Up and out at 7:45 – We arrived at Red Rose for a second day of observing (and in some cases, actually doing some teaching). Our goal this week is to get a feel for the classes and to start planning the lessons we will be teaching in the mornings next week.
In most classes, the students in our group (from the United States) are still mainly observing and getting to know their students. But in some cases, as described below, there’s a lot of teaching going on already. Here’s an account by Maria:
In the third grade (8 and 9-year olds) Daniel and I (Maria) were in charge of teaching English and math before the break and Social Studies and Science afterwards. Daniel ran the English class where the students reviewed a story that we had read yesterday (moral of the story: help your neighbors) and talked about what professions we wanted to be when we grew up. Mercy and Patience, the two girls in the class, wanted to be a doctor and a banker, respectively, while most of the boys wanted to be pilots or policemen. One of the boys, Walles, wants to be a teacher. In math, which I was in charge of, we continued converting days into weeks and weeks into days. These conversions required a mastery of the seven times tables, which is something that I think we’ll continue to work on for the next couple of weeks.
During the break most of the children played outside in the courtyard, but Mercy brought me back inside for an impromptu Swahili lesson. She taught me the numbers, one through ten, and basic greetings (“welcome”, “how did you sleep”, etc.) and responses. I’m going to be quizzed tomorrow, so I’ll have to study tonight. Daniel and I finished the last unit in the social studies book after the break. We talked about caring for our environment -- the people, animals, plants, and resources around us. In science class, we talked about the human body.
I think Daniel and I are warming up to teaching the third grade students. We have some ideas for what we can do tomorrow and Thursday and are still working on our plan for running the classroom next week.
END OF ACCOUNT – Thanks, Maria!
Other pairs of students had other experiences, of course, and we may have a chance to add other experiences to the blog, but that should give a flavor of what we did at Red Rose today.
We then headed to lunch (again at the Ngong Hills Hotel), and at the end of lunch, we were met by a Member of Parliament (MP) who was -- before he came out of retirement to be an MP -- a former high school teacher, then superintendent of schools in Nairobi, and then a representative of Kenya in India on education issues (there are 3000 Kenyans studying there). He spoke to us about comparative systems of education and answered our questions. That was pretty cool.
After that, we left the Ngong Hills Hotel and went to the Girls Soccer School, which was a very moving experience that I’ll get a student to describe in more detail here to get a student view, but Jeff's earlier post does a really nice job of describing it, so see that description.
We then returned to Rosa Mystica. Some people chose to rest, while an intrepid group of us went to see Pamoja FM, a community radio station in Kibera that played a role in calming the community in the post-election violence of early 2008.
The few of us who went were actually interviewed live on a radio station that reaches about a million people – mainly in Kibera. Again, I'll get a student or two to describe that experience soon...
Here is James
On Tuesday after our time at Red Rose, Maria, Katie, Alexis, and I went with Ken and Mr. Goldberg to Pomoja FM, a community radio station broadcasting from heart of Kibera. Pomoja is unique in that it caters specifically to the residents of Kibera, who are generally ignored by the traditional media in Kenya. Along with music, the station has talk shows and other shows geared towards specific demographics within Kibera (e.g. women). The station, much like everything else in Kibera, exists purely through creative use of space and recourses. The US embassy in Kenya as well as USAID provides substantial assistance to the station (one of the main broadcasters at the station was eager to mention that he was invited to the US embassy for the Fourth of July).
The staff showed us around the station, which is housed in two apartments in one of the only 3+ story buildings in Kibera. It is up on the sixth floor, and there were a lot of stairs. Although the station runs on a meager budget, they produce shows just like any other radio station in the United States, complete with personality DJs and hosts and new music. For the residents of Kibera, who are too poor to afford television, Pamoja FM is one of the main sources of entertainment and as such sometimes has as many as one million listeners.
After being shown around the station, we were invited into the studio to be interviewed by the stations lead talk show host. Although most of his interview with Ken was in Swahili, he took about fifteen minutes to interview each one of us students and ask us about our experience in Kibera.
Overall, our visit to the radio station was an amazing experience. The services it provides to the community are obviously incredibly important and it was awesome to be able to sit down and experience Pomoja FM first hand.
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