Form 1

It has been a very good day in the life of our Technical School today. Having spent last week selecting students for our new Form 1 intake and making preparations for their arrival, today was the day they started. It was very encouraging to see them arrive on time and dressed smartly. I’m not really sure how they all felt as they went to take their first breakfast together but I was quite nervous about the whole day. It is very important for us to encourage these young people and to give them a real hope for the future. None of them would have been able to go to secondary school if we hadn't offered them a place. Their teachers remain confident that we have chosen a good group with great potential. Time will tell but at this point in the day (a couple of hours after the end of school) I am feeling a bit more relaxed about the rest of the week.

I've spent the day in school inspector mode observing lessons in our primary school and giving feedback to teachers on their lessons. Most of them have been through this process before so it is fairly familiar territory for them this year. I enjoy watching teachers at work. There is always much to learn. I particularly enjoy the feedback session after an observation. Talking to our teachers I get the distinct impression that this type of professional development is not widely practiced in public schools in Kenya. Rose, our Year 2 teacher, told me that you are inspected while you are training to be a teacher and then left alone to get on with it. I am encouraged by our teachers’ response to being observed. They are appreciative of both training and performance management seeing these practices as positive and career enhancing. We will follow up with a training day next week.

It’s my birthday today so I’d like to thank all the regular blog readers who have sent me birthday greetings. I think I spent my birthday last year in Kenya as well, so I’m now getting used to it. I try and keep this event as low profile as possible as I don’t really like anybody making a fuss about it. I spent an interesting forty minutes this morning observing a lesson about divisibility rules in maths. I can confidently say that my age as of today is definitely divisible by five!