From Hilary: Hi, everyone! I'll be headed back toward the United States of America a little later this week…. I hope my guest blogging has provided a wider perspective on life here in Kasempa, Zambia. It's been a little hard to describe the differences between education in the United States and education in this part of Zambia in just a few entries. I think the general prevailing attitude is one of doing the best we can with the resources available. We haven't had running water in the school the entire time I've been here (there is a faucet in the classroom but nothing has ever come out of it), which makes science and art projects a bit challenging. There's no photocopy machine for the school, and there's only one math book for each grade level, so the kids take turns copying the problems out of the book then passing it on to the next student. As you can imagine, it takes several hours/days for all the kids in a particular grade level to complete the homework for the current math lesson. I've been amazed at the lack of wastefulness when it comes to paper. The kids typically have a small exercise book for each academic subject in which they write all the answers during their independent curriculum work. The kids are very careful to write on both sides of the paper, all the way across each line on the page. If a child leaves the school, his or her exercise books are=0 Acollected, and the remaining blank pages are torn out one by one to be used for taking tests, etc. It's quite a bit different from our throwaway society.
Things have been a little bit different instructionally as well. As I mentioned in a previous blog, the students spend most of their days working independently on the main academic subjects (social studies, science, mathematics, English, word building) with some whole/large group instruction for Zambian social studies, Kikaonde, art, and physical education. We had the students stop doing the independent curriculum work one week before the end of the term in order to allow enough time for grading and doing report cards, which meant that we were able to provide a little more creative instruction during the last week of school. Apparently the kids don't spend a lot of time writing in school; during this last week I gave a mini-lesson on writing a five sentence paragraph about their field trip to Mukinge Hospital (introductory sentence, three sentences with supporting details, concluding sentence), collected their first drafts and made corrections, then handed the corrected drafts back with instructions to write a final draft. The first drafts needed a lot of work, to say the least; the kids also told me that they had never done a final draft of their work before, so explaining the idea of fixing mistakes and turning in a second copy of their writing took a little bit of=2 0effort. Our second writing assignment was also a bit challenging but highly entertaining; I had the kids write a short script then create their characters with popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, colored markers, and stickers. (One of my favorite scripts called Cat and Mouse went something like this: CAT – Look, I see a fat mouse that I can eat. MOUSE – I think I will go for a little walk. CAT – I think my dinner is in front of me. MOUSE – I think I can smell danger. I will run home. CAT – My dinner has disappeared.… pretty good for a first attempt!) Once again, the kids' creativity came to the forefront as they started making capes, hats, and all kinds of other decorations for their characters.
So all in all, being and teaching in Zambia has been a great experience. If anyone has the opportunity to teach or work in Africa or another foreign land, I highly recommend pursuing the adventure. And if you come to Mukinge Hill Academy in Zambia, bring lots of rubbers (erasers), high quality pencils, and paper – we would certainly appreciate the contributions! Please feel free to email me at hilaryburg@aol.com if you would like any further information or have any questions… and thanks for bearing with the sideways pictures, weird text appearance, and other blogging mishaps! Lots of love to all, H ilary (Twasanta, mwane – that means thank you in Kikaonde!)
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