Discussions I never though I would have [Part 2]

Today has been a busy schedule of teacher observations again and has been very revealing. I've seen teachers from both of our schools today. From the youngest children in our Nursery class to the oldest in Form 2 of our secondary school. It has felt a bit like fast forwarding through a film watching children grow up. First lesson this morning I was watching the nursery children learning to write the alphabet. My last observation was a geography lesson with Form 2 taught by Teacher Collins.

Watching Collins teaching was a very strange experience in many ways as he is the main reason that Judi and I became involved with Kenya. About eleven years ago we started to sponsor Collins and just over ten years ago came out to Kenya to work with the lady who ran the orphanage he then lived in. Collins is about the same age as my son Tom and he came out to Kosele with Judi, our children Tom and Ellie and I when we started our work in Kosele in July 2002. Collins is currently waiting to start University in Kisumu, (the closest city to us) and is earning his keep teaching humanities subjects for us. Collins is a good teacher and had a nice rapport with the class I watched him teaching. We sat in my ‘office’ (the living room of the house I stay in) to discuss the lesson. When Collins was living with Tom and Ellie in 2002 the same room had been their classroom. We had a quiet chuckle about the way life works out.

As I type our Year 8 pupils are doing another test for me. Tonight it is English. I’m very glad we have a mark scheme for the questions. The tests that the pupils sit in primary school in Kenya are all multiple choice, fifty questions to a paper. It is very impressive that our children can speak three languages – their ‘mother tongue’ (Luo, the local tribal language in our case), Kiswahili and English. I enjoy the creativity of writing but have long forgotten the formal rules of English grammar. The questions that the children have to answer on their English paper are, I think, very hard so it will be extremely interesting to see how they get on. Despite the multiple choice format the questions are very subtle and require good subject knowledge. There is about an hour left to go and you can almost hear the grey cells turning over.

Tomorrow is my last day for lesson observations. On Thursday and Friday all the pupils in our primary school will be sitting their first exams of the year to help us determine their baseline performance. Next Tuesday we’ll be poring over the data as part of our training day. I still can’t believe that I get to do this job sometimes. Teaching isn't for everybody but when you feel the momentum building with a group of youngsters and teachers it’s very exciting.