Category: TWB-C

Remba Pt. 1

31 July 09

When you board a boat from Mbita, the first island you pass is Rusinga. Then, there’s Kibougi, Ngodhe, Takawiri, Mfangano and Ringiti.

When you’re boat pulls approximately parallel to Ringiti and you’re still motoring, there grows in you a sense of understanding for those Old Worlders who believed sailing into the horizon would lead one to fall off the edge of the earth.

Wait about 30 minutes after that point, though, and you’ll realize there’s something out there.

In waters whose ownership incites great debate between Kenya and Uganda rests Remba Island.

As we pulled close, I grew confused. Perhaps, I told myself, we are just stopping here to refuel before we head to whatever island school is next on our itinerary. But Remba was our destination. Existing solely as a base of operations for fisherfolk, Remba stands as a pile of rocks with corrugated tin structures shoved up against one another. Aside from people, chickens, goats and, inexplicably, cows, the bulk of Remba’s population is sam – a type of flying insect that crowds the air and makes opening one’s mouth a dreadful mistake.

We disembarked, surrounded by nonplussed fisherfolk, and I was distinctly aware of my foreignness. While Mbita has taken on a feel of familiarity, this place was not my own.

Our party made its way through the shacks, sheds and sam to the far side of the island to Remba Island Primary School. In the middle of a barren rocky expanse stood two corrugated tin structures larger than any others on the island and divided into classrooms. We ducked inside the staff room to meet the school’s faculty. Five of the school’s 9 teachers sat at desks on a dirt floor grading the school’s end-of-term exams as though unaware of their environment.

Of Remba Primary’s 150 learners, we were told approximately 130 were complete or partial orphans sent to live with female relatives on the island. It was difficult to get an exact tally on the number of pupils at the school, one teacher told us because many students were migrant and moved with the fish. They’d gone to Class 8, the teacher said, but those students had moved so now the school only went to Class 7.

Though the school operated on an inclusion model, it was more out of necessity than design as there was no special education teacher to meet the needs of the school’s 4 deaf and 3 mentally challenged learners.

When he was campaigning, Remba’s MP had promised an allocation of Ksh 500,000 to the school. They’re still waiting.

“Because community members and business owners don’t have children in the school,” one teacher told us, “they don’t see the need to fund the school.”

The closest semblance of government on the island, the Beach Management Unit, was decidedly uninvolved.

The outhouse dug for the school hadn’t been maintained by the community and the learners were left to relieve themselves in the sparse clumps of grass near the water’s edge.

As we stood in the sweltering staff room and I watched the kids through the mesh wire that was standing in as a window, I was keenly aware of a pain somewhere in my heart.

Everything was stacked against these kids. Everything. Cut off from the mainland community that had hosted us so warmly since our arrival, the only thing the children of the island in their favor was their ignorance of what they didn’t have. 

No matter the resources lacking at any of the other schools we’d seen so far on the trip I’d felt a sense of growth and hope. All the schools so far would be okay. 

I couldn’t see the hope here. I couldn’t see the school’s growth.

Cheating (in) the System

6 August 09

So tired today. It may be the teaching of backward design. It may be the fact that I made the mistake of wearing long pants and the room I was teaching in had no air flow to speak of. It may be any  number of things. My money is on the idea that we’ve been going for about 5 weeks now and there are bound to be days that are more difficult than others.

Today was that day.

I’d been told that some teachers will purchase pre-written exams and administer them to their learners without reading the contents. This, I was told would lead to learners attempting to answer questions about material they hadn’t learned or even encountered in class. Try as they might, many would fail and need to repeat a class because their teacher was too lazy to write a decent exam.

I hadn’t believed it when I’d heard it.

When discussing the importance of designing assessment in Stage 2 of the Understanding by Design process, I repeated the story I’d heard.

“Does this really happen?” I asked.

“It does,” some responded while the others simply shook their heads at their lesser colleague’s actions.

I suppose my main ire is at the idea that, if you’re going to be an exam-centered educational system, at least do it well. Have a system you can be proud of or at least defend.

I’ve started to identify in some inexplicable way with belonging here. The unexpected affirmation of what I’d heard from my colleagues made me angry. Too much stands in the way of education for teachers to be pulling a bait and switch because they can’t bothered to do their jobs. More than just this, I think I’d enjoyed the idea that the similarities I’ve found between the South African, Kenyan, Canadian and American educational systems ended with what we do right. I didn’t want a reminder that our lowest common denominators are, indeed, common.

Maybe I’m just tired, and I should remind myself of the teachers here this week and their seemingly endless dedication, curiosity and hope for being able to do even better by their students.

Yeah.

But do you have a song?

4 August 09

Part of working with 45 teachers on ICT skills when you’ve only 11 computers available to you is the fact that not everyone can be on a computer all the time.

As such, my lot this week has been to perform as song and dance man attempting to make pedagogy sexy.

A few summers ago, I had the illustrious task of making data sexy for a conference presentation.

That was 90 minutes. This has been a week of 90 minute sessions taught next door to the room where they really want to be – with the computers.

Still, it’s been good.

Yesterday, Mama Jane said, “These people came just thinking they were going to touch computers. You have given them real professional development.” That’ll make you feel good.

Tuesday, my task was to talk about the idea of Multiple Intelligences and its implications in education.

Not surprisingly, an inventory of the teachers showed very few scored highly in the logical-mathematics and verbal areas with the majority blowing kinesthetic and interpersonal out of the water.

After I pointed this out, we had a healthy discussion about the fact that most of their classes are taught using verbal instruction and asking for logic/maths based skills when we had a room of 30 teachers who didn’t count that as one of their learning strengths.

Whilst all of this was going on, Mboya sat at the back of the room with the group of teachers who scored highest in the area of musical intelligence.

As we’d been coming up with the names of various Kenyans who exemplified each intelligence, Mboya’s colleagues had listed him as a chief example.

I’d joked, that he should write a song about the day.

At the end of the session, I was mid-sentence dismissing everyone when Mboya spoke up, “May I share the song?”

Of course.

He stood and sang:

Zac is a wonderful teacher,

Zac is a wonderful teacher.

He teaches with John and Jody and Lois.

These are wonderful teachers.

I stood a little shocked and completely humbled. The room applauded and laughed a little.

I started to finish my dismissal when Mboya spoke up again, “May I teach the song to everyone?”

I laughed and said, “I don’t think…” but was cut off when the room filled with teachers saying, “Yes, yes. Teach it.”

You don’t know humble, you don’t know gratitude until you stand in a classroom of adults (whom you’re pretty sure would rather be playing with computers next door) rather intently and quite literally sing a chorus of your praises.

I’m tempted to go all meta here or reach for deep reflection. Instead, I’m going to let the moment stand – a small sweet memory that I will take with me always.

When does the game change?

 

05 August 09

When Dan Otedo was talking to our team about what he’d like us to do whilst we’re here working with teachers from Suba, he said, “Inspire us.”

No small order.

We’ve attempted to include some sort of “wowza” factor each day using a tool that’s within reach to the teachers here. To put “within reach” into perspective, on the news last night, it was announced that non-urban areas would be experiencing planned blackouts starting tomorrow from 6 AM to 6 PM because there’s not enough water to power the country’s hydroelectric plants. (The news announced that the blackouts would be two days each week starting Thursday, but left one to wonder what the other day might be.)

Today, we showed them Skype.

We’d tried the North American ubi-tool in South Africa with a 50 percent success rate. Knowing the likelihood of Kenyan wireless modem bandwidth being enough to support video or even audio chat, I opted for good ole’ text chat.

When we started here at around 8:30 AM, it was 1:37 AM on the east coast of North America. Still, Dean Shareski was awake (I don’t know why). Tyrone (an SLA student) was also online, and Chris Lehmann popped on after a plea on twitter(I love my principal). The team assembled, the exchange was interesting.

My workshop today was on using cooperative learning in the classroom, so I asked what our guests considered collaboration’s role in learning to be:

Chris Lehmann: 08:42:11

    Simply put — it means that your idea and my idea are both made better for their interaction.

Dean Shareski: 08:42:13

    Collaboration is the connecting of ideas and information with human beings. We used to just call it research.

Sharon Peters: 08:42:42

    Some called it cheating

Dean Shareski: 08:43:02

    I cheat everyday.

Tyrone Kidd: 08:43:02

    it can be.

Chris Lehmann: 08:43:05

    cheating, to me, is when person takes another person’s ideas without contributing anything.

I have to tip my hat to Chris for this last one. One of the things I’ve been bringing up over and over again here is the proposition that, if I share an idea with you, then you don’t really own it until you add to it.

A few minutes later:

Sharon Peters: 08:46:05

    question from a teacher: What do you know about Africa – Kenya in particular?

Tyrone Kidd: 08:46:22

    Not much

Chris Lehmann: 08:46:23

    Honest answer: not enough.

Dean Shareski: 08:46:35

    not much. Our view would likely be very stereotypic

Dean Shareski: 08:46:46

    This is why Skype and tools like it matter….

Dean Shareski: 08:46:56

    to be able to learn from and with all of you

Chris Lehmann: 08:47:07

    Much of the knowledge I have of Kenya beyond what I learned in school and what I see in the media is from the people I’ve met.

Tyrone Kidd: 08:48:13

    I really don’t know much about  Kenya. Would love to learn about it though.

(That’s why I love our kids.)

I was hit most, though, by two things.

1) The ability to connect and communicate in this way could will be a game changer. That goes for Kenya and North America as well. If Michael Malone is correct in The Future Arrived Yesterday and the second and third million participants in the global marketplace are about to arrive, both sides need to start having much deeper conversations about what it’s like to be us.

2) I have no idea when that game is going to change. Every school we visited last week was lacking electricity and plumbing. Two had generators, but no way to buy fuel. One could literally see the power lines, but was waiting for a transformer to be installed somewhere down the line. When we asked about the timeline for the transformer’s installation, the teacher we were talking to rolled her eyes and said she’d been told within the year, but that they were working on “Africa time.”

When it happens, it’s going to be overwhelming. When it will happen, I know not.

‘Why do you care about special education?’

30 August 09

“When I go home and walk down the street, people treat me like a traitor. They say, ‘Why did you betray us and abandon the normal students.”

– Benedict, Special Education Teacher

Obalwanda Special School for the Mentally Handicapped

Mbita, Kenya

In Kenya, according to Mama Jane, it’s not uncommon for someone to answer an inquiry as to what her child is up to by responding, “He graduated from college but he couldn’t find a job; he’s a teacher.”

Calling or not, this doesn’t set the lights a’shimmering down the career path to education.

Thursday, we found things could be worse.

Anyone in education in Kenya will tell you that Special Education in the country has gone neglected. Having a child with special needs it seen by most to be shameful and as Jane was introducing us to the district’s newly minted coordinator of special education, she admitted sometimes you will find children who literally haven’t seen the light of day because of their family’s pride.

At Obalwanda Special School for the Mentally Handicapped, I met Benedict, the teacher in charge of the school’s integration program.

He was genuinely taken aback when I began peppering him with questions.

“Why do you care about special education?” he asked.

I explained that I had always taught in an inclusive classroom with students with disabilities who had been mainstreamed.

His surprise that I was interested as a “traditional” teacher and that I wasn’t a special education teacher trumped that of his surprise at my questions.

Benedict said he was responsible for the mainstreaming of 5 the school’s 43 residential students into classes at the primary school that shared both its grounds and its principal with Obalwanda. (When I say shared, I mean shared with a wire fence dividing both schools’ yards.)

It was going well, he said. The students were taking things more slowly than their counterparts, but they were doing generally well.

I asked how they were being accepted and Benedict said the stigma had been noticeable when the program started a year ago, but things were getting better.

Teachers had been the biggest problem, he said. “They won’t make time to talk about what the students need,” he said.

It’s sad some of the things I’m learning are international.

Benedict is doing good things, though, despite the many obstacles.

We weren’t there long, but I feel the same could be said for the Obalwandan faculty.

If only the teachers could enjoy a least restrictive environment, imagine what that would mean for their learners.

Education for All?

29 July 09

One of the benefits of our schedule here in Mbita has been the chance to visit and speak with teachers and learners before our workshops begin.

Wednesday, we made our visit official with an introduction to John Ololtuaa the District Education Officer (DEO) for the Suba School District.

Ololtuaa lines up nicely with his counterparts in the States. His office was adorned with hand-stenciled charts proclaiming data relating to all facets of running a school district – per pupil spending, mean test scores, administration organizational charts, graduation rates – everything you would expect.

Except.

Last year, 51,757 learners were enrolled in Suba district – a decent number for a moderately-sized community anywhere.

One hundred thirty-four of those 51,757 learners qualified for university.

That’s .2 percent of the total student population. 

Kenya’s is an exam-based educational system that would make NCLB run to a corner and cry like a small child.

Learners begin taking exams during Early Childhood Development (ECD) which can be in the form of coloring a picture. Sometimes, a friend Maresa explained to us, this will be over a period of three days where the learner colors a little until she’s tired. Then, she comes back the next day and does a little more, and so on. The big tests come in Class 8 (Grade 8 in the US) and Form 4 (Grade 12 in the US). The Class 8 National Exam determines if a student must remain in Primary School or if they can continue to High School. The Form 4 National Exam determines if a student is eligible to continue on to college.

This is where the exception revealed itself in the DEO’s office.

134.

Of those, 128 were boys.

Do the math.

The answer you’ll find is 6.

Six girls qualified for university intake last year from Form 4. That’s 4 percent of the learners qualifying for university intake.

Dan Otedo, Chairman of the Suba Teacher Guidance and Resource Center, explained that even from that limited pool, many would not have been able to attend because they couldn’t afford it.

Before our meeting with the DEO, Dan told me girls outnumbered boys in the beginning classes of primary school, but that those statistics reversed as the years went on.

According to the DEO’s charts, in the last 8 years, a total of 42 girls have qualified for university intake.

Mama Jane, whose home we’ve been staying in here, works in the local office of the Ministry of Education and oversees ECD in Suba reiterated what many of the teachers we’d meet Wednesday would explain to us.

The fishermen around Lake Victoria entice the girls with gifts of mandazi (a sort of fried doughnut, sanitary napkins, oils and lotions for their skins and various other insignificant sundries. These gifts come with promises of love and caring which often lead to the girls sleeping with the men. Not surprisingly, this often leads to pregnancy – but not always pregnancy. 

Charles, a medical anthropologist we met on Mfangano, one of the islands off the coast of Mbita, told us in straightforward language “the fishermen are killing these people.” Mfangano, where Charles had done his graduate research, has a population of 20,000 and a HIV/AIDS infection rate of 30 percent.

Though Kenyans everywhere are embracing the concept of “education for all” most schools charge annual fees for enrollment. This is to say  nothing of purchasing uniforms and the other pieces of education.

Because one is rarely ignorant of his own culture, parents of girls here will pay fees for their daughters to get a basic education, but stop because they determine it to be an unwise investment. If she gets pregnant, then all those years of fees are money down the drain.

Boys (and their subsequent inability to have children) are a smarter bet.

Toward the end of the meeting, when I asked about the district’s goals for the future, he said plainly, “We must empower the girl-child.”

Amen.

Someplace Like Home

28 July 09

The woman two seats across from me on our flight from SA to Kenya had these parting words, “Welcome to Kenya. Our roads are very bad.” 

She wasn’t kidding.

The roads from Masai Mara Tuesday to Mbita put even the most country of country roads of my youth to shame – both in duration and excitement.

Six hours into the trip, the breakfast we’d had back on the Mara was a distant memory and our stomachs began to digest themselves. We asked Steve, our driver, if there was somewhere we could stop and find something to eat in one of the towns we were traveling through. At this point, we had hit a stretch of tarmac and had grown mistakenly hopeful that it would hold out for the remainder of our journey. 

After two towns of Steve’s request that we wait for the next town where he was sure he knew of a restaurant, the team said no and we circled the town of Kissii until we stopped at a hotel Steve was determined to find.

We unloaded our jumbled bones from the van and found the lobby to ask if the restaurant was serving food.

The concierge who also turned out to be the server and waitress assured us that yes, they were serving food and we were in luck, it was American food.

I remember thinking two things: 1) Yea and 2)I wonder what the local definition of “American food” is. As it turned out, at least according to the hotel staff in Kissii, Americans eat a lot of cabbage.

We ate happily, though explaining why I had to rebuff the concierge/server/waitress’s frequent attempts at serving me chicken, beef and or sausage was a little tricky.

Then, we were on the road again.

I’d moved up to the front passenger seat to take in the full view.

This had unexpected results. The tarmac road ended soon after we left Kissii and we were back to off-roading on the road. Riding in the back of the van had been bumpy, yes. Riding in the front of the van was bumpy with the added bonus of my body bracing for each bump and at my foot pumping the brake I wished were on my side.

After 2.5 more hours of almost getting lost, but not quite, we met up with Jane who was to be our host mother for the duration of our stay in Mbita. We followed Jane’s car 45k more to her house with only the delay of the first tire puncture of our journey when we were mere kilometers from the house.

The luggage was unloaded, the spare was fitted and we were back in the car.

When we finally piled out of the van at Mama Jane’s home exhausted and dust-covered, we were ready for sleep.

Our NGO partners here in Mbita had decided it would be more enjoyable, not to mention authentic, to have a home stay experience rather than hiring a house or hotel. I have to admit, after a long day on the road, it was nice to be welcomed as family. Jane immediately took to calling us her new children and called her daughter Bettie and son Charles in Nairobi so that they could speak with their unexpected new brothers and sisters.

If nothing else, I know I’m enjoying being referred to as “the last born” and “the baby.”

Somehow, it makes this place thousands of miles from my family feel a little more like home.

An Interesting Preposition

22 July 09

During our final week in South Africa, we were able to get into the schools of the teacher’s we had worked with the first week at Liwa Primary. I asked to pair up with Rachelle, who teaches G8 English and G9 Econ at Siyazakha Primary School. Her energy and excitement after the first week were infectious and I wanted to see her in her element.

I was not disappointed. Working with 40+ learners in a classroom, Rachelle designed lessons that were engaging and tailored to her learners’ needs. That’s something many teachers state-side could benefit from.

Her English learners’ final task at the end of the previous term had been to compose a journal entry about an event in their lives. From her marking of the tasks, Rachelle noted that the bulk of her learners were struggling with the proper choice and use of prepositions in their writing. A quick survey of the students’ writing confirmed frequent composition such as, “My mother has me go to the store to her money on the bank.”

To review, Rachelle first wrote the word “preposition” on the chalk board that stood on its end in front of its former mount. (The boards had been removed over the holidays in the rooms that would eventually be receiving SMART Boards sometime in the coming months.) From there, she drew a box around, “position” and asked her learners what words came to mind when they saw the word “position.” Within minutes, the class had constructed a mindmap of the word which allowed Rachelle to explain, “A preposition is a word that’s used to help explain something’s position, location or place compared to something else.”

She then asked a handful of learners to position themselves at specific points around the classroom and then had their classmates describe where they were in the classroom and identify the prepositions in the sentences they constructed. Everyone could be successful and the entire class was visibly engaged.

Content her review had achieved its desired result and running out of time, Rachelle assigned homework. Each learner was to find 5 pictures from magazines, newspapers and the like and paste each picture on a piece of paper. Next to each picture, the learners were to write one sentence describing something in the picture as it related to the location of something else. As a final touch, the learners were to underline the prepositions in each of their sentences.

At first, my reaction to all of this was to admire the lesson, but worry about its content given the fact that these were Grade 8 learners. Then reality set in. The mother tongue of the children in the townships is Xhosa. They only begin formal English instruction in Grade 4. Considering their training was only 3.5 years old, they were exactly where I’d expect learners of their experience to be if not a little ahead of the game.

This all works toward the point that given an extreme lack of resources, an over-crowded classroom, and personal stories from each learner that could easily have become an insurmountable barrier, this was quality instruction based on the needs of the learners involved. It all-encompassing – in a few of the classrooms I observed during my time at the school, a class’ teacher was simply missing. And, it wasn’t ideal – I’m sure not each and every learner got the full, personal attention he or she would have benefitted from. What is was was exactly what all strong teachers do, making the most out of what they have. I’m not sure more can be asked than that.

The Death of Ritual

20 July 09

Today was a down day during which we debriefed the previous two weeks with Edunova and then had time to ourselves to decompress. Decompression and stray thoughts lead to what’s below.

Becoming a Man:

At 18, Xhosa males are taken into the bush where they become men. According to Khonaya, our guide for our township tours, this ritual is about “learning the identity of the tribe” and “grasping the true essence of ritual.” During their time in this conclave, the boys are circumcised.

During the ritual, Khonaya told  us, the boys are not allowed to flinch or show signs of pain. “Being masculine,” he said, “you have to handle the pain.”

This was just about as much as he could tell us about the ritual as the men are not allowed to divulge or describe what happens once they return.

In fact, during yesterday’s braai, when Terry asked one of the Xhosa Edunova facilitators about when he was taken into the bush, all of the women at the table excused themselves and Terry was told men weren’t allowed to talk about what happened in the bush. 

“I have a younger brother,” Khonaye had told us, “and all I can do is support him when the time comes.”

Sharon asked if there were any differences once the men returned home. Khonaya said sometimes “circumcised boys in the classroom expect to be treated differently” especially by female teachers.

I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around all of this for over two weeks now, and I just don’t think I can. More to the point, this is one of the pieces that creates a breech in my ability to understand the culture here. I’ve no basis for comparison. While I’m certain this ritual and others like it have far-reaching social implications, I simply don’t know what I don’t know.

When I see the community that exists here, the strength of the social structure, I begin to worry that the plurality of America also means we’ve watered down or lost our rituals along the road to coexistence. While I’m not suggesting the adoption of this particular ritual, I do wonder if the lack of a shared threshold experience leaves most of our youth without a clear sense of whom they are and where they come from.

To the Island

18 July 09

Nelson Mandela is 91.

Prior to arriving in Africa, I’ll admit, Mandela was really one of the few national icons with whom I was familiar. Even that knowledge wasn’t appreciably deep.

Having had a few weeks in Cape Town and traveling within the province of Western Cape, I’ve gained a better understanding of what this man has meant to his country and what he continues to represent.

One of the things that strikes me about driving or walking through the townships or working with educators in their schools here is the air of hope I can’t help but breath in. The people I’ve met have hope and faith that their schools will improve and provide stronger, more connected educations for their learners.

Yes, they will admire their problems with the same rockstar status of any other group of teachers I’ve met, but when all’s said and done, they are hopeful.

More than anything else, Mandela embodies that hope.

This made visiting Robben Island, the prison island where Mandela spent 18 years of his life, on his birthday especially poignant.

I remember, as a teenager, watching Mandela’s release from prison, and knowing, but not understanding that something important was happening. It wasn’t until the boat ride on the Susan Kruger (the boat that first ferried political prisoners to Robben Island in 1961) that I started to grasp (if only feebly) the what it would have meant to be imprisoned for 18 years for holding onto an idea.

During each day of their imprisonment, the political prisoners on the island were forced to work 8 hours a day in one of the island’s limestone quarries. The stone was eventually used to pave the roads of the island and some of Cape Town. Initially, though, none of it was put to any actually use. It was meant as a soul-crushing exercise in futility.

What struck me, though. What truly hit home was the walk back to the prison from the quarry. Just over the rise at the pit’s mouth, Cape Town comes into view. As my tour group moved back along the same route, I imagined what it must have been like to toil purposelessly for 8 hours a day for 18 years and to return to your cell each day with a clear view of the home and country you love so much but to which you were forbidden to return.

In some ways, I wonder if South African teachers, if not many educators around the world, aren’t facing the same struggle – working each day for 8 hours for often unclear reasons only to come out of the pit at the end of the day feeling where they want to be is just as clear, but just as distant as when they they began.

I choose to believe the desperation is misplaced. Yes, we’ve a long way to go, but our own “long walk to freedom” is well under way.