I have had a fairly restful day, for once, and feel well prepared for what will, I hope, be a big day tomorrow. The main reason for my current trip to Kosele is to prepare the ground, (literally), for our Agriculture College, which will be starting in January. Tomorrow we will be interviewing three candidates for the teaching post(s), which this new venture creates.
It is a both exciting and challenging prospect. We have advertised more widely than usual for these posts and have got good candidates to choose from. There will be four of us on the interview panel; Mr Dedans, our head teacher, Mary our manager, Duncan the farm manager and myself. Between us we should be asking a series of carefully honed questions to really put the interviewees through their paces. I am trying to decide whether or not it would be mean to get them to answer a short exam paper as well as do an interview.
It is encouraging to see how much agriculture is being promoted in the Kenyan media. One of the key things we will be looking for in the interviewees tomorrow is a good understanding of the challenges facing Kenyan agriculture at present and a real enthusiasm for doing something about it. As part of our drive to become a more self-sufficient organisation the teachers in the Agriculture College will have their pay tied to the performance of the farm. We are hoping that this will deter any but serious applicants. If we are unable to appoint anybody tomorrow we will have to cast our recruitment net further, (and I will have to teach the students myself for the first few weeks of term). This shouldn’t be too much of a problem. The most exciting part of this whole project is its unique character. Planning a curriculum and timetable around the agricultural calendar presents a number of opportunities for creative approaches to teaching and learning. I can’t wait to get stuck into it with our first group of students.
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