In one week I will find out where my site will be, the place I will live for the next two years. It’s crazy to think about. I’ve been here about a month and a half and in less than a month I will be done with training. Last week we had a written exam and the spoken LPI. Next week we will have another written exam and a simulation. After that I probably won’t have any more formal instruction in Kiswahili other than self-study. I will be left to pick up any more from the people I will work with and the people in my community. So far I’ve learned to express several tenses and constructions. But I still don’t understand what my host mama says to me when we cook dinner. I hear a jumble of words, one or two of which I actually recognize. I might think I know, but when I respond she tries to correct my line of thinking. My French classes were never this intense.
This past week was my last full week in internship teaching. I’ve been teaching form 1 students about work, energy, and power. It’s been challenging but I’m learning. The school I’m at is a private school. The students have comparatively good English abilities compared to students at the other nearby schools. Nonetheless they still don’t understand everything. Think back to high school and taking a foreign language. How much did you really know? Now would you have been able to take all of your classes in that language? That’s the situation of Tanzanian secondary school students. As teachers we have to speak in “Special English” so that our students can understand us. At the end of the day I’m still not sure if they truly got the concept. They can recite a definition but if I ask for another explanation they give me blank stares. I try to make sure lessons aren’t just me writing on the blackboard. With physics there are so many demonstrations that you can show the class. Seeing something happen is easier to get than words out of the mouth or in white chalk. I loved my high school physics classes because of all the labs we did. We learned from observing and not listening to a lecture. For a lesson in power, I had the students in four teams pull a full nalgene up by a rope that was looped over the doorway. Essentially the quickest group was the most powerful. Everyone had fun and hopefully I imparted on the students what power is.
The bulk of training is done and I can’t believe it. Soon I’ll be figuring out how to survive on my own in this country.
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Marguerite in Peace 
Janet and I were just talking about how hard it would be to teach in a foreign language, but you’re teaching in English so the weight is on the students to learn in a foreign language. You have to be very creative; fortunately you’re up to the task. Another challenge is that in many educational systems, reciting is valued over understanding, which may be part of the reason for the blank looks; the students thought they had done what was required when they fed back the answer. One of the exciting things you will do is inspire them to try to understand. Best wishes!
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I was trying to translate “form 1” – it looks like it is the 8th year of classroom schooling – similar to 8th grade in the US, but that the students are about the age of 9th graders in the US because they have two years of “pre-primary” (kindergarten)?
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Your experience is similar to mine in Brazil with AFS, except I was the student trying to understand lessons in Portuguese after a few weeks language instruction at UCR. Understanding someone’s speech is always the bigger challenge.
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