Storms in Africa

The storms in Africa are great. Since we live near the mountains (at the moment) I watched as the clouds got progressively darker and consumed the mountains. This occurred as I was walking home from town. It began to rain but I made it home before the big downpour. I have listened to the song Storms in Africa by Enya before and now I can "feel" the music...

On the last day I asked my students to write two things: 1. What they liked about my class and 2. what they didn't like about my class. The following are what the students wrote word for word. Keep in mind that this is the first year they are being instructed in English in all their classes.

In Lisa's class I like the way she teaches you get well understand and she's charming too. One thing is that I didn't like was that the students were too quite in class.

One thing which I liked about Lisa's class is that:
1. she is teaching well
2. she is very charming
3. she shows us true love.

The thing which I mostly liked about Lisa's class is:
*she tried her best level to teach in Swahili language so that everyone were able to understand. Congratulation!

One thing that I like most in Lisa's class is that she is carpable of her work and charming to her pupils. She is also understood in class and loving to all students in class.

One thing I lied about Lisa's class she is teaching very well, peacefullae smile etc.

One thing I liked about Lisa's class is more examples which she gave is so I can understand well. She is helpful so she make sure everyone can understand a subject.

and my favorite...

She's always smiling and that simplifies our task of asking questions

Let me say a few things about the Tanzanian school system. I can't remember all the facts so if something is wrong, please tell me! Basically the education system here is based on that of the British school system. There's primary school (elementary) which there are seven "Standards" (or grade levels). Then if you pass your exams and are selected you move onto O-level (middle school to lower high school) where there are "Forms" (or grade levels). Forms 5 and 6 are called A-level (last two years of high school). You take exams in Forms 2, 4, and 6. If you pass your exam in your form you move onto the next form. After Form 6 you go onto University if you are selected and can afford it. Every week during training we have the PCV of the week and they have told us many stories. One of the stories is that many students are not able to afford to go to school (in some cases the fees can be as little as Tshs. 20,000 ($20) for non-boarding schools to Tshs. 70,000 ($70) for boarding schools per semester). Everyone in my training group will be teaching Forms 1-6 (either Math, Biology, Chemistry, or Physics) besides the ICT people who will be at teacher's colleges. Now if you don't pass your exams there are a few options. One is to go back to the farm, say you tried your best, and live the best life you can. But you can also try to go to the growing number of teacher college's where you can get training on becoming a teacher. Teachers are greatly needed in this country. Many of them die of diseases or go to work outside of the country because the pay might be better and therefore the demand cannot keep up with the growing number of students attending school. Right now there are about 300,000 students in 2,000 schools and the board of education in Tanzania wants to increase the number of students in primary and secondary schools to 1,000,000 by the year 2010. If they do that schools will need to be built and teachers trained.