This week I had several interesting lessons.
I had several opportunities to teach science classes at
Tumona when the teachers did not appear at school. There are many reasons why a teacher may
miss school or come late. They range
from simple reasons such as illness, to more complex ones such as challenges with
transportation to school. But there is
also the matter of an underpaid and demoralized teaching staff who often have a
side business outside of school or who may simply prioritize other personal
matters above coming to work. I’m not
sure which of those reasons applied this week at Tumona, but both science
teachers were absent or very late for several days. Everyone I’ve spoken to here says it’s a
problem all over Tanzania.
I had observed enough teaching that I felt comfortable
taking over the Form 4 Chemistry class and the Form 2 Biology class. In both classes I knew what the next lesson
was supposed to be and I had observed Godwill, their teacher, presenting
material to them. I’ll start by saying
that I don’t think the way material is presented in the classes I’ve observed
is effective, but it seems to be widespread. Godwill’s usual method is to copy
several pages of information from the book to the board, so that the students
can copy it down. Then he goes through
the material verbally, explaining and elaborating. He would generally do this in Swahili, though
the material was written in English; my Swahili isn’t up to the task, so I used
a mixture of English and Swahili. Students
are invited to participate by completing a sentence in unison. Teacher:
“Heating copper hydroxide is the indirect method of preparing copper?” Students:
“oxide.”
This approach to teaching is very different from what I’m
accustomed to in the United States, and it’s apparent to me that some more
student-centered approaches would probably help the students to appreciate and
master this material much better than they currently do. However, my efforts to engage students in
discussion have all fallen completely flat.
The students clearly aren’t comfortable speaking out in class. If they do have a question they usually ask
me to repeat a definition or fill in something I left out. Getting them to take a risk, to propose a
hypothesis or argue a point seems to be nearly impossible, at least on short
acquaintance. I don’t have a clear idea
in my mind about how to approach this situation. I’m convinced that the customary approach is
an inefficient and ineffective way to teach an understanding of science;
however, it’s deeply embedded in the educational culture of Tanzania, and I
don’t see an obvious way to bring about change.
But if and when we do additional teacher workshops here, this is an
obvious point to address.
The Form 1 Chemistry class presented a different
challenge. These are the youngest
students in the school, equivalent to 8th grade students in the
USA. Their English is extremely limited,
and I had to teach them in as much Swahili as I could, though at times I had to
revert to English, and I suspect they understood little of that. They were studying mixtures, and the textbook
pages I was working from listed a large number of methdos for separating
mixtures, from separatory funnels to fractional distillation. But when I started to work with the students
it was clear that they didn’t even understand what a mixture is, or what
separating a mixture even means. So I started
out having them think of mixtures they knew of from daily life, and they were
much more willing to participate in this than the older students. I spent the rest of the class demonstrating
how salt dissolves in water but mud doesn’t; how to filter mud out of water or
to decant the water away after the mud has settled, and to boil the water away
from a salt solution leaving the salt behind.
There were over 30 students in the class, far too many to take into the
science classroom, so I brought materials in and demonstrated from the front of
the room. I would have loved to let them
do these experiments themselves.
The students had some difficulty with changes of state. I let them watch solid iodine sublimate,
which caused them to ooh and aah, but they clearly didn’t know what had
happened. In trying to explain I came to
realize that these children living without electricity at the equator had never
in their lives seen anything melt. With
Kilimanjaro in plain sight, I tried to explain that very cold water forms ice,
and that all the water running off the mountain comes from the melting of the
ice. I’m not convinced that any of them
understood me. Still, I felt that I left
them with a much more tangible understanding than they had before of what the
topic they are studying actually is about.
My second big lesson of the week came in discussion with
Lukumay about the difficulties facing the village, the students and the
school. I had known that the village of
Orori is extremely poor and that many of the students are unable to pay their
fees. I have been gathering information
about a number of those students in the hope that Friends of Foot2Afrika will
be able to recruit sponsors (this will be appearing on the website in the late
summer/early fall). However it turns out
that almost all the students are behind in their fees. As an illustration, the school fees for one
term are about 50,000 shillings (about $30.00 US). Two weeks into the second term, he had
collected about 110,000 shillings from 300 students. This money came not from a few students
paying their fees, but from a large number of students coming to school with
5,000 or 10,000 shillings. Somehow he is
required to run the school on almost no money, with little help from the
government and no capacity to get money from students’ fees. It’s clear to me that sponsoring students
isn’t just about helping students go to school; it’s about keeping the school
afloat. It’s not a long-term sustainable
solution to the underlying problem, but it’s essential.
My third big lesson came yesterday when I went to visit
three schools that had each sent a teacher to the workshop I organized two
weeks ago. These schools are quite
different from one another.
Lyaskika Secondary School is high on the slopes of Kilimanjaro where the weather is often wet and where
lush banana plantations and streams abound.
Rundugai Secondary School and Longoi Seconary School are down on the flats where conditions are very dry and the
vegetation is scrubby, almost desert-like. It was a long drive across dusty tracks to find these schools, which are quite remote from any sizeable town. Here also the people farm using irrigation to grow onions and other
crops that require relatively little water.
I expected to find that these schools had little to nothing in terms of
science equipment and supplies; but I discovered that all of them have a decent
collection of glassware and at least some chemicals. Longoi has a large science room
under construction through help from a European contact, and Rundugai has a "mobile science laboratory", which is demonstration bench with a sink and gas jets for Bunsen burners. However, in all cases the materials seemed to
be stored in a dust-covered pile in the back of an unused room. Teachers apparently have the students do
specific experiments that are likely to appear on the national exam, but do not
integrate experimentation into the teaching of the subject.
Lyaskika Secondary School
The Teacher at Lyaskika Demonstrates an Experiment
Students Then Do the Experiment Themselves
The Headmaster's Office at Rundugai Secondary School. Those boxes in the back are full of
the school's glassware, chemicals and other apparatus.
A Building at Rundugai Secondary School
I'm getting used to the fact that everywhere I go I may be asked to give a spontaneous speech.
This is the "Mobile Science Lab." I have no idea how often it's used.
I'm very intrigued by the setup for using Bunsen Burners, though.
Longoi Secondary School
The New Science Building Under Construction at Longoi Secondary School
The Teacher at Longoi Gives a Demonstration of Practical Chemistry
I went into this summer knowing I had a lot to learn. At this point I think I am learning that the
challenge of providing laboratory equipment and supplies is not as great as I
had anticipated, but that the real challenge is teaching teachers how to make
effective use of these materials. I think, based on the feedback I received
after the first workshop, that the teachers themselves would be receptive to
this.
I have a lot to think about.
But that’s a big part of what I came for.
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