21/10/2010

Teaching in Zambia

Ross Horowitz taught in Zambia for two weeks. He wrote a very open and detailed blog of his fantastic experiences whilst he was there.

Here is an extract:

I get up early. It’s hot and sticky as per usual.Robert is picking me up at 8. I’m full of nerves about class. No idea if I’ve prepared enough or too much. Robert has his son with him and drops him off at another school on the way. We go to the school from a different road and pass through another town of Maramba and see their open market, and as we get closer to the school, the much smaller open market of Linda.

When I get to the school, I meet Catherine the principal who wasn’t there on Friday. She introduces herself and tells me about the school. She asks about Friday and she tells me that I should have more of an orientation to the school before teaching a lesson. So I get to watch the teachers teach a couple lessons. One teacher teaches a lesson about flowering plants that it’s clear she doesn’t quite get herself and is reading from the book and she misspells a couple of the bigger words. Ok, photosynthesis is a hard word even for native English speakers. And then another teacher teaches addition. They have a whole process of expanded notation of addition of large numbers that is quite burdensome. I suppose it makes sense in a country where the smallest currency is a 50 Kwacha note. The children are taking exercises from the board and writing them in their books. I get to mark them. This gives me an idea of process.

And then they have break. I expect break to be mealtime as it was on Friday. But I find out they don’t have enough food for the kids. I ask what they need. Soon I’m going with the principal to the Maramba market to buy food. The Linda market is too expensive. Luckily as we’re leaving, Lamock is outside with a car. He had come to take pictures of me with the class. He gives us a ride to the market.

When we get back, I find that the children have gathered mangoes from a tree within the school grounds. Catherine shows me that they have a whole garden they’re growing food in, but harvest time won’t be for a couple months.

The children are reading books for the rest of the time. They’re obviously donated from the outside. Likely from England from the various British style in the books. Not Africa based. One book is about bears playing in the snow and a child asks me what snow is. I ask her if she knows what ice is, and tell her it’s like fine ground up ice, and it falls from the sky like rain.

Robert picks me up at 12:30 like he’s supposed to. Tomorrow he will get me at 1:30 so I can see where some of the children live. On the ride back, Robert and I wind up talking about television and I tell him that people in America who have satellite TV can get hundreds of channels. He says in Zambia on satellite you get 40 or 50 and most of them are religious. But he says that they like watching American wrestling. And he asks me if it’s real. I explain it isn’t and it’s all about the performance and the drama. It’s not a real competiton.

Ross summarised his placement with Travellers in a paragraph:

I know that I would not have felt comfortable making a trip like this on my own. Travellers Worldwide was a good guide to enable me to see a part of the world I likely would not have seen without help and enabled me to meet people that I would not have met otherwise. The experience is one that will stay with me forever.

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