Tuesday:Teaching at Bondeni

After seeing the school and observing classrooms at Bondeni on Monday, I was ready for a lot of fun on Tuesday. We had gone through many of the supplies (nearly 2000 pounds) that we had brought to Kenya through donations and separated them by grade level and school. Area 2 school was for preschool-grade 2. Bondeni was grades 3-6, and Joska, the boarding school was grades 6-8. There were piles of stuff for Bondeni and many beautiful classroom posters. I was happy to see so many science posters, particularly on human body systems. Since I had seen on lesson on the respiratory systems and the digestive systems, I took them out to use in class. Having seen a lesson on adverbs taught straight from a study book, I decided that it would be perfect to do some sentence building using ideas from the John Collins system.

The student's (and teachers) loved the posters that I brought to school and we did a lesson on what happens to food as it moves through the digestive system. Where are all the "FitKids" supplies when you really need them? It helped for the kids to see a better representation of what the organs in these systems looked lie, rather than seeing line drawings and to learn more simply what happens to food during its journey rather than just label parts on a line drawing. The most peculiar part of the previous lesson and my lesson is that none of the Kenyan students giggled at words like rectum, anus, and feces which is quite different then what I am used to hearing in 4th and 5th grade classrooms. At first I thought it was because they were just labeled names to them, but then I was thinking that they are so used to human bodily functions all around them that it wasn't so funny to them. After all the streets are filled with "flying toilets" all around them on the ground, which is when someone  goes bathroom, ties it up in a plastic back, then throws it down the street. I also loved this one "bathroom pass" that one of the fifth grade classes used.

"5 Red girl Out for Biological Nature Call"

This is the teacher's bathroom at the Area 2 School. Before you laugh, in the slums having a bathroom at all is remarkable. Next to the teacher's room was a similar girls and boys bathroom and around the corner was simply a "wall" for the boys. The blue water is the flushing system. You scoop out some liquid and pour it down the drain. With no plumbing in the slums, I think (I didn't check) that it flowed downhill out a pipe. I heard that a man's shanty was in the line of flow, but again I didn't check. With stomach illnesses, some teachers had to learn to squat!

After teaching one class a science lesson, I started to dive into writing with the other two classes. This was so much fun! I used principals of the John Collins system and we built sentences starting with "The man ran". We worked on using more specific words for "man" and "ran" and started lists of these on the wall. We then talked about nouns and verbs, before reviewing the "adverb" lesson from the previous day. Most kids couldn't even remember what they had studied, so I knew it hadn't stuck with them. I made the definitions more "kid friendly" and usable. They learned that many adverb end with "-ly" and then they started finding workable adverbs. We also added adjectives, but my plan to go over similes was aborted as they didn't seem to have a clue to using them even though I saw them in there writing books. We were also running out of time.

I used John Collins FCA (Focus Correction Area) with them, since like seemed to like big words and phrases. I have them write sentences for two specific words for the noun and the verb, adverbs, and adjectives. I corrected all books, with smiles for each of these parts in a sentence and stars for extra credit. The books kept coming back to me. I loved this interaction as I got to talk to all students and praise them or give them fist bangs.

Teacher Robert