Last Days in Kampala

Just a few more days for me in Kampala and although I must admit that sometimes, during this last month, the difficulties of negotiating ourselves through and around Kampala, from the simplest task of buying water to the more complex ones such as traveling to other places, I have entertained serious thoughts about leaving Uganda earlier than planned; however,my time with the teachers and students at Stand Tall has more than made up for these discomforts and now I am feeling quite sad and even bad to be leaving them.
A few notes to continue from two blogs ago. I had an excellent meeting with the teachers, during lunch and at a more formal after-school meeting. My concerns about maintaining a classroom culture that encourages all children to be engaged in active productive programs all the time, is also their concern and my question about how to best incorporate volunteers, who are not teachers, into the classes, is also their question. So now we are are talking about best ways to solve these issues and coming up with practical and pedagogically sound ideas.
I offered to create a list of all the different classroom activities that I have demonstrated along with the reason ( rationale) for each so that they (teachers and admin) could have this reference to remind and encourage them. Second, volunteers will be invited to talk to admin before entering classrooms about how they can help, i.e. what teachable skills they can offer, and if there is no specific teaching area, then one idea was to help with group work during the Centers approach while another was to work one-on-one with the children needing individual help in math and/or reading.
I am cheered by these conversations that we had and continue to have during lunch and break time.
But our talk is not only about school stuff. There is a very big curiosity about Canadian social practices, especially marriage. Remember that the teachers are quite young. They can’t believe that we do not practice polygamy or that young people live in their own homes (apartments) after they begin to work, among other points of interest. That we do not pay much attention, if any, to personal religious affiliations or practice is another point of incredulity. Sometimes I think that they don’t really believe what I tell them about marriage and religious practice in Canada, yet because they are polite and respectful, they don’t press the point.
I witnessed a most wondrous event late in the day on Thursday. I had been working the two older levels quite hard, trying to assist them in their understanding of the local newspaper that is delivered free to a large number of schools. This a difficult and frustrating lesson as the newspaper is not easy to read or to understand, even by yours truly. In the past weeks we have used the newspaper to practice partner reading; to find a word they didn’t know ( a very easy task) and then to circulate around the room looking for help with that unknown word and writing the meaning on the back of their paper; even looking for words that begin with every letter of the alphabet and other such simple interactions with the articles.
I have tried predication activities based on article headlines but quickly realizede that this was simply not going to happen, as they have no prior experience with inferential reasoning of written text.
Yesterday I decided to discuss an article about Sunday floods in Kampala caused by a sudden heavy burst of rain that washed the garbage that is strewn everywhere into the OPEN drains ( at night you could easily fall into one of these drains and be lost forever) resulting in blocked drains, of course, and serious floods in the city center. In the newspaper the mayor, blamed god for the rains along with the rubbish in the open drains dumped by the small shopkeepers, called traders.
What a great little story, I thought. So much to talk about I thought.
But no, I was proven quite wrong. The students were given time to read the story, to tell their closest neighbor about what they had read, before I asked simple literal type of questions. But the answers I received had nothing to do with the story at all. Realizing a problem I asked them to underline words they had not been able to read or understand. This task they liked and participated with enthusiasm.
On average there were about 40 words in the article that mystified the kids. Words like, ‘standstill, downpour, submerged, causalities, rendered impassable, refuge, accompanied, hailstorm, billboards, disaster, maintenance’ and so on. And this was, what I thought an easy article to understand.
The children are not to blame for their inability to understand the vocabulary; they have little or no experience with books of any type, let alone narrative books. We (readers) learn about words through reading stories or information books, not through copying sentences from the board and answering fill in the blank ( read my mind) questions. How in heaven’s name could they possibly know the words in the newspaper? What was I thinking?
Recently I read an article praising the newspapers in education program as it provides material for children to make airplanes and hats and other toys. Why didn’t I think of that? Why did I have us all hitting our heads against a stone wall.
So, in an attempt to salvage everyone’s ego, including mine, I asked the students to tell me about their favorite picture in the newspaper. That worked fine; I had lots of good talk and participation and we all relaxed. At some point someone referred to pictures of cool people doing a new dance called the “Stamina” and I innocently asked what that was.
Four students came to the front of the room, the others clapped and sang from their chairs, and I was treated to the most amazing display of acrobatic and unusual dancing accompanied by hooting and hollering and laughter and just good wholesome fun. Then another four came up and the dance routine was demonstrated once again to singing and clapping and hilarity. A few more students, more dancing and singing and the day was done.
A lesson that started as a frustrating struggle for all of us, ended in a warm display of community and cohesiveness that was remarkable to witness. I was truly delighted to witness the dancing and be part of the joyous event and felt very fortunate to have been a part of this very fine conclusion to our day.
Over the past few days I’ve had most generous offers from family and friends to buy something special the students. After email discussion with the school founder in Vancouver and the admin here we decided on a microscope and a sewing machine. A microscope so that every child can get some idea of the invisible world, both benign and dangerous. Remember that Uganda still has a ridiculously high level of HIV AIDS, partly because of a poorly educated population and misinformation about the dangers of things that are out there but not visible to the human eye. And a sewing machine as Stand Tall is committed to offering an education that prepares the children for the world of work that comes after school.
I have this idea that the kids can use the sewing machine to make carry bags from sturdy cloth to replace the dependency on plastic bags. You would not believe the proliferation of plastic bags, everywhere. My hope is that Stand Tall can be among the first to make and sell sturdy reusable cloth bags to carry groceries and books and all that stuff that we have too much of. To make a little money I’m sure that carry bags could be sold to visitors and to students in other schools and to townspeople.
I realize that most of the pictures have been about the Level two and three pupils, so here is one of the youngest class, Level one, having a look at the new purchases along with one of the teachers, Cotrida.

Another shot of the new acquisitions, but this time with Level two students, who were very interested in both objects and wanted to know when they could try them, especially the microscope.

This last one is at the end of the day. That’s me and the students, dancing. Please, no comment about my style.

Just another couple of days and we are off to Tanzania. Meanwhile, I’ve got popcorn arranged for all for tomorrow and I know the headmaster is organizing speeches and a special lunch on Wednesday. I’m already worried about how I will get through my good-bye speech without cracking up.
These is a rather extraordinary place, with very special children.
I feel most fortunate to have spent a month getting to know them.

Thanks for hanging in there with me.
Honey
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The Last Stretch

Hello all,

Good news to report. Stand Tall is now being recognized as having an exemplary program and I have been asked to talk to three schools in the Kampala area about ‘child-centered’ education. I am invited to meet with the teachers of each school during their lunch hour, and I’m sure it will be a most interesting experience as I will get a chance to see what other schools look like, especially in terms of materials and resources and class size.
A note, however, to explain my absence from this blog. We went away for four days, mainly to visit my friend Juliet who lives in Mbale and teaches at the Islamic University in Uganda ( IUIU) and to spend a day at the Busolwe community library, a small but wonderful little, and I mean little, set of rooms with a few hundred sundry and assorted books, in a little town about an hour’s drive along back wrenching potholed dirt roads. More like craters and lakes than holes.

Juliet drives a small truck with huge sturdy wheels, otherwise we would never have made it to the outskirts of Mbale.
I can’t speak for all the roads in Uganda but the ones I have been on are wretched, dangerous, and scary all the time.
The one good road that we have driven on was from Mbale to the tourist area of Sipi Falls ( we spent Sunday-Monday taking guided walks up in the mountains around the Falls. I loved that little tourist experience even though it came with Vancouver weather—-cold and rain)

Back to the community library in Busolwe. ( see photos) A group of local citizens took it upon themselves to create this library in hopes of inspiring a reading culture in their town. They have enthusiasm and optimism. What they don’t have is money to buy books, a library system ( however, i have since heard about Librarians Without Borders and alerted Juliet to this possible resource) books in the local language ( can anyone tell me the name of that organization that provides books to children in their local language? is it Right to Read or something like that?) and interest from mothers of young children. At the Saturday meeting with the library committee we talked about Story Hour for your children a few mornings a week.

A reasonable idea, but culturally not so simple, for too many reasons of culture to get into in this blog. But I believe that the idea was well received by the gentlemen in charge of the library, and will be tried out

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Pictures from Stand Tall
Students practicing a script they wrote before presenting it to the others:

Students showing off their personal little books about family:

Students at the library station:

The best colleagues!

Thanks for reading my blog.

Honey

End of week two

I had a volunteer from Kansas helping me on Friday, who took many pictures, some of which I think you’ll enjoy seeing. Unfortunately I’m having trouble getting them from her camera onto this blog so I’ll post them when and if I can. I hope that I can send them along eventually as I think that these pictures do a better than reasonable job of showing the children on task as I badger them into trying new ways of improving reading and writing skills.

But there are no pictures of my latest classroom activity: learning centers, sometimes called activity stations. Remember that we don’t have class sets of books yet, so I organized the students into three groups of approximately seven children each. One group worked with the classroom teacher with the reading textbooks, one group read/browsed through the 24 books of various topics that I had brought with me, and the third group worked with me on story writing. The kids loved the centers, everyone was on task, wonderfully so, my group produced the first stories they had ever written. One young lad today, during his second ever writing center experience, wrote a full page and then just grinned with delight. The browsing through books center was a total success. The kids looked at pictures, tried to read some of the text, and totally and absolutely loved having access to a lovely array of books for the first time in their lives.
How do the teachers respond to this approach? Good question. I actually don’t really know. They are happy that I take over the class, and they go along with my program, but we have yet to engage in teacherly conversations that would demonstrate excitement or even acknowledgement of the possibilities of a Centers approach. But then again, my faithful readers, so much of personal communication is culture, culture, culture, a very big issue that needs to be taken into consideration 24/7.
Today,Thursday, a bus load of teachers and educators from Kenya came to visit the school. What excitement. I was so proud of our kids. They sat quietly and politely through the usual speeches and then sang and danced a welcome to the visitors. They were so good, I only wish I had had a video camera.
I was asked to give a little talk about the work I have been doing and of course I talked about our child-centered program. Then afterwards the leader of the delegation told me that Kenya was quite interested in that approach. Our school headmaster told me later that the Kenyan delegation learned so much from the visit to our school that they were not going to bother going to others. Good, huh?

Tony and I are taking a little holiday on Friday, not to look for animals this time but to climb a few low mountains; I won’t be back to Stand Tall until next Wednesday.

Thank you for reading my blog

Honey

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Good Days

I have fallen for a mother and baby rhino that were just a few meters way from me and Tony and the driver and the tracker and the bodyguards. (see photo below)Yes, in Uganda, rhinos rate bodyguards, and a good thing that is too.
Much of the weekend was spent driving around in a large tough,four wheel Land Cruiser looking for and finding the usual exotic and truly wonderful assortment of animals that you can hardly believe really are out there. Yup, we saw giraffes, up close, elephants very close, wonderfully noisy and aerodynamic chimps as well as hippos,(see other photo) in and out of the water, crocodiles, and a large range of deer-like animals such as cobs and waterbucks.

But as mentioned in an earlier blog, this is not intended to be a travel blog, as I am not the first to travel to East Africa, but instead is intended to be a description of my most challenging work as a volunteer teacher and teacher trainer at Stand Tall Training Center
Many many thanks to friends and family for your easy to read and to sing suggestions. I successfully did Brother John, with four tables of children in a round, to great laughs by all. And have started The Wheels on The Bus, with many variations, such as “the boda-boda drivers go, come on here” Boda boda drivers are motorcycle owners who will drive you any place you want to go, for a price, at breakneck speed, dodging cars and buses, and without helmets, too.

Thursday was wonderfully busy, I even got to work in the classroom of a third and new, to me, teacher. This class, level one, are learning English, and I couldn’t get much done without the help of their teacher who does simultaneous translation into Luganda and then works with the children to help them get started. We tried an exercise using words on separate pieces of paper. The kids choose the words, write them on small pieces of paper (which is in short supply and thus a precious commodity) and then combine their words and others to make very long sentences which more or less mean something. These simple little activities take a very long time as the children are just not used to having sets of instructions that encourage them to write words of personal interest to them and then to string along these words into sentences. But it’s all good, and at the end, we had a very self-satisfied class of students.
When I explain, with the help of their teacher translator, what I am planning to do, I am usually met with respectful silence and a very still class. It’s only after I model, with exaggerated actions, a number of times, that eventually one student takes the risk of trying what I just demonstrated and the others slowly follow suit.
We may move slowly but the learning curve is pretty sharp.
So many classroom activities that we at home take for granted, such as sharing work, and assisting one another and working together in groups, take a great deal of coaching and coaxing if the intended purpose is to be met, i.e. everyone in the class gets to be actively involved in reading all at the same time, there is no audience or ‘watchers’, everyone is to be on task, to some degree, all the time I’m in the room. I can only imagine what the children think about my classroom methods. But the proof of the learning is in their little writing exercise books which get better every single day.
The days are very long. Classes run anywhere from one to two hours at a stretch, and the day starts at 8:00 and goes through to 5:00, although the last hour is for anything from music and dance (yes, I am learning African dance, sort of, as long as I’m at the back of the room) and singing, to netball, soccer and volleyball. The children seem happy right through the day, me,I’m wiped by 4:00 and am very pleased when my driver arrives around 4:30, some days.

Today, Tuesday, was great. We created and acted in a short dialogue/skit in the morning and in the afternoon I introduced a class to stations. One table did grammar activities from a workbook with their teacher, one table read books that Tony and I had brought. The bad part about the books is that they are too difficult for most of the children to read; the good part is that the colours and pictures are lively and interesting, and so the books, a real rare treat in this school and others too I understand, were received with genuine excitement. The third table/group met with me and wrote, “once upon a time” stories after I showed them my model of “The Three Little Pigs”. They told me that this was the first story they had ever written. Their little stories are hard to read but the pride they had in their accomplishments was pretty wonderful.

One more thing. These kids receive a free class set of newspapers every week and we are supposed to ‘study’ these papers in class, easier said than done as the topics and the language of the paper are beyond my comprehension much of the time. However, in an attempt to get involved in this newspapers in the classroom program I had each student write a letter for publication in the Monday section for children. Please cross your fingers and toes that at least one of the letters get published. I’ll be sure to let you know if your good thoughts worked.

One more picture. This is me with my hand in the source waters of the Nile River. The Nile River! There really is a Nile River and it starts right here in Uganda, about an hour’s drive from Kampala. Do I look like Cleopatra, a little?

Thanks for reading and commenting.

Honey

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Two days on

Readers, I need some suggestions for fun easy songs. I’ve done Eensie Wensie Spider and Brother John and can’t think of others of this type. I need ones with simple words and tunes that I can easily write on the board, hand actions are good too.
I have never before had such an easy time with classroom management. Every child seems interested as I ask the level two students what they did over the weekend and put their answers on the blackboard. This little activity is a preamble to the lesson which is to compose simple and compound sentences in their writing books. This material then becomes the reading material as I encourage them to read their newly created sentences to one another.
However, the second part of this activity (reading to one another) doesn’t work out quite as I had wanted. I am still working on teaching them to read to one another, as what they are used to doing is reading their newly created sentences aloud to the whole class, which is fine for the person doing the reading but kind of boring for the others as most children at any age, are difficult to follow under the best of circumstances.
A real problem though is my Canadian pronunciation. It’s so different from the language that they hear from their teachers, on the radio, everywhere. In turn, understanding the children when they respond is almost impossible for me. I hope that in time all our ears will be better attuned to each other’s language, but right now, they can hardly understand me and I them. As well, level one students (pupils is the word they use) are just learning English, and so their teacher regularly translates me into Luganda. Although there are so many times that the kids just don’t understand my instructions, still, I already sense a change from last Friday. Today when I entered a classroom the children smiled and seemed quite excited and happy to see me. What better reward could a teacher ask for?
A big accomplishment today was that the level twos and threes created little six page books on topics of their own choosing, along with pictures to accompany their text. They loved this little activity, and practically had to be shoehorned out of the room for morning break.
I use these books to teach a little spelling and grammar but primarily to motivate them to engage in reading and writing. And it worked. It was really lovely to see every child proud of their little books.
I haven’t been successful at getting them to share their stories with one another yet, but give me time.
Creating little books was today, yesterday was Newspapers in Education (NIE) day. A NIE program means that the school gets a free set of local papers every Monday, along with a little set of reading questions to go with the papers. This month the theme of the questions is ‘democracy’, and I should be asking the children to find and discuss stories/articles on democracy, not an easy topic based on the articles in the newspaper.
Instead, I opted to concentrate on the special embedded Children’s Section that comes in the Monday edition. After a few minutes to read the articles to themselves, I moved the chairs away from the tables and into pairs in the empty space at the back of the room. The children, in their pairs, became either giraffes or lions and, after a number of models to illustrate the activity, the giraffes were supposed to read to the lions until I gave the signal for the lions to read to the giraffes. Easier said than done; but we did have a lot of laughs, mainly at my expense. However, eventually I had most of the lions reading to the giraffes, and then vice versa.
During the same lesson I tried a little prediction activity that is supposed to encourage strong reading comprehension skills. For example, ‘Based on the title, what do you think this story will be about?” The response was, to be honest, a very quiet classroom. I hope for more success next time.
My days with the children are long and full and good. I am even learning to dance, just as long as I am allowed to stand at the back of the room. Today I played volleyball during morning break in a rough field inhabited by monkeys. The pupils and their teachers were impressed by my mean serve and now think that we can do something in Canada besides mangle the language.
Hope this was not too long, but once I get going I realize that I am spilling over with stories.
By the way, the weather is ideal. Could not be better. Hot but not too hot, little or no humidity. Lots and lots of flowers and trees everywhere.
Speak to you again, soon.
Honey

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Location:Kira Road, Kampala

First impressions, first class

Tony and I spent all day Thursday at the school, joining the teachers for break snack of sweet milky tea and chapatis and then later on a lunch of rice, boiled and mashed green bananas, beans, and a chopped spinach- like green. Dessert was sugar cane, a first for me. The meal itself, ample in quantity, but unfamiliar in taste.
Everyone was welcoming and could not have been more hospitable.
There are three classes, each with approximately 27 students, three teachers, a head master, a business assistant/vice principal and a secretary.
The property is large, with ample grounds, although these grounds are still under construction, the buildings/classrooms are large enough to comfortably accommodate the children, their chairs and four good sized tables. At this time the water system has not been completed, however water is brought in, in large containers, so we can wash up before eating.
The children eat in a dining building, the picture that I posted in my last blog shows one group with their morning snack, a large cup of hot milky porridge.
Tony and I progressed from one level to the next ( the children are grouped according to educational skills rather than by age) and in each room we were warmly greeted, and welcomed through songs and dance.
The children are expected to be quiet while in class, and at first did not know how to respond when I asked them if they had any questions about us but with encouragement a few took the lead and asked us questions such as, where are we from? who is our king? do we have any children?
These classroom visits took up most of the day and allowed me to get a good sense of classroom protocol as well as class material.
The former is one of children expected to be quiet and be good listeners, the latter is pretty simple. There are no materials other than each child has a small exercise book, a pencil and a pen. The room itself is bare except for a blackboard on one half of the front wall.
Before leaving Vancouver a close friend gave me $50.00 to buy materials for the children, a wonderful and thoughtful gift. Friday morning Tony and I and the school principal and my driver ( yes, I have a driver available to take me to the school and on errands, for the cost of gasoline, which is not cheap). Posted is a picture of the shopping cart as we filled it with 80 exercise books, pencils, rulers, pens, and some treats for the teachers such as colored pens, special writing books, and office glue. $50.00 CDN went much further here than it would have at Staples!
Needless to say, the material was and is very much appreciated.
Yesterday I actually taught the level one children for 90 minutes. Hard work without any materials. But I did have a colourful story book to read ( one I brought with me) and a writing book for each child. First I moved the children into a double semi-circle ( they had never done this before) for story time, an arrangement that worked very well, and then, back to their tables to do a little writing and reading. The first worked better than the second as I have learned that I have to do more readiness teaching on group work. I tried to get the tables to read their newly made sentences to one another, but that really wasn’t successful. I have my work cut out for me on Monday.
We finished the 90 minutes class with my attempts to teach the song, Eensy, weensie spider.
Ohh if I only had more material such as large chart paper, and a class set of story books. But I don’t, so I simply need to find other ways to teach the children how to work together co-operatively as well as enjoy reading and writing.
This is not a travel blog, but I must mention to my friends and readers that Tony and I spent a most successful afternoon in Kampala yesterday, Tony did not lose his Tilly hat, ( almost but not) we met the contact from Arua and gave him the EGranary unit that came from UBC. This man travelled by bus, 8 hours in each direction, just to pick up this hard drive unit for his school! and had an excellent Ethiopian dinner with a friend of Nicole’s.

Thank you for reading.

PS We are supposed to have internet connection in our apartment but so far it hasn’t happened, although it has been promised, any day now. And so we need to hike over to an internet cafe, not that close and not that easy to access, so please be patient with personal responses.

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Location:Kira Rd,Kampala,Uganda

Ready to go

A day and a half of traveling plus 10 hours forward in time and we arrived at our Kampala apartment. Air travel is always somewhat of a fog for me, the longer the trip, the thicker the fog. We arrived safely and on time, grubby and tired and really pleased to be here. That’s about all there is to say about the experience without whining about discomforts, food, and lack of sleep.
Today was spent grocery shopping, changing money ( USD=2200 Ugandan shillings) and buying our mobile. We asked the driver who picked us up from Entebbe airport last night to drive us to the shopping area and then back to our apartment, once we had completed our chores. Sounds simple and straight forward, but in reality, rather complex to organize and to carry out.
But the point of this blog is not to present a travelogue, others do that sort of thing for a living, but to talk about my reason for being here, which is to see if I can help the teachers and students at Stand Tall participate in a child centered educational program.
A word of explanation is necessary now. Stand Tall is a small school of 80 children that educates children between ages 9-18. Schooling in Uganda is tuition free but the students need to pay for uniforms and books. Stand Tall students have uniforms and books provided.

For those readers of this blog who don’t know me, another word of explanation. I am here for one month as a volunteer.
I don’t work for any agency or am part of any government or NGO. In other words what I decide to offer will be based solely on my knowledge and experience. I’m not sure how usual that is but as everyone we have met wants to know who I work for I thought that I should mention that I am an independent volunteer.
Tomorrow, Thursday, I will be meeting the teachers and students for the first time. I have no idea what they think about me coming all the way from Vancouver for one month to help them with reading and writing skills, but I’m sure to find out, and I will let you know.

Thanks for reading,

Honey

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Location:Kampala, Uganda