I started with a tour of the school to greet the classes and teachers. Tony’s plan to train Haddy (G2) to monitor the text books fell at the simple fence that she was not in today. So he went straight into training Modou Lamin to use Quicken whilst I met with Abibatou to discuss how she runs the Nursery. We inspected the Nursery classrooms and I asked her to pick out the aspects of each one that indicated that stimulating learning was going on, that children’s work was being displayed and that the learning aids were clean, tidy and up to date. Nursery 1 definitely scored the highest in these respects and Nursery 2 & 3 suffer from dirty walls and dark concrete floors. We need to provide new furniture in Nursery 2 which is using recycled small tables and chairs that have been in the school from almost the start and all the backs of the chairs are broken. In November we replaced the furniture in N3 with locally made tables and benches and we plan to do the same with N2 BUT we will not use the same welder man. He just does not seem to be able to measure or follow instructions and once too often have has supplied goods that are far from good quality. Moses told Tony off quite severely for accepting his shoddy work last time!
I popped, unplanned into the reading classes and found that I had to give a lot of guidance to Jorjor and Lamin about helping children to read the individual words, using clues such as initial sounds. There is still far too much of the teacher reading and the children copying, but overall the level of independent reading is definitely increasing. Old ways die hard and my attempts to support and train the teachers seem to infiltrate very slowly. But I would surely take a long time to absorb new ways of teaching a new subject, such as car maintenance, I guess. We all need familiar hooks upon which to hang our new learning and plenty of time, practice and inclination to secure it into our teaching methods.
Then I met with Moses and we discussed monthly tests and the need for good foundation in the four rules of Maths. We also agreed to follow his plan to collect in samples of English exercise books from each class room. He reminded me very strongly to take the samples randomly myself and not to accept those offered by teachers. Once we had done this he, Abibatou and I settled down after school to go through them. It took 2 hours but we found some good things – high standard of hand writing, some evidence of creative writing in Grades 4 & 5 and quite a bit of differentiation in tasks set for quicker and slower children.
Tony went to observe Lamin give and Arts & Crafts lesson which was totally theory but he assures us that he gives 2/3 of his lessons as practical. And I have been invited to one on 2nd April!!!! He showed me some fascinating mats made of dyed hessian looped into more sacking and backed with plastic rice sack. Ingenious, attractive and practical!
I finished the day typing up my notes and analysis of the English exercise books and I am sitting in the staff room to juice up the lap top and as I write I can through the open door, see the 4 goats springing and gambolling around the compound. They have been feasting from the fig fruits of the fallen tree and I suspect that they are more than a little tipsy!
Tony is immersed in accounts in the office but it is getting dark and that happens very quickly here. So it is now time to go back to Tonka Kunda, start cooking our poppadums that we routinely have with a cool beer before cooking supper. I think it will be a sauce of tomatoes, onions, herbs on pasta.
All in all a productive day with lots of positive feelings as well as clear ideas about moving forward to improve learning standards.
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