Lady Gaga and the Back-Up Dancers

Week three is behind us and we have lots of news to cover. Final examinations are over and the students are not the only ones who are thankful for that! Friday, after we proctored the last exam, Cassie, Eileen and I decided that since the kids had been working so hard they deserved a little treat. We performed a “skit” which involved me singing and playing guitar, accompanied by my two backup dancers. We performed “Baby” by Justin Bieber and “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga. Of course, the kids loved it and have not stopped asking us to sing those songs ever since.

The weekend flew by and included a lot of work on typing up documents for needs assessments of the three schools, budgets, and working on the documentary. We also got final estimates on the cost of building shelves, desks and chairs in the library at Fanaka. Then for fun Bilo, Bibi’s son, took us to Bagamoyo on Sunday to see the coast. It was very beautiful and interesting to learn about the history of the city. We all enjoyed splashing our feet in the warm Indian Ocean, collecting shells, and searching for crustacean organisms in the low-tide pools (ok maybe the last one was just me).

Monday marked the start of the holiday term in which students from form II and form IV come to Fanaka for a half-day of review classes in order to prepare themselves for their national exams in September. I am teaching both forms of biology classes and Eileen and Cassie are teaching forms of the English classes. It’s very exciting to be teaching about a subject I am so passionate about, but overtime I have come to realize that it is truly a challenge to teach complex concepts to a group of teenagers, especially because English is not their first language. I admire how hard they work in order to grasp these concepts because I know it was hard enough for me to understand, even with the advantage of learning it in my native tongue.

We also had a staff meeting at Fanaka to discuss the major problems that the school was facing and how the Tanzanian Education Project’s programs could fix them. Also included in the discussion were various administrative problems affecting the school. We set up three committees to address them in an organized fashion. In each committee we have a volunteer representative and we have meetings set for next week.

The discipline committee, represented by Cassie, aims to reform the current discipline policies that are clearly not working at Fanaka. We are all brainstorming new systems to implement at the school that will be effective and simple so that the staff will continue to follow them after we are gone. The academic committee, represented by Eileen, aims to reform the problems with the current time table, reinforce the rules of speaking English only on the campus, and possibly setting up a system of positive reinforcement for students in order to encourage them to do better. The last committee is the sports and clubs committee, which I am representing. Our goal is to get a budget for fixing the soccer and volleyball fields, implementing new clubs, and addressing any other needs that the school has in this sector which hopefully will raise enrollment and make the school more money.

We all taught our first real lessons on Tuesday. Mine was form II biology and it was very exhilarating! The students told me they needed help with understanding the role of carbohydrates so we went into amino acids, proteins, lipids and all that good stuff. Giving them real-life examples and analogies to make them understand is very rewarding.

We will continue to teach our lessons for the rest of this month and hopefully do a good job of preparing these students for their national exams. The new term starts July 5^th so we are also hoping to have all administrative problems reformed by then!

Unfortunately, the sea container arrival date has been pushed back again to June 19^th because of the strike in South Africa.

Plans for next week include continuing the construction of the library at Fanaka, starting reconstruction of library space at ELA, visiting Olof, visiting nearby schools in order to see how they make their library and disciplinary systems work, committee meetings, and holding the normal classes.

Thanks for reading!

-Teresa