Secondary School (Dave)

We visited the Secondary School on day 4 and had a quick tour, so we sort of had an idea of what to expect on our first day- it was characterized by a lot  of sitting around. We arrived and had to wait outside the office to be called in, so we used this time to discuss how we’re going to try to affect African culture. We’ve got a bet on- whoever can bring a piece of Bolton slang into common Tanzanian usage first is the winner; we’re expecting to hear ‘be reet’, ‘mingin’, ‘dry as’ and ‘sick lad’ around the corridors by the time we leave.

We  were called in by a severe looking man (who I assumed was the headmaster, but later learnt was head of discipline) who took down what lessons we want to teach- me English and maths, Danny maths and physics and Jonny physics and English. In the first week, I’m taking English, Dan maths and Jonny physics and so we all split up to talk to our respective subject teachers. The English teacher was off on maternity leave, so me and Dan saw the maths teacher together and spent the rest of the day sitting around some more and working out what to teach in maths for the next three weeks.

Something the Tanzanian secondary school has that Thornleigh doesn’t, that surely needs to be introduced- a scheduled twenty minute tea break every day. I got a very funny look from the maths teacher when I asked if there was any coffee.

The next day we turned up just before first period to teach our first lessons. I was teaching English for the first two lessons, so I stopped off in the staffroom to find the English teacher to find out what I should be teaching.
‘The English teacher is off ill, she wants you to teach debating. Your lesson is now. GO GO GO.’

The passing nun who had given me these instructions then disappeared, leaving me and Kevin in a state of bewilderment. With no lesson plan and very very little experience teaching English it was a challenge trying to think of how to approach the lesson, but Kevin came up with an idea- a debate comparing life in England to life in Tanzania. We split the class into two groups and each team constructed an argument for Tanzania or England.

We’re teaching form 1, the equivalent of English year 7, which is split into three classes- 1a, 1b and 1c (all boys), so we teach each lesson three times, and so we had the debate three times, which meant we got to see a lot of the perspective the students had on both countries.

The England teams, which I was overseeing, came up with some really insightful points that taught me a lot about Tanzanian culture- some of them had a real interest in Tanzanian politics, and could go into great detail about political parties and the level of corruption there (although Kevin made the point that we have more politicians in jail than they do). Team England made some strong points about English education, technology, economy and politics, making arguments against Tanzanian corruption and electrical failures.

The Tanzanian team, however, tended to be a lot more convincing and got a few laughs from the crowd also-
'Good afternoon, I am Benjamin, aka, Benji'
‘In England, they spend millions on a wedding. In Tanzania, it takes us an hour and then we go home’.
'In England, it is so cold, every day, they wear TEN SWEATERS'

Tanzania scored points on weather, friendliness of its people, national parks, natural resources and wildlife. In the end, the Tanzania teams won all three.

The next few lessons I spent teaching about debating and writing techniques, some of which I suspect may have gone over their heads, but Kevin was helping me to get the class to understand, leading to this conversation:

‘In England, we have metaphors like raining cats and dogs- it doesn’t make any sense to us, but we use it to mean it’s raining heavily. In Swahili, do you have any phrases like this?’
(silence from the class)
‘You’re not going for lunch until someone thinks of one!’
(a lot of thinking, then someone puts their hand up)
‘Yes?’
‘We have ‘mama na jiko’
‘What does that mean literally?’
‘Wife’
‘And what do you use that to mean?’
‘Kitchen’

After finally meeting the English teacher and getting a copy of the syllabus, I found I was going to be teaching ‘Expressing state of health’- this sounded like a nightmare, but most of the kids gave me a lot of feedback and again taught me a lot about Tanzanian life, like different ways of preventing malaria, symptoms of different diseases and how to treat them. However there was some misinformation:

‘How can we prevent the spread of AIDS?’
One student put his hand up:
‘Avoid excessive masturbation!’
I then found myself in the awkward situation of having to say:
 ‘No, class, excessive masturbation does not cause the spread of AIDS.’

I then had them write a conversation between a doctor and a patient, trying to use as many of the keywords we’d brainstormed as possible, which led to some fantastic stories, my favorite about a man who is diagnosed with AIDS, but demands the doctor takes the test again:
‘Oh, sorry. I was mistaken. You do not have AIDS.’

The next lesson I had to teach was about ‘Expressing feelings’. This sounded difficult to me- getting a load of year 7s to express their feelings? How was that going to work? Me and Jonny asked the class to think of feelings, then use them in a sentence as an example. Again, the class got far more involved than we’d hoped for; we learnt quite a lot about the different love interests of the class (for ‘love’, one said ‘I love Catherine!’ I managed to get a laugh out of the class here by pretending to explode- ‘CATHERINE IS MY SISTER’S NAME’) and also that there is one teacher here nicknamed ‘Shadow’, because his skin is just that dark and he has a tendency to suddenly appear when the class are ‘misbehaving’. Jonny was thrilled with one of the responses ‘I feel confident when Jonny teaches me physics’ N’aww.

The discipline system is quite strict here. One morning we saw some students on their knees in the front yard, and later found out they had to kneel there as a punishment for a whole period. Kevin intervened in a fight one morning, pulling apart what he thought was two fighting students, but later found out it was a teacher and a pupil fighting. And during one of my lessons, two of the teachers came through the door without warning and pulled out six or seven students into the hallway. I asked the class what was going on, and they told me they were being caned for forgetting their ties.

 Kevin told me he was asked by a teacher how, if not through physical punishment, we discipline students in England? Kevin replied that we detain them and take away their time. The teacher said that wouldn’t work here because in Tanzania, time is not as valuable. That’s definitely true- everyone here is much less busy, and things are more flexible. When a Tanzanian says they’ll be there in an hour, it seems they can mean any time in the next week or so I think I prefer Tanzanian time to English time. I think I was running on it already.

-Dave

(More to come on the Secondary school from Jonny and Dan!)