6th Grade School Outdoors

This past weekend, we took our 6^th grade on a 2-day camping trip in the Serengeti to learn about the plains, animals, and everything else you need to know about the world-renowned Serenget National Park. They had approached us about this idea about two months back, and Kayci and I thought that it would be a great idea to get our kids out of the classroom and learn, hands-on. Plus, it would have the added bonus of bonding and character building, as any good camping trip does!

That is exactly what happed at the first annual 6^th Grade School Out of The Doors (the change in name is because of the slight misunderstanding of our accents). We left at 6AM last Saturday, headed to the Serengeti, and entered the park around 7:30. Our first stop was the swinging bridge above the huge Nile Crocodiles (there were 3 people too scared to cross). We had breakfast and ventured to the middle of the park, where, after lunch and a short stop at the gas station, we got word there was a leopard in a tree right by the road. So, we rushed from the visitor center where we were eating and learning about the history of the Serengeti, and headed to the leopard tree. We were extremely lucky, and caught the leopard in the tree, laying right next to his dinner, Mr. Antelope. It was an incredible sight, and yet another educational experience for our students.

When we arrived at the campsite, we had a short lesson on tent building and spent about half-an-hour writing reflections on the day and answering a worksheet full of questions (when the students proposed this “educational experience” I don’t think they thought there would be any education involved). We started dinner, the campfire, and talked about what we had seen, what we learned, and played a variety of games. In our conversations, we learned that only 6 of the 29 students had ever been to the Serengeti, and only our JBFC girls had ever been camping!

Overall, it was an extremely successful trip (minus the two flat tires), and our students walked away having a greater understanding of the Serengeti, their nation, and what wildlife is. As we continue to better our school, giving our students a more hands-on curriculum, we hope to be able to provide more and more experiences just like the School Out Of The Doors.

Well, we are finally back in Tanzania after a very short, whirlwind tour in the States. It was a great time, but I know there were many more of you we wished to see, and didn't have time. I will write more about Boniface's impressions and feedback from the trip as a follow up to the previous post, but I wanted to make sure that I got this video that Ashli and Jonathon put together. This is our new promotional video, and I encourage you to share it with anyone and everyone you can to get the word out of what we are doing. This footage was taken while they were working on the documentary, Little by Little this past February and March. Hope you enjoy...

Eyes Wide Open

As many of you know, we were fortunate enough to have a US visa granted to our principal, Boniface, and we are now in the middle of our American safari. It has only been 5 days since we landed in the US, but I can tell that this is going to be a life changing, eye opening 3 weeks, in so many more ways than I could have imagined. Of course, there is the culture shock for Boniface; the freezing weather, the huge highways, the nice houses, and commodoties at our fingertips, but there is so much learning taking place that I know Boniface, and therefore the Joseph and Mary Primary School will never be the same.

Even though we have only visited one school (Bronxville Public School in New York), I can tell that Boniface has an entirely new appreciation for what it means to be an educator. He said to me that after almost 40 years in education, his eyes are finally open to what education can be, and he is excited to get back to work with a new fervor and drive. He is amazed by the teachers drive, the way that a class is controlled without the use of harsh language or corporal punishment, and how much FUN learning can be for a student when a teacher is excited about the subject. Of course, these are all things that we have discussed in our countless staff development days over the past year, but I am hopeful that Boniface having his eyes opened here will mean a new commitment by our entire staff to changing the education system in Tanzania by being an example at the Joseph and Mary Primary School. There are still so many more schools to tour, and so much more to see, but if we continue in this direction, I think this trip could possibly change what it means to be a teacher and student at JBFC!

Our Farm and Livestock

Every business, organization, or even individual reaches a point in their lifespan where they need to step back, evaluate, and re-organize. At JBFC, we had reached that point in our livestock and agriculture department last year, and we felt it was time to make some significant changes.

I should probably diverge for a minute, however, and talk about this department and why it is so important to the JBFC model. The first reason is that we at JBFC are constantly working towards self-sustainability. We hope, once all of our income-generating projects reach maturity, we will be able to provide for all of our operating expense in-country, allowing us to focus more of our budget on expansion and helping more children. A large part of these self-sustaining plans are reliant on our agriculture and livestock programs. However, this department also plays a big hand in life education for our children. By having our girls and students involved in learning how these projects are run, we are setting them up with invaluable skills to succeed later in life. We are showing them, by example, how to lead a sustainable life.

The first thing we have done, is to evaluate the various pieces of our farm, and looked to see which were the most productive. For instance, turkeys, pigs, and ducks are much more productive and profitable than milk cows and local chickens. So, as we looked at the business side of the farm, we realized a need to put more effort into those areas. Secondly, having struggled with the accountability of our workers in this department for some time, we figured it best to divide all of our workers, and put each one of them in charge of a different piece of the farm, creating an easy way to keep workers accountable.

We have only been trying this new system for a month, but it seems to be working. We have already seen tremendous improvement in the cleanliness of our farm, the livestock has begun to fatten up, and the vegetable garden is incredibly organized and weed-free! We are hoping this new system will continue to show improvements in the coming months while we continue to evaluate the different aspects of the farm and livestock ares, so that JBFC-Kitongo can move even closer to our self-sustainability goal!

A Brief Update on the School

First of all, I would like to apologize for the long silence. Slow to no internet is one of the many challenges of living in the Tanzanian bush!

Anyways, I would like to take a minute and discuss some of the major improvements at the school, following up on a previous blog about the challenges we are facing with the current education system. At the end of last year, we made some major changes in our teaching staff, bringing in some more qualified teachers with a greater understanding of English (since we are an English-Medium school). We were fortunately able to find these teachers due to the growing popularity of our school.

Thanks to these staff changes and continuing staff development, school is running much, much more smoothly this year. For two weeks before opening the school, we sat as a school staff, working to bring new concepts and techniques to the table, and discussed how these new ideas could be implemented in our school. We also agreed to rearrange our early years so that the students in our kindergarten, first, and second grades stay with the same teacher and aide for three years, creating consistency during incredibly important years of development. We have many new supplies for our classrooms, and we have recently had a math teacher from the States run a week-long seminar on math techniques and teaching styles. With all of this coming together, we are extremely hopeful for the year (and years) ahead. We have faith that our students will quickly rise to the top, and these systems we are using currently will be a model for many other schools.

And, just to mention, even though we ourselves viewed last year as one with many new challenges, we passed with flying colors by national standards. Our fourth grade had a 100% pass-mark on the national exams last fall, which put us on the radar on the national level for excellence in education.

I will write another post in the next few days about the progress being made with our documentary (the film crew is in Tanzania), but until then, I want to thank all of you for your continued support of JBFC. We would not be able to do what we are doing without you.

A Challenge with Education in Tanzania

When we first opened the school a year ago, I thought we were in way over our heads. The behavior of the students definitely left something to be desired, but I was much more concerned about our teachers. The students, I knew, would eventually come around. Before we opened school, we had led a 2-week staff development to try to get everyone on the same page. We covered tons of topics, from individualizing lesson plans, to group work, to overall school structure. We all left excited and I was hopeful for the weeks ahead.

Hopefulness ended day one when I realized very little of what we had covered in staff development actually sank in. All of the teachers had reverted back to their ‘stand only at the board, the student is always wrong’ mentality, having not a care in the world about the learning that needed to take place. I felt a little stupid for being so hopeful, having fully known this is how education is viewed across the country.

We took the next several months taking the approach of working with each teacher individually, giving periodical evaluations which only had one, maybe two suggestions at a time. Slowly, the feel of the classroom and the school started to change, and to date, our teachers are much more eager to experiment with different methodologies. We still have a long ways to go, but we are extremely happy with the progress thus far.

I bring all of this up not to praise ourselves for the progress we’ve had, but to try to help paint a picture of one of the main challenges facing the entire Tanzanian education system- teacher education and training. Sure, there are not enough teachers in Tanzania in general, but I believe the greater question is “are the teachers we do have good teachers?’ I think so many people, especially ones in administrative positions like myself, focus on numbers and forget some of these greater qualitative questions. We could have a 1:1 teacher-student ratio across the country and still not raise the standard of education because the teachers are not adequately trained. Don’t misunderstand me either. I do not believe there are enough teachers currently in Tanzania. I am merely talking about our focus and where it should be as we look at the bigger picture and talk about scalability, both of JBFC and on a more macro level.

You may be asking yourself- what is the answer to this complex question? What needs to be done? And, I am not going to answer that yet, as this is a solution we are still trying to work out ourselves. It is a complex issue, dealing with systematically changing a long-standing behavior structure, and it must be worked with slowly, which is exactly what we are doing in our little corner of the world.

We are the champions!

We are just back from a 5 day trip to Arusha, where we travelled to take home the gold from an international soccer tournament. We took 28 kids, with me, Rachel, and of course the coach, Ashley. The trip, I can say since we are back now, could not have gone smoother. For the first time in my African life, we did not have a car break down. Mind you, this is a little more than a minor miracle, seeing as we went through both the Serengeti and Ngorongoro National Parks.

The first night of our trip, we camped on the rim of the Ngorongoro crater. Manoj, our travel agent, let us use some of his tents, so we were set. We brought pasta and hot dogs for dinner, cooked over firewood, and watched the sun set over the crater. It was a picture perfect scene, albeit the girls thought they were going to die from the cold. It was good we only stayed one night, becuase the sniffles started the next morning, and we were out of there. We didn't want our players getting sick.

For the tournament, we stayed at an incredible boarding school, St. Jude's, which is a school devoted to alleviating poverty. They have incredible facilities, including hot water in the teachers' rooms and a grass field. They also had an incredible library which was inspiring for all of us.

The tournament started on Saturday, and we only played 2 games. One of the other teams we were slotted to play did not show up, so it was a fairly easy day. We had our challenging points in the game, including myself loosing it with the ref, but our girls were definitely the most fit and practiced team in the tournament. By the end of each game, our girls were ready to keep going, were the opponents were on their knees with exhaustion. We won both games 1-0, one game scored by Neema, and another by Tabu.

The final day, Sunday, we started, and again, the refs were favoring the other team. The team we were playing in the finals were the hosts of the entire tournament. However, after a little half-time talk with the refs and tournament officials at half-time (Ashley did the talking, while I stayed with the girls- my competitive streak came out), the playing field was a little more fair. However, our girls were so bitter after the first half that they came out with a fiery force. They played incredibly, knowing down anyone who came in their path, and we ended up winning the game 1-0, again, Neema's score leading us to victory.

After the game, there was lunch, some team building exercises with the other teams, and an awards ceremony. Our girls also took home 3 of the 4 personal awards awarded to players. Pili for best goalkeeper, Neema for best defender, and Tabu for best striker. We left the field pretty early, and headed back to St. Jude's where we rested, packed, and had dinner before an early bedtime.

Monday, we left Arusha around 4AM so as to make it back to Kitongo in one day, and we were all back on campus by 5PM. Again, no car or other issues on the road, just a long day of bumps! We weren't able to tell the people who stayed back much about the tournament, because they had been following us on the radio, and would constantly hear how the "JBFC Mwanza girls' team is fierce!" All in all, an incredible trip, and incredible confidence booster for all of our girls. It is amazing to see how the villagers keep coming up and congratulating the players, and how much pride there is in this girls' team- something extremely rare in this area. Now we are setting our sights on an international tournament with 60 teams from across Africa next August in Nairobi. We have lots to do before then, but we are hoping to be able to bring home the gold there, as well.

Finally, we would like to thank everyone who made our Arusha trip possible. Without your financial support, we would not have been able to make this happen, and all of us in the JBFC family are extremely grateful. Thank You!