Another Year in Africa: March 2017

We’ve just returned from a successful Saturday morning foray into Kampala. Successful in that there were no serious attempts on our lives and limbs or on our sanity. The mission was only marred by a lack of American Garden chunky peanut butter in either Game or Shoprite and still no Hastee Tastee sweet and sour sauce. We also compromised on the bread – no wholemeal or seed bread available today but the white bread from Patisserie is edible, unlike the local loaves. On the plus side of the ledger Steve was able to get four cans of tuna – not John West but, hey, still tuna. Our philosophy, when shopping, is buy what you can get because you can only occasionally get what you want!

I have been doing a round of “supervisions” – observations of teachers teaching, and after each class I try to devise a small learning aid for that teacher, useful for teaching the current topic. This week it has been word searches and sets of matching cards (e.g. occupations and tools thereof) as well as number cards and place value concertinas for maths. One of the teachers is about to start a unit on family relationships and roles in a family. This is what the students will learn.

I won’t be doing a set of cards to match for that one!

This also in the students work book - makes you think!

Number cards - it's hard to get a 'straight' 9

I was told quite firmly that Domestic animals are 'animals which are kept at home' and definitely not 'animals we keep at home'!!

Our CEO needs data for the grant submissions she is constantly writing, to get the money to keep this operation going. So I have spent some time looking at ways to collect useable data. Over the last month I have designed survey forms to gauge the perceptions of parents, students and teachers on the quality of education we provide. The teacher one has just been handed out and the student one will follow soon. The parent survey will need to be translated and read out to parents on Parent-Teacher Day next month. Most of our parents are illiterate in English and Luganda.

The other survey I have been working on was to gauge our students’ understanding of sexual and reproductive health matters. It was given to the students two weeks ago. We wanted to be sure the students understood the questions so we had to risk teacher influence in responses by having them explain the questions and translate where necessary. Steve and I could hear the Primary 5 class chanting various definitions (40 voices in unison stating “A virgin is a boy or a girl who has not had sexual intercourse”) and then later the teacher acting out each of the possible symptoms of a STI. We couldn’t see what he was doing but the children were entertained and we were stifling giggles in the staff room next door.

As this was happening one of the kitchen helpers walked in with an eviscerated chicken for the Primary 4 science class and put it on the table in front of us. That just about finished us off! It’s really hard to convey what here is considered “normal”.

A teaching aid.

I spent a whole day entering data from the SRH survey into an Excel spreadsheet. The results were really interesting. There were very many responses of “unsure” and “don’t know” as well as a situation where one class had obviously been taught that mosquitoes spread HIV-AIDS (They don’t!). So now the social worker employed one day a week to do counselling and teach small groups of students has a clear idea of what needs to be tackled. We will be surveying the teachers next to gauge their understanding and taking remedial action where necessary in the next round of whole school professional development.

Whole school professional development (PD) has mostly to be done during term breaks. Teachers are fully occupied from 7:30 am until 4:30 and then they have preparation and marking to do so it would be cruel to expect them to do PD after classes. The weekly staff meeting has been reduced to 30 minutes so there is only time for brief communications. Most of the PD then has to be one–on-one. The only exception has been the computer classes, which have been running at both campuses weekly for the past month. Teachers are learning basic computer skills in word processing and using spreadsheets. They are loving it! Hopefully soon they’ll be typing their own exams and reports. (And matching cards and word searches) Quite a few of the staff are doing further study – at university on weekends and holidays! – so being able to type their essays and assignments will also be a bonus. Some of the teachers are keen to buy cheap, second-hand laptops so if you have one you no longer use please let me know.

Computer competency class

The science staff at Baimbridge have chipped in for one for the science co-ordinator here. He is very pleased with it. He keeps bringing it to me to show what he is typing for his university studies. He has mastered fonts and formats! He wanted a picture with us to show his mum.