I haven't posted in a few days, life here has been busy! Today should be rather lazy, and I'm quite excited about that.
School has been very interesting this week, and Monday was only the tip of the iceburg. On Tuesday, the head teacher asked me to teach Class Five math and Class Six science, as in become the class teacher. Students here are really struggling in math and science, so that's where the school really wants help. When they saw my high school transcript and saw some of the classes I took, (chemistry, physics, trig, etc.), they took that to mean I was certified to teach in them. We've had to explain many times that I don't have a college degree, so teaching for me should be somewhat limited. Furthermore, there are already teachers for Class Five and Six, and my job here is not to replace people, espcially temporarily. Someday, I will leave, and I want to empower people here so that something I can start here can continue without me. We've struggled explaining the idea of a teaching aide or resource teacher to the head teacher and other teachers here. We finally got through the idea helping the upper level math teacher in class, but then she turned around and asked me to teach a few periods a week.
Basically, I tried to do what I do with the English classes- pull out one student at a time, work with them for a few minutes, then switch students, repeat, etc. So I asked the math teacher for one of her strugglers. She asked me to explain even, odd, and prime numbers as well as GCF. So we went over to my desk. The student is basically fifth grade level in the US, so I was thinking, "All right, even, any number divisible by two." Here's basically what happened:
Me: Can you tell me what 2 divided by 2 is?
Him: 1
Me: 4 divided by 2?
Him: 2
Me 6 divided by 2?
Him: Silence and blank stare.
I was floored. He eventually got the answer, by drawing out six tallies and grouping them into two group, how you teach basic division at the beginning. Somehow, I was supposed to explain prime numbers, numbers that are only divisible by one and themselves, and the greatest common factor. I was prepared to teach a kid struggling with even and odd numbers, but I expected to have the building blocks. We needed to go back and redo some of our second grade basics!
Now, I don't pretend to understand the mind of God, but I think all of our frustrations were a build up to what I think needs to be done. My brain was whirring, trying to find some solution to what we were going to do. I had inadvertantly spent the entire period with that one student, and I'm not sure if we made progress or not, but then I thought, "What if we had a remedial class?" I asked the teacher how many students she thought were at that level in her Class Five Math, and she thought about ten. I think that's what we're going to try to do. We have an empty classroom at the moment because the Class Seven kids are done for the year (our school years run with the calendar years, so we'll end in December). I think I'm just going to pull them out and do my own math class with them. On Friday, I had the ten strugglers come with me, and I had made flashcards that for addition went no higher than 9+9, and subtraction that started at 12-1, praying I was wrong and they would breeze through them. I would estimate that the kids were only at a 60-70%, so there is a lot of work to be done.
From what I understand, Class Five is the worst at the moment. I actually ended up teaching a Class Four math period this week because one day the teacher was gone, and some Class Four students came up to me and told me I was teaching (?????). They said they were doing long multiplication, so I figured "Easy enough. A little extra practice won't hurt them." As a whole, they did ok. A lot of the mistakes were silly mistakes- if I would have made them check their work before handing it in to me, I bet most of them would have been caught. I think they got the concepts, but again, when I would go around and say, "6 times 5 is?" they would have to pull out the times table to check. And if I would say "all right, you carried a 4, so what is 25 plus 4?" they more often than not had to count on their fingers before being able to tell me. I know I was blessed; school came very easily to me. But I do think this is behind where they should be. I remember practicing from second - fourth grade to learn our basic addition, subtraction, times and division tables. I remember math minutes and flashcards, so that when we were doing higher level math we didn't have to spend time redoing the basics over and over. We could just whip them out. And since our entire goal is to get these kids to secondary school (the tests that Class Seven just took are the entire point of primary school- seven years in preparation for one set of tests) I would like them to be able truly excel once they get there. Otherwise, why prepare them to simply get there? They have to get through it as well.
I feel like I'm preaching to the choir. Sorry! Because I can meet with each class four times a week, I think we're going to try to do the remedial class with Four, Five and Six. We'll just have to see how it goes. I'm just glad that I think God has finally given me a more clear purpose for being here. At first all I knew was he wanted me to go somewhere and do something; I got the Tanzania part, but I was never sure what he exactly wanted me to do. Again, it's a tricky balance sometimes. We want to do temporary things that just need an extra set of hands or things that we can start and have someone continue for us. We don't want to take over for someone already here, or do something that someone else here can. Unfortunately, because we're mzungus, we see an attitude a lot that we should do everything, regardless if I'm actually adding to or taking over. I feel like with this, if we do enough work in the six months I'm here, we can hopefully get these kids back up to where they should be. Then they can continue when I'm gone and my help wouldn't be necessary any more. Hopefully we can also make sure that the younger classes aren't where this is starting (there have been a number of teacher changes over the years, so this could have happened because of a former teacher no longer with us. At the moment, I feel pretty confident about our younger class teachers.)
I know this is already such a long blog post, but I've actually had a life outside of school this week. On Wednesday, Christine and I went to town to meet another missionary for supper; that was fun! On Thursday, we went to a congregation member's house for supper. It was really nice. The best part was getting to actually play with the kids! I think that was the most enjoyable tickle war I've ever been in! When you're teaching the kids, you don't get to just have fun with them. In all honesty, I think Christine and I had more fun than they did. Last night, I learned about another part of the mzungu community here in Morogoro. Some of Christine's friends were leaving Tanzania, so we went out to a restaurant. They were all researchers; one who told us about what she doing talked about studying deforestation and farming practices at the university (Sokione University of Agriculture in Morogoro). It was a very different group to be with. I felt like I was with a European group of Carls. It was kind of fun to nerd it out again :) Also, yesterday, I taught my first English class with the church ladies. We did lots of conversation practice, and they went fast! I'm going to have to prepare more for them to do next week.
Wow, so much! This week looks quieter, which I'm glad about. I took some intense naps this week to keep up with everything going on! Now, time to do some schoolwork.
God bless!
Kjirstin
School has been very interesting this week, and Monday was only the tip of the iceburg. On Tuesday, the head teacher asked me to teach Class Five math and Class Six science, as in become the class teacher. Students here are really struggling in math and science, so that's where the school really wants help. When they saw my high school transcript and saw some of the classes I took, (chemistry, physics, trig, etc.), they took that to mean I was certified to teach in them. We've had to explain many times that I don't have a college degree, so teaching for me should be somewhat limited. Furthermore, there are already teachers for Class Five and Six, and my job here is not to replace people, espcially temporarily. Someday, I will leave, and I want to empower people here so that something I can start here can continue without me. We've struggled explaining the idea of a teaching aide or resource teacher to the head teacher and other teachers here. We finally got through the idea helping the upper level math teacher in class, but then she turned around and asked me to teach a few periods a week.
Basically, I tried to do what I do with the English classes- pull out one student at a time, work with them for a few minutes, then switch students, repeat, etc. So I asked the math teacher for one of her strugglers. She asked me to explain even, odd, and prime numbers as well as GCF. So we went over to my desk. The student is basically fifth grade level in the US, so I was thinking, "All right, even, any number divisible by two." Here's basically what happened:
Me: Can you tell me what 2 divided by 2 is?
Him: 1
Me: 4 divided by 2?
Him: 2
Me 6 divided by 2?
Him: Silence and blank stare.
I was floored. He eventually got the answer, by drawing out six tallies and grouping them into two group, how you teach basic division at the beginning. Somehow, I was supposed to explain prime numbers, numbers that are only divisible by one and themselves, and the greatest common factor. I was prepared to teach a kid struggling with even and odd numbers, but I expected to have the building blocks. We needed to go back and redo some of our second grade basics!
Now, I don't pretend to understand the mind of God, but I think all of our frustrations were a build up to what I think needs to be done. My brain was whirring, trying to find some solution to what we were going to do. I had inadvertantly spent the entire period with that one student, and I'm not sure if we made progress or not, but then I thought, "What if we had a remedial class?" I asked the teacher how many students she thought were at that level in her Class Five Math, and she thought about ten. I think that's what we're going to try to do. We have an empty classroom at the moment because the Class Seven kids are done for the year (our school years run with the calendar years, so we'll end in December). I think I'm just going to pull them out and do my own math class with them. On Friday, I had the ten strugglers come with me, and I had made flashcards that for addition went no higher than 9+9, and subtraction that started at 12-1, praying I was wrong and they would breeze through them. I would estimate that the kids were only at a 60-70%, so there is a lot of work to be done.
From what I understand, Class Five is the worst at the moment. I actually ended up teaching a Class Four math period this week because one day the teacher was gone, and some Class Four students came up to me and told me I was teaching (?????). They said they were doing long multiplication, so I figured "Easy enough. A little extra practice won't hurt them." As a whole, they did ok. A lot of the mistakes were silly mistakes- if I would have made them check their work before handing it in to me, I bet most of them would have been caught. I think they got the concepts, but again, when I would go around and say, "6 times 5 is?" they would have to pull out the times table to check. And if I would say "all right, you carried a 4, so what is 25 plus 4?" they more often than not had to count on their fingers before being able to tell me. I know I was blessed; school came very easily to me. But I do think this is behind where they should be. I remember practicing from second - fourth grade to learn our basic addition, subtraction, times and division tables. I remember math minutes and flashcards, so that when we were doing higher level math we didn't have to spend time redoing the basics over and over. We could just whip them out. And since our entire goal is to get these kids to secondary school (the tests that Class Seven just took are the entire point of primary school- seven years in preparation for one set of tests) I would like them to be able truly excel once they get there. Otherwise, why prepare them to simply get there? They have to get through it as well.
I feel like I'm preaching to the choir. Sorry! Because I can meet with each class four times a week, I think we're going to try to do the remedial class with Four, Five and Six. We'll just have to see how it goes. I'm just glad that I think God has finally given me a more clear purpose for being here. At first all I knew was he wanted me to go somewhere and do something; I got the Tanzania part, but I was never sure what he exactly wanted me to do. Again, it's a tricky balance sometimes. We want to do temporary things that just need an extra set of hands or things that we can start and have someone continue for us. We don't want to take over for someone already here, or do something that someone else here can. Unfortunately, because we're mzungus, we see an attitude a lot that we should do everything, regardless if I'm actually adding to or taking over. I feel like with this, if we do enough work in the six months I'm here, we can hopefully get these kids back up to where they should be. Then they can continue when I'm gone and my help wouldn't be necessary any more. Hopefully we can also make sure that the younger classes aren't where this is starting (there have been a number of teacher changes over the years, so this could have happened because of a former teacher no longer with us. At the moment, I feel pretty confident about our younger class teachers.)
I know this is already such a long blog post, but I've actually had a life outside of school this week. On Wednesday, Christine and I went to town to meet another missionary for supper; that was fun! On Thursday, we went to a congregation member's house for supper. It was really nice. The best part was getting to actually play with the kids! I think that was the most enjoyable tickle war I've ever been in! When you're teaching the kids, you don't get to just have fun with them. In all honesty, I think Christine and I had more fun than they did. Last night, I learned about another part of the mzungu community here in Morogoro. Some of Christine's friends were leaving Tanzania, so we went out to a restaurant. They were all researchers; one who told us about what she doing talked about studying deforestation and farming practices at the university (Sokione University of Agriculture in Morogoro). It was a very different group to be with. I felt like I was with a European group of Carls. It was kind of fun to nerd it out again :) Also, yesterday, I taught my first English class with the church ladies. We did lots of conversation practice, and they went fast! I'm going to have to prepare more for them to do next week.
Wow, so much! This week looks quieter, which I'm glad about. I took some intense naps this week to keep up with everything going on! Now, time to do some schoolwork.
God bless!
Kjirstin
Thanks for the posting Honey! I'm so glad to see how you are being utilized! I love you and am very proud of you! Those Deuel elementary teachers should be proud of how they taught you! Looking forward to skyping in the morning!
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