Monday afternoon: first visit to Bondeni School

Later in the morning, I visited the Bondeni School just down the "road" from the Area 2 school. We would be using the Area 2 school as our base of operations and most teachers would be working there, but as it only goes up to grade 2, I was moved over to the Bondeni School to teach grade 5 (or as they say in Kenya "class 5"). It was a short 5 minute walk to Bondeni, but it wasn't safe without a Kenyan teacher walking a "Mzungu" (foreigner) through the streets. There are 10 areas to the Mathare Valley slums. The Bondeni area is known for the making of alcohol which is used by many of the Kenyans to escape the hopelessness of living in the slums.

 You can see the Bondeni School (silver building) in the distance.

The route to Bondeni.

Kids are always friendly and stop us so we can hold their hands or take their pictures.

Arriving at new Bondeni School. It is three stories tall and made out of corrugated steel. The windows, doors to classrooms, and stairs are all located on the inside part of the school. 

 I arrived at the school with other teachers and we were introduced to several classrooms and treated to songs and greetings. Teachers were dropped off to classrooms and I was dropped off to a fifth grade class. After the greetings, I was told that I would be in this classroom and the teacher would soon be there. Well, I jumped right in and talked with the kids, told them about myself, asked them about themselves, and still the teacher did not show up. I remembered to take out my book of photos of my family and shared them with the class. I told them not only about my family, but the snow, ocean, and lighthouse that was in some photos. The teacher still did not show up. I was having a blast, just like a first day of school in America. After about an hour, the teacher, Titus, showed up. Titus is the head fifth grade teacher. It seems that in Kenya, teachers can leave students alone in the classroom, while they take care of business and other things. 

Titus, then taught the class a lesson on adverbs. It was very formal and from the Kenyan curriculum book. There were not enough copies for the class so they shared. The kids responded well in the class. I had to figure out that "cha" meant "teacher" as they kept shouting it out to get Titus's attention. The lesson was straight from the book and dealt with difficult definitions and uses of adverbs, and then the class copied sentences out of the book and chose adverbs to put in the missing places. I looked at the student's writing notebooks and they were all neat and careful with their work and I saw no doodles or pictures in any of the books. The boy in front of me was trying to write with a pen that looked very old and well used. I saw there was no ink left in it, so I gave him my pen to use. The classroom was very small with almost 30 students in it. The students sat three to each small desk and bench set and it was very close quarters for all students. They were very well behaved.

Teacher Titus checking work.

Students getting notebooks.

This was all of the supplies in the class. All poster are hand-made.

 

I then went to another fifth grade class to see teacher Robert teach a lesson on the Digestive and Respiratory systems. He drew outlines on the board and the students could identify all the parts of the system. They copied this down in their notebooks. The drawings looked just like the drawings in the curriculum book that would appear on the 8th grade test. This test must be passed to get into a high school. A lot of pressure is placed on the students to get ready for the test. The students respond because the test will influence their future. I was impressed that the students could name all the parts, but I wasn't sure they knew how the systems worked to digest food or exchange gases for breathing.