One Day at a Time

A friend recently asked me the following question:
”I know you have learned a lot about the kids, and the culture, and the politics of the school system, and I’m interested if this new knowledge has affected the work you do and the goals you set…?”

My goals for the most part are constantly changing.  I see so many different areas in which I can try to improve but I am only here for two years and I can’t do everything.  An issue I definitely want to tackle is HIV/AIDS education.  As always, my counterpart Patrick is a great resource because he is always willing and eager to help.  The two of us would like to maybe start a Health Club for the students and use that as a way to teach AIDS awareness or maybe we could have a class devoted entirely to HIV/AIDS and other health related issues.

As I have said before, Kenya places a huge emphasis on standardized testing.  So this term, I have spent a lot of time researching past tests to see what I should teach my students.  I do not necessarily agree with what is on the test but they need to do well on them in order to have any success in Kenya.  If they want to go onto to secondary school and even college, they must do well on the tests.

I have learned that there is a huge communication gap between the students and the majority of the teachers.  As I wrote in my previous post, I have seen a solid effort on the part of some of the teachers, but they are still teaching the students as if they were hearing students.  One goal I have is  to try and close this gap.

I’ve thought about dedicating all of my effort into teaching the students English and reading so that they can better understand the teachers in all of the other subjects.  Some of the older students are so far behind that I have to accept that I cannot really help them academically.  I am only here for two years and I cannot undo years of neglect from past teachers.  I do feel that my time is best spent working with students in lower primary.  So I am throwing around the idea of maybe teaching all of the English and reading classes in lower primary.  Of course this means that I will have to deal with those crazy kids in class one again for part of the day.

I would also like to somehow get the teachers to improve their KSL.  How I plan to achieve this goal is beyond me.  I really have no idea how to teach English to deaf students and I do not know how I can motivate the teachers to improve their KSL.

As for the school system, it is corrupt just like everything else in Kenya.  So I’m not even going to touch that one.

As I said, my goals are constantly changing so who knows what I will want to do tomorrow.