Say Cheez

            I went white water rafting on the Nile this past weekend, and it was much more successful than the last time I went – I didn’t get sick!  I went with the other intern, Wade, who my friend Kiera works with in Kampala.  White water rafting on the Nile is pretty crazy because it is a lot of class 5 rapids, but it is a wide river with few rocks, so you don’t have to worry too much when you are thrown out.  The first rapid we went down was a 15-foot waterfall.  There is a rapid called the “bad place” because you can be under water for 10 seconds before you pop back up.  The water was too low though, so we didn’t go to the “bad place.”  Instead, we went through “50/50”, which gets its name because 50% stay in the boat, while the other half get thrown out.  We all managed to stay in, but the boat ended up on its side and we were pretty close to tipping over.  The last rapid, called the Nile Special, has a 95% flip rate – so our guide gave us some guidelines.  He told us to hold on, but we would most likely get thrown out and not be able to hold onto the boat.  He also said that once you’re thrown out, you’d be under water for a while, but take a deep breath when you get back up because you’re about to get hit by another wave.  Well…advice I probably should have been paying more attention to.  We of course hit the wave and all get thrown out of the boat and the boat tips over…on top of me.  There was that moment of panic where I thought “uh, now what?”  I managed to get out, but of course I get out and the next wave hits me and I swallow a ton of water.  Yummy.  Of course I finally come out of the rapid simultaneously coughing up water and laughing.  Overall, it was a great trip.  I was so sunburned on my thighs and I am still in pain (I put on SPF 70 too!!). 

            I have been working on the resource room for the school that I work at in an effort to get teachers motivated to add to the room.  I made a math bingo for 60 students, which took forever!  I have also made posters to be used as examples for learning aids that teachers can hang in their classrooms.  Classrooms in most of the schools are completely bare.  I am also putting together binders of fun activities teachers can do in class in order to make lesson plans less boring.  My counterpart wants me to set up a workshop in one of the upcoming weeks to teach the teachers how to use the resources that I have started to put together. 

            On Tuesday I visited two schools with my counterpart in order to observe classes and to see how the school was doing with PIASCY (Presidential Initiative on Aids Strategy for Communication to Youth) and SFI (School Family Initiative).   SFI is a relatively new program initiated by the government as a complement to the US-AID funded Unity.  SFI aims to create families within the school in order to provide guidance to students that do not have a strong support network at home.  The students are divided up among the teachers, who serve as their parents.  They have a family name and they meet once a week to discuss issues they might be having at home or school.  So how did the two schools fare in our observations?  Not so good.  Both schools had no records of doing any PIASCY related activities this past term and neither school had started the SFI. 

            I was only able to observe classes at the first school we visited, and the lessons were...interesting.  I asked to see the teachers’ schemes of work and lesson plans (which are required to be made by the teachers) – neither had them.  The first lesson was P6 Science, and it took me about 10 minutes to figure out what the actual topic the teacher was covering.  He was covering Milk Products, which include: ice cream, powdered milk, evaporated milk, skimmed milk, butter, and cheez.  Yes, that’s right, cheez.  I asked to see a student’s notebook in order to look through what they have covered in the past and to see if the teacher is grading their work.  Well, the teacher is grading their work, but I discovered the students had done this same exact lesson a week before.  Everything that was written on the board had already been written verbatim the week before – and the students were still copying it again!  I was shocked.  In America, students would have immediately called a teacher out.  Not here.  I am sure the teacher had done this lesson in order to make me think his students were really smart and increase class participation.  (When I asked him about it after class he got really embarrassed and started to mumble an excuse.  I just let it go and said that next time I wanted to see a new lesson).  Lessons are only supposed to be 40 minutes long, but the teacher went for 60 minutes before the next teacher finally cut him off to begin his own lesson.  Therefore, the P6 Math class I observed was cut short.  He did a relatively good job for the shortened time frame, until he split up the class for group work.  He divided the class into 3 groups of 27 students to solve one problem each.  The problems were along the lines of “What is 14 squared?”  As you can see, it is not that effective to get 27 students to work together in order to solve this problem.  After observing the lessons, I had to talk with the teachers about their performance and give them feedback.  I have a form to fill out which gives a score to the teachers, and I felt pretty awful handing them a score of 20/50.  I worked with both teachers to come up with different teaching methods for their next classes and I stressed the importance of lesson plans and making a scheme of work.  I am returning next week to the school in order to observe their classes again and I have to fill out another progress report.  My counterpart will be checking on the progress of PIASCY and SFI within the schools, and hopefully they have made more progress.  

            At the second school we visited I was looking over the enrollment records and I noticed that a significant amount of students were dropping out.  P1 had an enrollment of 110 boys and 120 girls, while P7 had 21 boys and 7 girls.  I asked the head teacher why so many students, especially girls, drop out as the move up in Primary School.  He told me that a lot of girls get pregnant and have to leave school, and it has become a big problem.  My counterpart then volunteered me to do sex education with the girls, which the head teacher was immediately thankful for.  While I know this would be a great thing to work on, I hate to say that I am not sure I can do it without laughing.  If I do end up doing the sex education, then it won’t be until next term – so I’ll have some time to work on my maturity.  
             I hope you all had a great 4th of July - I wish I could have been back home for a BBQ at the Knaptons.  I miss you Steve, Penny and Sara!!  (Happy Steven?  That's two shout outs now.)