An A and a Bee

Back at site and back to work. Here are a few highlights from the past few weeks:

An A

Our school just finished our opening exams and I could not be happier with how my students performed! My form 2 class almost made me cry tears of joy! For the first time, one of my form 2s got an A on the biology exam! I was so happy! And when I was grading all of the exams I felt like everyone had done pretty well so that also made me happy, but then when I put all the scores in my mark book it turns out that every single one of my students improved their grade from the last exam! I am beyond proud of them, not only does this show that they are working hard to improve, but the fact that they are doing so in a subject that they have always been told is extremely difficult, and some of them have heard their whole life that girls can't do well in math and science, is a huge deal!

The form 1 students also did really well on their biology exam with most of them earning about the same grade as they had been earning last term or better. This form 1 class is extremely hard working and most of them did very well on the KCPE (the national exam at the end of primary school, which schools use as a benchmark for admission to secondary school). So I'm glad that they are still living up to their potential!

A Bee

I was walking back to my house one day when suddenly I felt something really painful on my foot, I looked down to see that a bee had gotten caught between by sandal and my big toe and had stung me. This is the first time in my life that I have ever been stung by a bee, and I am actually quite terrified of them (or at least I used to be, being stung and seeing what it feels like has definitely helped curb my irrational fear). The bee had stung me between by toes right on the inside of my big toe and it hurt pretty bad, but I was able to hobble home and use my aspevenin kit (a reusable suction kit for snake, scorpion, spider bites, or in this case bee stings). The kit worked wonders and I was almost completely pain free and able to go and play volleyball in the afternoon as usual.

A Quote

My students, along with everyone else at my school and in my community, tend to say some pretty hilarious things to me. When I first got back to site after my vacation I was a lot tanner than when I had left and the staff and students took notice. One of my students said to me "Madam, you look a lot browner than when you left... Don't worry though you will recover!" This exchange made me laugh, I thought about trying to explain that in the US people actually pay to go to a salon and get a fake tan, but I was worried that description wouldn't really translate. Also, I got asked in the staff room the other day by one of my colleagues: "Obama is the President of North America, right?" So, I got to do some geographic education, which by the end had one of the teachers convinced that states in the US are actually like nations, not like provinces, just like Kenya has provinces within the country, like I tried to explain... I'm trying to do a better job of remembering some of the interesting quotes and questions I get asked, so hopefully there will be more to come.

Teaching Differently

During our training the Peace Corps training staff likes to stress that they don't just want us to go to our schools and teach, they want us to "teach differently". This means a number of things. One, a majority of teachers in Kenya go to class (when they go to class, attendance by teachers is a huge problem in Kenya... thankfully not so much at my school) and dictate notes to the students for the entire lesson, which if I were a Kenyan student I would say: BORING. So, since arriving at my school I have tried to demonstrate the effectiveness of making and using visual aids, interactive activities and laboratory practicals in my classes. A few of my favorite interactive lessons that I have used:

Being a Plant: When my form 2 class was studying transport in plants I took the whole class to the field and they had to make a plant with themselves as the material, so some of the girls were the root hair, some were the xylem in the root, xylem in the stem, and the leaves. Then I had students who were given water and mineral salt "molecules" and they had to act out the process by which the plant absorbs and transports these materials all the way until water is lost to the environment through the leaves. This was the first big activity that I tried with my class so it took quite awhile for the students to get the hang of it but when we went back to class to review what we had just done the girls really understood and were excited about the topic.

Classification: When my form 1 class was studying the units of classification (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species) we did an activity where they came up with their own sentence to remember the order. For example: Kenyan Students Can Often Fear Giant Snakes. Each student had to come up with one of these sentences on their own and then draw a picture to match! We had a blast and some of the sentences the students came up with were hilarious! And, I should comment that not a single one of my students missed this question on their exam!

Circulatory System: Right now my form 2 class is about to finish the topic of transport in animals and we have been studying the mammalian circulatory system. Much like the plant activity I recently took my class to the field where we constructed a circulatory system. I had students assigned different parts of the circulatory system and they held big labels (like, Left Ventricle, Aorta, Hepatic Vein etc). Then we took a big ball of yarn and connected all the parts together to represent the flow of blood in the body. There were also students who were red blood cells, oxygen and carbon dioxide, so the red blood cells followed the string through the circulatory system, when they got to the lungs they picked up oxygen and then brought it to the tissues, where they picked up carbon dioxide and brought it to the lungs. The whole activity worked really well and it was a blast!

Organelles: My form 1 class is currently studying the cell and we are going over all the different organelles and what they do for the cell. In my class we have been playing "Organelle Bingo". The students make bingo cards in their notebooks and fill them in with the different organelles however they want. Then, I draw an organelle at random, expect instead of just reading the name of an organelle I read a description, so, the students have to know about each organelle so they can mark it off on their bingo sheet!

Well, that's a short overview of some of the things I've been doing at site since the term started. More to come soon!

Cheers!