Today was our first day at our host school, which serves 2300 students. We started our day by greeting the headmaster, who was also a biology teacher, and sharing a little information about the exchange and what we hoped to accomplish. He shared some general information about the school, such as the disparity of students in studies: 80% take the “general studies” track, which is basically the humanities, and 20% study science and math. After leaving the principal’s office, we met the other administrative staff, then headed out to the courtyard. High school in Senegal is a lot like college in the States; students and teachers have larger blocks of class on varying days, so there were a lot of students just hanging around or studying until their first class began. We walked by the physical education class, which a large number of students in Fanta’s English club were taking, and we succeeding in completely disrupting the class as the students tried out their English greetings and asked questions. Teenagers are the same everywhere; they relish the opportunity to get out of class and were very adept at prolonging their time away from instruction! We then headed to a Terminale (final year) biology class on the human reproductive system and observed the last forty minutes of class. Of the 26 students in class, 9 were female. The teacher showed remarkable patience in first dictating the new material, then asking students to compare to their diagrams on the handout, then having them essentially “Think-Pair-Share,” then concluding with whole class discussion. He was very encouraging to the students and seemed completely unfazed by the increasing volume of students outside who were talking during their break. Afterwards we returned to the teachers’ lounge where we shared difficulties with covering the biology content prior to the exam but in a deep enough way that students can master the concepts. I broke out the Foldscopes (paper microscopes from Prakesh Labs at Stanford University) and as a group we assembled a few together. Now we just need to find something to examine under them! We then drove a few blocks to an elementary school, which I promise you had the cutest kids ever. We arrived at recess to find some boys throwing rocks at the mangos hanging from the tree in the hopes they could knock them down. They quickly abandoned that entertainment to join the rest at following us until they were shooed away. We met with the headmistress, who has worked with Fanta on keeping girls in school. At this school of about 940 students, half the students are girls (you can see the statistics by grade in the background. One of the solutions they came up with is to feed all the children a meal at school. That way, parents are motivated to send their children so that they will at least get something to eat. So when does girls’ education become a problem? The answer could be found at our next visit. We drove out to a rural secondary school, which is another place that Fanta has worked with on preventing girls from leaving school. At this school, they lack even enough classrooms for all the students, so they make temporary ones from woven walls. (Actually, it was a LOT cooler in the temporary classrooms than the concrete ones- but they would be no good whatsoever when the rains come). And here is where you start to see a marked gender gap: over 700 students go to this school, but only about 200 are female…and that’s an improvement over prior years. In the sixieme class (first year of middle school), the genders were about equal. But their teacher said that even some of these girls would be getting married that year. As the girls get married young, it either becomes too difficult to take care of their home and continue studying, or they get pregnant and have to leave school. Even if they don’t get married, their families may need their help at home. So by the lycee classes, there was only one girl (out of 4) in the English class we visited. After another fantastic lunch made by Kolda’s daughters, we took a brief repose and then went to greet the mayor. Somehow we ended up in the vice-mayor’s office telling the craziest stories about inspections of schools gone wrong, the relative power of mayors, and other random stories that probably got lost in translation. We then stopped at the virtual university in Kolda, which is allowing more students to get a university education in English, mathematics, and computer science. We then stopped to do some power shopping, then at the Moussa molo tree, which legend has it that if you walk around it seven times, you will never leave Kolda. Tempting, but given the temperature has been around 108 in the afternoon, I politely demurred.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Kirstin Bullington
I teach science, engineering, and computer science at W.J. Keenan High School in Columbia, SC Archives
March 2016
Categories |