After arriving at our Moshi accomm0dation (Springlands), a quick shower and lunch, we headed out (just a 10 minute walk) to the three local government primary schools where we would be doing our prepared classroom lessons… Mandela and Azimio Schools share the same campus and Kalolemi is just across the railway track.
This was the first real taste of Africa for group 2 – and was quiet an eye opener. The schools are very basic, the classrooms have up to 50 students each, and it is hot and very dusty….. but the kids are absolutely amazing, their passion and exuberance is compelling – just the thing to keep our kids minds off jet lag and tiredness.
Everyone very quickly learned that their carefully prepared lessons were (mostly) just not practical… they were for the most part too structured and depended too much on spoken explanations…most of the local kids English is very basic, and it is nit that much better for many of the teachers…. So pretty much everyone had to customise their lessons on the fly, and incorporate much more mime/action and play.
The second big lesson learned was that you have to be VERY careful about giving out pretty much anything to a crowd of 100-300 over-excited preschoolers….. Even an empty bag (which they thought contained balloons) was enough to generate a near riot… so we had to make a hasty retreat to calm things down.
Incidentally – the group 2ers did amazing – and after returning to Springlands and having dinner, most managed to keep themselves awake until 9 or 10 in the evening…
