Dear Family and Friends,
As we stood at Mwangaza's "banda" and ate our evening meal yesterday (Wednesday, June 16), John asked if we remembered a certain Thursday of 2 weeks ago. He was referring to our last days at Kisarawe School, with Salome getting ill late Wed afternoon and evening, then Sharon having similar stomach issues early Thursday morning. So suddenly John and Allen are transporting Salome to clinic & hospital Wed PM to check for malaria &/or thyphoid and Mike is arranging Thurs AM for Sharon to stay at the hotel for the day. So while John and Mike were busier than expected trying to turn we 2 into all 4 facilitators, both ladies were weak but recovering as Thursday progressed, with no serious diseases diagnosed for Salome and antibiotics made available for both (for wazungu, they had been prescribed by and brought along from DeKalb just for that possibility) available for Sharon. In fact, even the Kisarawe Headmaster and staff became involved, as he sent the Matron to check in on our teammates. By the time we reached home Saturday night, all were approaching full strength, although John had malaria issues early the next week -- he is not fond of Dar's heat and humidity, nor the mosquitos that live in that region.
So there are few, if any, pictures from our Thursday at Kisarawe, but will include a few others below in an attempt to give you the feeling and flow of the second half of the week.
In each of Mwangaza's seminars, several resources are put to good use. Always those include the Mwangaza Resource Book, built through the 15 years of seminars by contributions from a number of teachers, organized in meaningful and appliable format a number of years ago by Jim Talarico, and still growing. Within that RB is a lesson plan template, also evolving over the years, and growing to be known and respected, to the point where the gov't lesson plan template resembles Mwangaza's.
In the first photo you can see several of the participants looking at a page featuring a Learning Pyramid, which shows the increased percent of content which is retained by students as they are increasingly involved in the learning process, even to the point of applying the skills and teaching others.
In the second picture, one of the participants is busy writing a lesson plan (on the right) for presentation on Friday while referencing the RB's LP example (on the left).
During the times provided for the participants to develop their lesson plans, we made ourselves available for consultation and feedback. Here 2 mathematicians were writing LPs to address different topics from the gov't syllabus, but discussing with each other, and Mike, their ideas. As in most schools around the world, teachers in TZ have more to do than time to do it, so time for discussion with colleagues is not usually available. For Tanzanians teachers, this exchange of ideas can be even more seldom because cultural hesitancy to put forth your ideas (may be seen as bragging) and certainly a younger/new teacher would not offer ideas to someone older and more experienced. A Kiswahili proverb, we are told, says: "A young bird has nothing to tell an old bird."
On Friday, four of the participants presented the fruits of their, and our, labors -- their lesson plans. A lottery was held mid-morning to select 4 teachers from different content areas, making sure to include one woman and one teacher from the second, smaller school. The other participants, and at least some of the facilitators, then became students. In the vertical photo below, we see English language teacher Pauline watching and listening as one of her "students" is making a report from his group's discussion. Later Pauline is now a "physics student" in Rainel's lesson, where he is helping her and her group set up a pendulum for measuring acceleration due to gravity.
After each lesson presentation, John or Salome led an evaluation, allowing input from those of us with more gray hair also. Since we are teaching a methodology, the Lesson Checklist is there to help the teacher assess his/her lesson, make adjustments (John likes to begin the discussion with "Now that you have tried to teach us, what changes might you make in this lesson plan for your students?") Was reinforcing to us that some were brave and tried, what was for them, new methods and strategies -- and some perhaps not so much. Overall, it was a very positive experience, and certainly eye-opening for Sharon and Mike, making their first safari into an on-site seminar.
John and Allen, both familiar with Dar es Salaam, gave us a going away treat with a tour of the city, even finding a good spot to stop so we could snap a few pix of the harbor. Good that we did this drive early Saturday morning, as not all 4 million people (John estimated) were up and around. Much construction everywhere one looked, and a very long traffic jam, several kilometers, coming into town as we left relatively quick.
Some thoughts on this week's seminar, plus some wonderful weekend sharing last weekend, coming soon.
Peace and love,
Mike and Sharon
No comments:
Post a Comment