Michelle and I have completed our first week of school reviews, accompanied by Mr Josiah, our aide from BRDC.  We have visited six schools over three days; we have fourteen more to visit in the next two weeks.

Our VSO predecessors, James and Sue Taylor, began this process last year when they introduced the idea of SMART targets to the school communities.  Each school has set itself several targets related to school management, teacher training and community involvement.  In our visits we are asking about and looking at evidence of progress towards these targets as well as observing a lesson in each school where a teacher demonstrates the use of student centred methods.  It must be daunting (and maybe a little galling) for the teachers having strangers drop in to judge what they are doing.  We try to be as non-threatening as possible.  I think my efforts at KiHaya help – it always elicits laughter and smiles all around.  (One day I’ll get the pronunciation right!)

Until this week the only Tanzanian school I’d been in was St Peters Junior Seminary, which was next to the Amabilis Centre in Morogoro.   It is a secondary boarding school and has students selected by competitive exam from all over Tanzania.  It is reckoned to be an excellent school.

Students at St Peters are aged from 12 years and are training to be priests.  After ‘A’ levels they will go to university.  Upon graduation they will be ordained.  Many are being supported financially by their home village church or diocese and are expected to return as parish priest.  Some will become teachers and return to St Peters.  Those who do not maintain the high standards required return home.

I observed and participated in four lessons at St Peters.  The first was a Form II Mathematics lesson.  The level of work was equivalent to our advanced year 10 students.  The class had been working on index laws, including fractional and negative indices, and were moving on to the use of 4-figure Logarithmic Tables for doing calculations.  This lesson was their first use of the book of tables.  I was able to help the students who raised their hands for assistance.  There were about 50 students in the class so I was kept busy.  The next class was a Form III learning about adding and subtracting polynomials.  I watched the children work – they were doing the questions written on the board confidently in their exercise books.  Students were called upon to demonstrate their working on the blackboard.  When the teacher saw an error he would ask another student to “come and assist your friend”.  Again there would have been 50 students in the class, all boys aged 14 to 16.  The teacher was amazing!

I observed a Form VI (‘A’ Level) English lesson.  Again, the teacher was amazing.  This class had only 12 students.  The teacher wrote a poem on to the board for the students to copy into their books – I copied it too and it covered three pages!  The teacher commented, with a glance at me, that in other places students would get a photocopy of the poem so more time could be spent on discussion.  The poem, “Development” by Kundi Faraja, a Tanzanian, was written about 15 years after Independence in 1980.  It is a criticism of the government and elected officials for the delays in meeting the needs of the people.  After copying the poem the teacher read through it and explained the images in it.  It is a very powerful poem and no less relevant today than when it was written.  After the lesson I commented to the teacher that I would not ever be able to be as political in my comments to students as he had been.  I asked if he would be able to speak as he had in a government school.  He said he would, after all he was only speaking the truth!

The last lesson I observed was a Form II English class.  The teacher had been reluctant to have me there but Father Oscar had insisted.  I felt uncomfortable and didn’t stay long as I felt the boys were suffering because of my presence.  The teacher was unfriendly and unsmiling.  It was only then that the bare cement floors and walls, the lack of adequate desks and equipment, the dullness of the light became overwhelmingly obvious and I knew learning did not happen in this classroom.

The schools we have visited this week are Government primary schools.  Most go from preschool to Standard VII, one was a new school that only goes to Standard VI so far.  The classrooms we have seen are basically bare cement shells, open to the elements (and insects), 20m square with a small blackboard on one wall and nothing else.  But good learning happens here!

We watched a demonstration lesson in each school where the teacher showed us and his colleagues a participatory (student centred) approach to teaching.   Teachers used hand made 'teaching aids' - paper slips in one case and pieces of recycled card in another - with numbers written as numerals and in words for the children to match up.  In one of the schools the energy and enthusiasm (and the smiles!) of the teacher made up for all the deficiencies in resources.  The children celebrated the achievements of their peers with a little sung jingle for each correct answer.  It was so lovely.

Most of the problems in the schools are problems of poverty - of the system and of the families - and these are problems we as volunteers cannot solve.  But the teachers are enthusiastic to attend some maths workshops, particularly in algebra and geometry, so I will oblige as soon as the Tanzanian elections are over in October.

More on school visits, hopefully with pictures, soon.  Love Jenny