Mwalimu Tyler

My first official day as an ICT mwalimu at Kihonda Secondary School didn’t start as smoothly as I would have hoped. My shangazi got a late start this morning and the hot water for my bucket-bath wasn’t ready until 15 minutes later than I was expecting. I’ve worked very hard to establish a predictable routine in the morning, almost down to the minute, but considering the Tanzanian concept of time and relative lack of clocks and reliable alarm systems the fact that I was ready for my maji moto every morning at 6:30 I’m afraid was lost on the extended family member I depend on every morning. I chose to take the water before it was ready in order to save as much time as I could and ended up making up the difference with some speed bathing.

The interruptions unfortunately didn’t end there. I’ve been lucky to not need my med kit for much since arriving in country, but have once or twice used the throat lozenges provided by the Peace Corps. I went again this morning to grab a few lozenges for my backpack and per usual, removed a few small ants along the way. However today the deeper I dug into the kit, it seemed, the more ants I needed to remove. I continued doing so until I found the source of the increased amount of the pests. Apparently a colony had decided to make the back right corner of my med kit its permanent residence and had not only moved in, but had begun laying eggs as well. I cursed, bit my lip and took the kit outside to really shake everything out. The time saved speed bathing with cold water was immediately lost but still didn’t put me too far behind. I was determined for today to be a good day. It was my first day teaching and I really couldn’t wait. I ate and drank chai quickly and left home only a few minutes behind schedule.

By the time I got to school (about a 10 minute walk when I’m really moving) any misfortune the morning had brought at home had completely been replaced by the adrenaline the prospect of teaching brought. I went to our normal room, grabbed my chalk and eraser and headed to the computer lab. Class was set to start at 7:40, and I had arrived at about 7:15. Students were already in the lab, but they were there to clean the floors and prepare the room for the day. I could tell they were avoiding other duties and probably shouldn’t be reading the newspaper or playing games, but I didn’t say anything. They eventually left the room to me and I began uncovering the computers, one at a time. I hadn’t had any time to explore what computers worked or what was on them, so I knew the coming lesson could really go either way. By 8:00 (20 minutes behind schedule, hamna shida, that’s Tanzania) the computer technician brought me a room full of Form 1 students.

I was so excited to start that I’m pretty sure I forgot to introduce myself, which was fine, because they would probably have just called me teacher anyways. I was worried about my ability to use “level appropriate” English, but I think I fell into it pretty easily, in fact, it almost felt natural. I was also somewhat worried about participation, specifically my ability to wait, remain patient and not panic while waiting for students to speak up. Luckily, standing in front of the classroom of 30 or more students felt incredibly comfortable, even as they stared blankly and quietly as I repeated myself multiple times. I even found myself using the charade like non-verbal reinforcements I had seen other current volunteers using.

My first activity to gauge their knowledge was more or less a failure. I asked each of them to raise their hands and show me:

1 if you know a little about computers
2 if you know some about computers
3 if you know a lot of about computers

Most hands that rose, if any, were half up at best - but there was some response. I saw a lot of one’s and two’s, which I was expecting. The next activity I was hoping would be a bit more specific and engaging. I asked them to help me make a list on the board of all the things they knew computers could do. I asked the question a few times and waited for a response. Things move slower here. It takes time for the students to translate and understand what you are asking, think of an answer and work up the courage to give the answer in front of the entire class. Eventually a girl in the class raised her hand and said, “It simplifies work.” A great answer! I was so thrilled I nearly skipped to the board to write it. (In retrospect, however, the answer was almost too textbook. I followed up with “HOW does it simplify work” which produced no response. We’ve been told that this is a common problem in Tanzania. Students very often will memorize terms and definitions verbatim from textbooks, memorizing the English rather than actually learning the information. I guess some volunteers have seen students memorize and write entire essays for their exams, only to use the essay for a question that in no way relates to the content they have memorized.) Either way, I was thrilled and it really got the ball rolling. After a few long minutes we had a relatively decent list of things a computer could do. (One student mentioned drawing, which was a great opportunity for me to tell them about how I was a graphic designer and created art on the computer for a living.)

Next, I asked the class to help me make a list of the things that they wanted to learn about computers. By this time, the ball was really rolling (in relative terms, things were still moving quite slowly. But they were participating!) Just as we were finishing our list and as I was moving on to definitions and describing the difference between hardware and software (my fellow CBT members helped me come up with a great analogy using the brain as hardware and ideas as software) a teacher walked into the room and said, “I want chairs.” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. How rude! I was teaching. Students were learning. And you want chairs? I don’t care what you want. He didn’t even acknowledge that I was in the room; he spoke directly to the students as if I wasn’t even there. I only get four 80-minute sessions with each of these groups and we already started 20 minutes late. The last thing I need is another distraction. Regardless, with little to no hesitation the students got out of their chairs, picked them up and carried them away. I had no idea what to do and was completely powerless. Was my lesson over? Were they coming back? Were they planning on standing for the next 50 minutes?

Luckily one student remained in the room (he was the only one with a wooden rather than plastic chair). I looked at him, then out the door, then back at him. “Are they coming back?” I asked. “Yes,” he answered. “With chairs?” I asked. “Yes,” he repeated. “Good,” I concluded with bewildered relief.

About 10 minutes later the room had refilled with students. We moved through the lesson on hardware, which included more participation and drawing on the board, plus my new awesome brain analogy and moved on to what I’m sure the students were all looking forward too – the computers! Turning on the computers was a bit chaotic, as I knew it would be. Not all of the machines worked and some ran Ubuntu while others used Windows, which made it difficult to explain how things worked at first.

My original plan was to have each of the groups around a computer report back to me the programs that they found on each computer. However the trill of having the machine working in front of them was too much for them to sit and simply look at what it could do, they wanted to use them! I quickly abandoned the plan and decided to move right to the end of the lesson I had planned. (I also really felt like I had reached teacher mode by this point. I’m not sure where it came from but after a few failed attempts at “hands up if you can hear me” and “quiet please” - “eyes on me” with an incredibly fluent and seemingly practiced gesture mimicking the command rang from my voice like I’d said it a million times before, with authority no less! I’m not sure how or why, but it definitely felt natural, totally fit the situation and completely commanded the attention of the room. It was perfect. I was teaching.)

I explained to each group how to open a word processor. (Word for Windows and Open Office for Ubuntu) and introduced the sentence:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

I asked the class if they knew what was special about this sentence. They had no idea, so I explained the fact that this sentence contains every letter in the English alphabet. I started to go through the letters and to my very pleasant surprise they all joined in!

I then explained that we would now be playing a game. Each computer would race to see who could type the sentence the fastest and raise their hands when they were finished. They loved the idea and jumped right in. The groups finished at a staggered pace and I finally had an opportunity to walk around and see where they were having problems. Many of them didn’t know how to add spaces, move the cursor or delete mistakes. Some even had problems using the mouse. The activity turned out to be really useful because not only were they thrilled to be using the computer but they were practicing the basic computer skills they would need to effectively use a computer. It also gave me some great ideas for things to cover in the future.

By the end of my time with the group they didn’t want to leave. And neither did I! Some of the slower groups tried to stay behind in order to finish typing the sentence and show me what they had done. (I didn’t have a prize for completing the task, so I went to each computer that was finished and gave high fives, which they LOVED!)

Teaching the class was a completely new kind of high for me. It was a complete adrenaline rush the entire time and I left the class beaming with excitement. It left me in such a good mood that I actually didn’t mind our Kiswahili session today, which I very regularly dread. I can only hope that every day will be half of what today was.