A Chance to Teach

I was given the opportunity to teach a lesson to the standard 3 class today. As I have said, there are about 125 children in the class. I was excited to try my hand at teaching in this setting. I had watched other teachers all week, so I wanted to give it a go.

I built my lesson from the previous lesson that was taught to the class. It was a reading lesson using a poem about mice. Yesterday’s lesson only worked on the first part of the poem, so I thought it would be good to complete the poem today.

I built a song around the poem, one that had a simple yet attractive tune for children from Malawi. It began with a rhythm that was easy for the children to imitate. I drew pictures, acted out the meanings of the words, and lead the children to learn the poem and the vocabulary through song. The lesson structure was well developed.

HOWEVER, at the end of the lesson I knew the children had learned very little. They certainly had fun, but the measure of actual learning was small. I was discouraged with myself!

I am rather glad that this happened the way that it did. In the end it illustrated to me that leaving the decisions to the expertise of those who know the children and the culture is best! In many ways it reinforces my direction and keeps the greatest responsibility for change with those within the culture.

A Vist to Standard 4: Mphungu

I spent the morning in a standard 4 class. The students are between the ages of about 8 through 12. There are different age groups in each class. Some children drop out of school and then return at another time. In addition, if a student does not pass the final exam (teacher-made) they cannot progress to the next standard.

When I walked into the classroom, I was amazed. It was absolutely packed with children. It was in one of the older buildings, so it was smaller than the classrooms yesterday. However, every seat was occupied by at least three students. There were at least 100 students in the classroom. I sat in an adult chair pushed up against the chalkboard and a row of seats.

The teacher was teaching a lesson in Chichewa, the indigenous language. There were only enough books for about one-third of the groups of children. It seemed that most of the children had to just listen to the lesson. When it came time for them to read their section, they passed the booklets to other groups of children.

The teacher had to use an extremely loud voice to get the class’ attention as well as to be heard over the rumble of so many students. I must call her a “master teacher” because I know there is no way that I could ever have done as well as she did with so many! Even under her watchful eye, there were some children fooling around. The teacher took the piece of bamboo that she was using as a pointer for the chalkboard and struck the child. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt, but it sent a message to the entire class to settle down.

After a short break, English class began with a different teacher. The teacher wrote the entire lesson on the board because there were only 7 textbooks for the class of 100. A story about a grasshopper was written on the board during break. During the lesson the children repeated the story after the teacher read. Then row by row the children read the story. Opportunities were given for individual children to read the story. Since there were so many children, the teacher did not know –or use- the names of the students.

After the reading of the lesson, the teacher erased the board and wrote the next part of the lesson up. It took about 20 minutes for her to get the next part of the lesson up on the board because it contained a chart about dosages of medicine for malaria and a paragraph with missing words that were to be filled in by the students. While the teacher was writing the next section of the lesson on the board, the class was misbehaving. After a while some older children from the back of the room stood up and took some small branches and lightly hit the misbehaving children with them as they walked around the room. I later found out that these were the class leaders. Each class votes on class leaders to help to manage behavior.

When talking to a house-worker about my day at school, she said that democracy has not been all good for Malawi. Before democracy, education was stronger. Every child in school had school books. Interesting comments. This was not the first time I heard this opinion. It is certainly an area to research.

Mphungu School, Lilongwe Malawi

Greetings from the Warm Heart of Africa!

I have arrived in Malawi and am once again enjoying the sights, sounds, and people of this wonderful nation. I am staying at the home of Samuel and Hannah Kayuni. The Kayuni's have two biological children and 25 chosen children. Because they have two homes, I knew more about the area near the other house than the one I am staying in for this trip. So I asked around for the name and location of the local government school. One of the yard men walked me over to the school last Thursday morning. When we arrived I could tell that classes were on morning break, because kids were chasing each other wildly through the school yard. Red dust was flying in every direction!

There were various buildings on the school grounds, but the first one I met had curtains in the windows. I assumed this was the main office. Inside there was only room enough for two desks and a few chairs along the opposite wall. I went in an introduced myself to the deputy headmaster and asked permission to observe classes. He kindly invited me to come to school for the day on Monday, today. I left excited, knowing that a connection between Brandon and Mphungu was very possible.

Today I spent the day observing and meeting students and faculty. This school runs from standard 1 (grade 1) through standard 8. After standard 8, students move to secondary school.

The first class I observed in was an English class. Although all subjects are taught in English for standard 5 on up, Chichawa remains the children' s primary language. The room was packed with students. There were 5 rows with nine desks in each row. The desks were new wooden desks that were set up to seat two children. However, most of the seats with children in them have three or four children per seat. As I watched the lessons, I counted close to 80 students in that one classroom. Halfway through the lesson, about 10 to 15 students entered. I thought the teacher was amazing! He continued the lesson and checked individual students' work even with this number of students and all of the disruptions of the lesson. He had to use a loud voice to be heard over the rumble of the off task talking, but he kept the lesson moving.

I noticed that the reason there were groups of students was because the students had to share books. There were not enough books to go around. The teachers told me that the government just can't afford to provide enough books for each student. Although the children do not have to pay for their books, they must share. Lesson are written down in small notebooks that the teacher moves around the room checking.

I moved to a standard 1 class from here. The little once were adorable! They sat on the floor together in little groups while their teacher taught them subtraction. There were bottle caps on the floor near some of the children. The bottle caps were used as manipulative for those who didn't use their fingers for subtraction. The teacher wrote some simple subtraction problems on the board. The children were supposed to copy the problems down and solve them in their notebooks. While the teacher walked around the room correcting students' work, she sang a echo response type of song to keep the others occupied. Brilliant!

First Visiting Teacher Travels to Malawi, East Africa

The Visiting Teachers' Programme begins!  I am traveling to Malawi tomorrow.  Since I have been to Malawi twice already, I generally know what to expect from the land and the people.  But every trip is unique, and I travel this time with a different purpose than before.  Now I am looking for opportunities to build bridges between teachers in Malawi and teachers in Atlanta, Ga.  I will visit schools, talk to teachers, meet head masters of educational programs, and try to find a school and teachers who might be interested to come to Atlanta, GA with the Visiting Teachers' Programme in 2009. 

The Mission of the Visiting Teachers' Programme

The mission of the Visiting Teachers' Programme is to provide educational and international immersion experiences for teachers and young people from developing nations and the United States for the purpose of inter-cultural dialogue and critical reflection of practice in order to transfer gained perspectives to educational practices in the home country.