Categories
Mombasa

Day Off

After an exhausting week, a day trip up to Kilifi (one hour north of Mombasa) helped a bit, but it created a new problem: I have the worst sunburn I have ever had in my life.  No, I wasn’t wearing sunscreen, and as a result I know your pity ends there, but it is a bit odd because normally I only apply sunscreen to my nose and shoulders with no trouble, but in this case, my feet are burnt!  So are my hands, and, well, everything, although my face is okay because it was shaded by the book I was reading.

I took this picture before I realized I was being slow-roasted:

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So today I’m not teaching because my knees hurt so much from the sunburn and it pains me to wear long pants.  So, while my students go neglected thanks to me, I thought I might as well update the old blog.

While I was in Kilifi I visited a volunteer who bought me a delicious mango and who also let me into her Deaf School’s computer lab, which has a dozen or so Pentium 4 machines, all donated by CFSK, putting my school’s library to shame.  I brought my laptop along and with a little help I was able to load up the computers with an array of educational software, and the one machine that wasn’t booting at all worked just fine with my custom DOS Educational Disk, which is pretty cool, as I designed it, after all, to be a “quick fix” for times like these.

From the sustainability perspective, the experience was less than ideal, just because running all the separate installation programs would have taken too much time for a non-IT person, but nonetheless the students can now do more than just “learn computers.”  They can use computers to learn all sorts of subjects.  I wrote to the NGO that donated the computers to ask if I could help arrange a better suite of pre-loaded software for future donations.

Here are some kids who wanted a glimpse of what the grown-ups were doing in the lab:

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Since I’m sidelined at the moment, I’ve been watching movies (I bought a war movie compilation a while back, so I don’t fall out of touch with violence while I’m in the Peace Corps) and I’ve been doing more research on educational software.  For those of you with the interest and the time, I have really been enjoying one particular site.  Here are a few pages from it that I found particularly relevant to what I’ve been researching:

This is the only site I’ve found so far that actually reviews educational software in a meaningful way.  It was a great find, because some 500+ educational softwares are released every year, so how the heck am I supposed to know which ones to look at?

In any case, I’ve started drafting a short design document for what I think will be best for teaching the kids here with computers.  It’s a ways off from completion, but it’s nice to be entering that stage.

In totally unrelated news, I recently noted in my far-less-prolific movie blog that The Mustachioed Bandit Meets His End now has an IMDB page.  I’ve submitted more info to them that’s not yet public, but even in its incomplete state, the page isn’t half bad.  Unfortunately my name is in IMDB in two different places, so I’m waiting for them to merge the entries so my giant moviemaking ego can be consolidated into one easy-to-read page.

Categories
Mombasa

Two Days in Second Grade

Yesterday I was late to the morning assembly, and apparently it was a short one, because it was already over.  As the children filed into their classrooms, I joined the circle of teachers who were milling around to see if there were any announcements, and there were: the Class Two teacher informed me that she is traveling up to coast to go home for the day.  “Paul, you will need to teach Class Two” was the extent of my guidance.  Normally I teach the vocational students in the morning, but they would have to wait.

The children were waiting, mostly seated, when I entered the room.  I explained that I would be the substitute, and they quickly pointed out the calendar to me so I could see the schedule.  First up: News.  “What’s news?” I ask.  No one knows.  I imagine trying to explain current events to this group who, for the most part, can’t color.  I decide to spend all day doing English vocab in different permutations.  Mostly I draw funny pictures on the blackboard, try to get the kids to tell me what they are, then label them and have them copy.  It was a long day of this.  By the end my hands, shirt, and trousers were covered in chalk.

Today after the Ash Wednesday mass, which was entirely in Swahili, I walked back to school with the Catholic students and resumed teaching Class Two again, and continued for the rest of the day.  I followed a similar routine, but for “Science” class, I decided to teach “ice” and “steam.”  As they were drawing pictures of ice cubes, it occurred to me, why not bring some into class to make this more tangible?  I scurried home (it’s visible from the classroom) and brought back an ice cube tray.  Upon my return, I began passing around the cubes to demonstrate “cold,” another vocab word I had written in the board.  In hindsight this shouldn’t have been surprising, but the children began eating the ice cubes, which prompted them to fight, to pull each others’ mouth open, and finally to surround me shrieking for more ice cubes, which I did not have.  They were so loud that the neighboring classroom’s teacher came over and told them all to hush.  Classroom noise is not usually a problem: it’s a Deaf School, after all.

I filled up both ice cube trays tonight so they will be ready for tomorrow, in case I decide to reintroduce anarchy into the classroom.

I do feel certain about one thing right now: the blackboard is the enemy.  And as much as I’m reading, writing, and focusing on computers as the solution, it’s not the only solution.  I feel strongly that well-selected worksheets/workbooks could do far more good for the students than the blackboard model (or for that matter, the projector/TV model— one visual simply can’t apply to that many children at the same time).  At any given moment there just aren’t enough attentive eyes on the board, and of the children watching, even fewer have a good understanding of what’s happening.  Custom worksheets for the students, handed out according to ability, would be far more valuable.

I’m going to buy a printer.

Categories
Mombasa

Obligatory Photos of Adorable Children

“Children” here is used loosely—many of the students are not that young!

Sunday was not technically a day off for me, as I joined 129 or 131 or so students (it was my job to count them on the bus) and a few teachers and staff on a field trip to Mtwapa.  It was “Disability Day 2009” or some such event, and our Deaf students were the first to arrive, followed by, in no particular order, the children with cerebral palsy, other children in crutches/wheelchairs, the albinos, and others whose disabilities I couldn’t superficially observe.

The day consisted of playing on the swings until the other schools all arrived, then watching cultural dances and songs (not necessarily the most engaging thing for the deaf, but there was a KSL interpreter there, which helped a little).  After that, lunch was served, then everyone got back on their busses and left.

Numerous children at my school have disabilities beyond their deafness as well, for example the boy on the left, below, is autistic:

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And the girl on the left, below, is wheelchair-bound:

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These children are just little and cute, so well worth a picture:

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And here are some kids on the swings:

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The event overall was a hit: the kids get to go somewhere different and the lunch was curry (it was an Indian-sponsored event), and that’s pretty different from the usual cafeteria meals.

I read a lot, sitting behind the big crowd in a cooler spot, since I’m not much for the song-and-dance, and I finished The Professor and the Madman, which I enjoyed very much.  It made me want to be an Oxford elite and to dedicate my life to some obscure but important cause.

In other news, I’m sleeping a lot.  I don’t think I have mono but I’m definitely very tired, as I seem to sleepwalk through my teaching responsibilities, nap, eat, and then sleep again.  There are so many variables, what with the malaria medication, that I really have no idea what’s going on, but it’s frustrating.  I feel like 50% is my new 100%.

One of the library computers died, which makes me sad.  It was the fastest one—a 233MHz machine, and the only one with USB, and for some reason it’s moving at molasses speed now, taking ten minutes to get through the BIOS.  This means I’ll be using the 100MHz machine in its place, which has far less potential.  I’ll get more technical in a later post.

The 2008 KCPE results are also in, and they’re basically just a reshuffle of the 2007 results, with a similar average.  My school is very happy because we moved up in the rankings, and despite my feeling on the matter I didn’t interrupt to rain on the parade, but really, the change can be chalked up to statistical luck.

Well, I’ve been up for almost six whole hours, so its off to bed again for me!