One month at my school

Secondary School Students and Teachers

25 Octoba 2019 Ijumaa (Friday)             I took the full two weeks before I started teaching at my assigned secondary school. But I did participated in grading form IV mock NECTA (standardized national) exams. I was "grounded" to school by mkuu (headmaster) on the first my first Friday at the school-I couldn't go to town to buy materials to install solar at my residence. So Beth, my neighbor and teacher and I had to go on Saturday. On this particular this late Friday afternoon, the academic master congratulated me (hongera is the verb he used) for continuing diligently to grade some left over form four biol exams since all the other Tanzanian teachers left the teachers’ staff room.

This is a pre-NECTA (mock) exam. When a form IV student doesn't pass the NECTA final, there is zero chance the student can go to form five (O level), A level, and later to university.

Guess what, the form IV biology exam scores so far is 3, or 15, or 40s or 50s, out of a total of 100. Only one scored 70. very disappointing. I have not started teaching, it will be Oct 7. form I+II biology, form I chemistry

I have not taught secondary school kids before, only college students in USA, meaning teenagers’ behaviors are a new experience for me, let alone in a foreign land, with different marking systems and requirements.

Devious is the word I can think of for the school kids here in Tanzania. 

They have

• stolen a blank exercise notebook from me, twice;
• tried to tell me that I borrowed a green color pen from them and not returned it when the notes in green were written in 2015 by a past volunteer;
• stolen a red pen so they can use it to revise the mark on the exam;
• cheated in exams by copying from one another and thereby copying the wrong answer. For example, more than 10 students had the wrong answer for the question “what is biology”. They wrote it is the study of the living and living things and non-living things;
• borrowed my copy of past exam questions published by the Education Ministry and never returned it;
•  constantly chatted in class, not only the girls, some boys too; even walking across the classroom to the other side of the room while I was talking in front of the class.

The above are common practices, teachers are well aware of them all.

New to us American volunteer teachers is that sometimes the exam questions are written in poor English. We get a laugh, but feel sorry for the kids. For example, in an English language exercise, the students are asked to put a question mark to each statement, such as “The dog like meat.” The students asked me to help them. I recognize the question is to convert the statement into a question. I used to see it in my tutoring for English Language Learning.

Another common practice is on some teachers’ part is if there is a problem with the exam question, and that question is worth 20 marks, the teachers just take the question off the table, and every student loses 20 marks! This did not happen in my school, but my cohorts reported happening at their schools.

A third practice among teachers in the Academic Office is to ignore a revised mark if the students contest the exam score. I told the academic master that at least revise the score for several students whose original grade was F and now their grade became D. That makes a difference to the students’ records. I let it go when the grade did not change upon re-scoring.

Multiple Reasons For Why People Do The Things They Do.

Some of them may be:

•  Primary school is taught in Kiswahili, except for English language. So the kids had 7 years of one language and then in one semester they have to face with English being used for all subjects except for Kiswahili.
• Some teachers are not as fluent in English as others.
• The Education Ministry mandates all schools to report test scores, and academic offices want to get the job done and move on to the next task.
• Some kids have poor grades in multiple subjects. Some kids do very well.
• Kids, especially in boarding schools, follow senior students as their role models, and sometimes the role models are not good one.
• The school system is harsh, once a student does not pass the Form 4 NECTA, the student is out of school. The student can re-enroll in private schools are private candidate to retake the NECTA in the following year, and that means paying tuition, 1.2 million TSH/year, and that is cheap in the nation.
• Textbooks are expensive, so students take notes. Some teachers do not even have textbooks.
• The government only recently provided free education for all secondary schools, but parents have to pay fees, and other incidentals.
• Some families need the children to help work on their farms. One estimate provided by my second headmaster is 30% of rural eligible kids are not in school.
• Tanzanian culture is to share, so the concept of property is different from western viewpoint. History of socialistic culture is still very strong in Tanzania, and tribal cultures are practised. For example, if you give them a flashlight if the electricity went off, don’t expect them to return your flashlight.
• Cheating is rampant, even in India. A recent news article (Oct 22 2019, cnn.com) on Indian university students voluntarily wear a cardboard box over their heads so as to test cheating prevention. That news went viral in India.
• Kids like everywhere want to push boundaries.

Experiences for each Peace Corps volunteer may be different, depending on each individual situations and conditions. This blog contains my opinions and viewpoints, it does not reflect the Peace Corps organization’s.

teachers' staff room-the front left side is
my "office desk" that I share with another teacher

the cement floor has pock marks, and trash
(no trash can in classrooms.
This room does not even have a door

Indiana university students voluntarily wear boxes on their heads to prevent cheating. Oct 2019 cnn news

to prevent students from cheating,
one volunteer in another school
had students sit in opposite direction
so each other so they cannot peak at answers.
This will not work in a class of many students

The windows do not have glass:
this is my intern school, we, trainees then,
were having our lunch