass rate. Needless to say this is a big problem for a developing region. So for the next 6 weeks as a collaboration between the Mafia District Council and the private sector, before high school term starts they are doing an very innovative new programme, a big part of which is Genki English, to bring the kids up to speed in order to speak & understand their lessons in English. That’s the challenge!
They used the software part of Genki English last year and got great results, so they called me back this year to do more training on how to use it all in class.
So after picking everyone up at the air field, whilst they settled in I had a quick meeting with the organisers, going over what I’d be doing in my part of the training and also talks about phonics and things.
Then it was off to meet the District Commissioner in the very posh air conditioned office and a look round the schools.
As often happens we were expecting kids to be there, but they were still on holiday! The schools look pretty nice though, nice and open and spacious.
And they have the solar panels on the roof for the low power computers. (No mains electricity here!)
Then it was the end of the day!
The evening though was really cool, and really felt like Africa. All the volunteers are staying at a campsite near the beach and it was really cool having dinner with everyone, playing Tanzanian card games and going through quite a few dos and don’ts of Tanzanian culture (plus the secrets of how they manage to keep their clothes so amazing looking, camping with irons??!) That was really cool and it is going to be such an amazing experience for the volunteers, really getting into the community as well, of course, getting a fantastic boost to their CVs and helping the kids here.
Tomorrow the workshops start with important guests to impress so all the big guns will be out first thing!
Hi Richard!
It’s great to learn about such faraway places!
What motivates pople to make progress in any sphere is their personal interest and capabilities on the one hand AND a real need of the land where they live on the other hand. When all of them come together, the results will be more appreciable.