If I were to give my workshops a title and theme, it would
be Nothing is Impossible. That phrase developed from a discussion during
one of the workshop days when I presented a problem on making a solution of a
specific concentration and one of the teachers pronounced that it was
impossible. “Really?” I replied and a
discussion ensued about how to solve difficult or challenging problems or more
importantly how these teachers could teach their students the skills and
mindset that would allow them to do the same. This was essentially the reason
we were here - to work with teachers on using hands-on experiential
activities to stimulate student learning, understanding and involvement instead
of teaching science by rote.
John Magee and I worked together (although John did the
heavy lifting and wrote the curriculum) to create a four day workshop for
science teachers in the Hai District near Moshi, Tanzania which was hosted by
Tuomona School. Tuomona is the secondary
school where John has developed a solid relationship with the headmaster, Lukumay,
and where I had volunteered in June, 2011 with a group of Drew students to rebuild
the administrative building offices, plant trees and work on projects around
the school. This time was quite
different for me because in this setting I was using my teaching experience,
chemistry knowledge and skills to try to improve, albeit in a small way and to
a small group of teachers, the quality of science education in Tanzania. Thank goodness to all that I didn’t have to
work directly with students in Kiswahili (which I don’t speak at all) or
English (which some students understand at a rudimentary level). The teachers we worked with are smart,
capable and dedicated, plus quite receptive to gaining new skills and teaching
with a different pedagogy. It is truly
a challenge and tough to teach in the Tanzania government schools where
resources are slim, facilities are primitive, books and internet access
virtually non-existent and students arrive with weak educational backgrounds.
Our workshops focused on a) problem solving and deeper understanding of
principles of science (John’s workshops)
and b) Chemistry (my workshops). We each worked with a group of teachers for
2 days and then traded groups.
Day one of my chemistry workshop focused on solutions,
dilutions and understanding the concepts of moles. Two of my simple lead-in activities of doing a
serial dilution with food coloring, pipets and spot plates and learning
how to count numbers by using mass of rice grains, using a balance and
average mass for a specific number of grains were well received. More importantly they laid the foundation for
using multiple dilutions to obtain a weak concentration of a solution from a strong
concentration of a stock solution and making molar concentrations, the
practical applications for the second half of the day.
Day two was focused on rates of reactions and factors
effecting reaction rates. We started
with a demonstration of why you can oxidize/ burn steel wool but not an iron
rod due to surface area, then expanded with a discussion of building a fire,
which all of their student do quite well.
Then we moved to the factors of concentration and temperature as part of
kinetic collision theory. The practical
applications were collecting data around those factors and then plotting
graphs. Graphing was a challenge, quite
similar to my experience with high school students in California and we
consequently spent a fair amount of time and discussion about how to do it and
the values of graphing in science to visually show relationships.
So back to the “theme” – Nothing is Impossible. The “impossibility” of creating a weak
solution of known concentration was discovered to be truly possible when they
applied the concept developed in the serial dilution lab and fundamental
math. More importantly, as a result of our workshops and
by looking at science teaching from a different perspective, I believe the
teachers I worked with gained a better understanding of how to solve a complex
problem by applying skills they have, by breaking the problem into smaller
steps and not giving up. Hopefully
these workshop days were challenging and fun but not impossible. We received excellent feedback and
evaluation from the workshops, so we think they were of great value. For me, teaching here in Tanzania was
important and rewarding as well as fun.
I’d like to come back, not only to work more with these teachers or
others but to also hear about the results of how they applied what they learned
to student learning in their classrooms.
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