Shule (‘shoo-lay’) in Tanzania - 4 stories in 1

This post is all about my school experiences in Tanzania – the wonders of arbitrary grading; student teachers (who teach at the primary school, play volleyball in the evenings and generally make the kids happy with relay races, soccer practice and even math problems); an incidence of corporal punishment; Chica Chica, Boom Boom and the flower project I started for the kindergarten, with my elementary school teachers and gardening mom in mind.

Here are some of the kids watering their plant; Teacher Taylor standing to the left

Chica Chica, Boom Boom and the Cheke Chea (‘Check-ee Chay-ah’) Flower Project
I love being with the kindergartners more and more every day. Last week we read Dr. Seuss’ Foot Book and the kids repeated every line of the story after me. It was as if they were reading in English: “Left foot, Right foot.” “Wet foot, Dry foot; Low foot, High foot.” Considering how much as they loved the foot book, the following day there was some pressure on my story choice. I’ve got a class full of little kids to please – better pick something good!

Reflecting on my own year in kindergarten, the other day I thought about the story Chica Chica, Boom Boom – the tale of 26 alphabet letters trying to climb to the top of a coconut tree. I wonder if the story that I remember reading as a kindergartner 17 years ago is hiding somewhere around here, I thought. Would you believe that as I perused the bookshelf that day, of the 25 books on the shelf, one of them was Chica Chica, Boom Boom?! I pulled the book off the shelf like an excited 6 year old and excitedly flipped through the pages, re-reading the story for what must have been the 150th time. Chica chica, boom boom; will there be enough room? I was thrilled, and since the kids are learning the alphabet, it was perfect. They took off with it right way and each time I said the famous phrase, they followed suit. They said it happily, laughing, in a whisper, slowly, quickly, loudly—every which way as if they were the two greatest words of all time.

Later outside, I sat on some rocks watching the kids play on the playground. "Chica chica, boom boom!" said a voice. "Chica chica, boom boom!" said another. I turned to see where all of those chicas and booms were coming from. As each kid slid down the slide, they shouted it – over and over. Sometime tells me it’s taken hold, and I can’t wait to read it again tomorrow.

Further drawing on my own elementary school experience, I started a flower project with the Cheke Chea last week. So much of life revolves around planting and growth here that it will be nice for the kids to water their own seeds and watch them grow, and in the process, learn the English words for seed, dirt, flower and water.

It’s amazing to see what you can create when you use only the materials that are around you. Sue helped me make the flower pots with soda cans cut in half, dirt and compost, and some nasturtium seeds that she was planting in front of the kids’ houses. No need to buy plastic pots, just use the coke can you drank from last week. At school, the kids’ excitement was so refreshing and so fun - they eagerly waited to tough the can, each reached their little hands into the bag of dirt and dropped their handful into the can, spilling lots of it on the table, which actually became part of the fun. It was so nice to see them give the seeds their first tastes of water. For the past week, we’ve watered the seeds regularly, and just last night two of the four started to sprout. It’ll be awesome to see their faces today when I bring the cans to school and show them that their flowers have begun to grow!

Two of my Cheke Chea students, Emmanuel and Tobias

One of My Favorite Things: Rift Valley’s Student-Teacher Program
Some of my most favorite people here in Tanzania are the student teachers, selected and sponsored by the RVCV, who work at the Gyetighi Primary School (where I help with kindergarten). The student teachers aren’t far from my age—most are about 19. They’re either just starting, or in the middle of, secondary school, and they spend a year living at the RVCV in the children’s houses and serving as student-teachers to earn a scholarship for secondary school. They don’t necessarily aspire to be teachers, but from what I’ve seen they are all wonderful with kids, and I’d assume, great teachers as well. The staff here have said that usually the student teachers arrive each year shy, nervous about speaking English and as the year progresses, their English ability inevitably soars as does their general self-confidence.

On Friday, there was a party to honor the out-going student-teachers and welcome the new ones. Everyone who works at the Primary school was invited to attend. The party was in the Rec Hall, which is like a school gym, complete with cement floor and caged windows. That night, there were nicely decorated tables and primary school teachers dressed in their best.

For me, the party seemed like fun and games: chit chat with my 50 word Kiswahili vocabulary, and drink a few beers. But when the student-teachers stood to say a few works about their experience, it hit me. We were sitting over an exposed cement floor, with torrential downpour of rain coming down on the tin roof (it’s the start of the rainy season), enjoying the luxury of beer and soda in glass bottles. I looked around at the women dressed in kangas (African wraps) and head-scarves, and men in baggy dress pants; but as the student-teachers were visibly emotional, I understood how special of an occasion this must be for them. The student-teachers have these positions because they’ve earned them, and they really need the scholarships that the positions award. The wouldn’t be able to go to secondary school (our equivalent of high school) without that scholarship money.

One of the student-teachers in particular made a particularly moving speech about what this experience meant to him. Of course I couldn’t understand a word he was saying – it was all in Kiswahili. But boy did I understand what he meant.

Volunteers Bonnie and Sue with India, Nalingi and Nicola

Hitting in Schools: slow progress
On a less positive note, though lots of strides have been made in school, there’s still a lot of work to be done. Corporal punishment was made illegal in Tanzanian schools about 10 years ago, but even though the law is on the books, hitting still happens in many Tanzanian schools. ‘It’s just the way it’s always been done.’ The RVCV has worked very hard to discourage hitting as punishment at Gyetighi; they’ve said that it took about 4 years to eliminate the practice. That length of time reflects the, as Lonely Planet puts it, often stubborn nature of Tanzanian culture, and the trappings that go along with a bunch of mzungus (white people) trying to better developing world school systems.

Sadly, these things take time. Last Friday one of the girls at RVCV came home with an extremely swollen upper lip. It looked to me like she’d gotten punched in the face—she was having a hard time talking, her eyes were downcast and she looked pretty uncomfortable. It made me worried—she’s normally smiley and cheerful and always has something to tell me. I asked what happened and one of the other girls told me that a stick had hit her at school. Ugh. ‘Stick’ suggests punishment.

Later in the day, we sat down to talk. One of her teachers had punished a boy in her class that day because “he didn’t answer a question right.” The question was “Who is the head of the school?” The boy had written “dada,” which in Swahili, means sister. As the girl put it, “he got punished because he didn’t understand.” As the teacher swung the stick backward, either a piece or the entire stick hit the girl’s lip—she shied away from giving me much detail. Either way, she was an unintended benefactor of punishment that is against the law in the first place.

I share this story to illuminate this issue, and show how effective the RVCV has been in almost completely eliminating this type of punishment at school. This is the only incident I’ve heard of in 4 weeks here, which says a lot considering how regular corporal punishment was in this school before the RVCV started. This whole incident is obviously disturbing – the reason for punishment and the force of the apparent force of the hit. But I’m happy to report that the situation is being handled by the senior staff. Considering the way that I’ve seen them handle other issues at the school, I’m confident that this incident will only help move the school more in the right direction.

Grading: “This is 100%. But this looks like a 92.6. And this one, this is definitely an 87.4. This is 83.2…”
Every time I’m working with the kids, I try to remember what it used to be like to be one. Going to school, going up to the blackboard, getting 100%, being embarrassed after getting a problem wrong. But as hard as I try, I don’t ever remember having an ‘exam’ in kindergarten.

A few weeks ago, the kindergartners had ‘exam day.’ Comical as this was to me, as the English teacher, I was in charge of the English exam. All we had done at that point was say the alphabet…how are you supposed to have an exam on that? Apparently, you have them orally identify and individually write letter combinations (of A,B,C,D). When the kids finished, they handed the papers in to their teachers. Then the real teachers handed the papers to me to mark. Does something seem wrong with this picture? I was obviously completely clueless. “Just give it a percentage.” Still clueless. How do you figure out what is 100% versus 90% and what do you give to the kids who needed help as they were writing and still came out with barely comprehensible letters? And then it dawned on me. These are the wonders of grading.

So how do you figure out the marks? Of the four letters the kid wrote, how many were legible? If one wasn’t legible, it should be a 75% right? But then I thought about the intricacies of legibility – was the illegible letter just tilted/rotated/upside down? Or was it clearly just a scribble? Surely I shouldn’t deduct 25% for a B that looked like an upside down 3… My goodness, I thought, how can this be so difficult?? Remembering that they are only kindergartners after all, most got 100% (though none were perfect), some 90% and 80%, and two 25%. I suspect that the two kids who got 25% have learning disabilities; the sad thing is that there appears not to be much done to help them. One little boy wrote all of his letters in reverse order and as mirror images. Since ‘exam day,’ I’ve started to give extra help to some of the kids during playtime, and am noticing the teachers call on the kids who are falling behind more during class time. If that’s the only contribution I make here—trying to make sure that the kids who need the most help are getting it, I’ll be satisfied.