Rau Primary School
P.O. Box 1663, Moshi
Head teacher: Mika O. Munissi
Telephone: 0755 740904
Alumni references: Miguel Santos: miguelasantos@cantv.net
Misty Eddy: mistyafrica@yahoo.com
Sarah Cohen: sarahdcohen@gmail.com
General Information about the Partner Organization
Rau Primary School is situated a quarter of a kilometer from the Home Base. The school enrolls pupils for primary level. The primary level has seven grades; primary I to primary VII with total of 684 pupils (341 boys and 343 girls). It also enrolls a total of 41 (16 boys and 25 girls) pupils who are orphans. Teaching is done in Kiswahili but English is among the 6 subjects normally offered. These include Math, Science, Kiswahili, English, General Knowledge and Arts and Crafts.
The school has an acute shortage of teachers in and supplies for arts and crafts. It has a total of 22 teachers (2 men and 20 women).
Duties
a) Classroom teaching: The Volunteer will work with the assigned teacher to support the teaching of certain topics(s) within the curriculum. Activities could range from providing direct teaching on a given topic, assisting in the design of student subject activities and managing group activities, providing exercises for class work and or home work and marking students work that are geared to promoting utilizing use of English language skills.
b) Specific student projects can be set up to promote cultural exchanges and explore differences between Tanzania and other nationalities through reading, writing discussions etc.
c) Teach basic computer skills to teachers and students
Supplies and equipments:
• Depending on your subject area, book resources would be very useful as reference material.
• Supplies of mathematical models, scientific models, maps and student centered activities.
• Readily designed group activities with facilitator instructions, ready for review and implementation.
• Team building activities, self esteem and empowerment games are greatly encouraged.
• Primary pupils sports gear.
• Magazines, brochures on your current or past experiences or any pieces of reliable material to help introduce your regular environment to your colleagues.
• Special costumes that explains your cultural background or institution affiliation, etc.
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1 comment:
Hi there,
My name is Sarah. I volunteered at Rau Primary School for five weeks, January 20 through the end of February, 2007. It was such an amazing experience. The teachers and the headmaster took a little while to warm up to me, but once they did they were fantastic.
I was teaching class 5 English with Miss Temu and assisting with her class 3 Math. In addition I was teaching class 4 English with Peggy. Miss Temu is a wonderful warm and caring person. I had never taught before and she was great at helping me plan lessons. I did all of the teaching from almost day 1 for class 5 but Miss Temu was almost always in the classroom to assist me when I needed it. I knew no Swahili when I arrived in Tanzania. Learning your numbers would be good and having a dictionary will help you tons.
Teaching class 4 was a little bit different. The students didn't have enough English for me to come in and teach everything in English (and I had a very very basic knowledge of Swahili). So Peggy and I did a lot of the teaching together. She was great and a lot of fun.
They have government issued curriculum books that make very little sense. When I learned a foreign language, we learned vocabulary and then how to conjugate verbs in the present, past and future tenses. They learn concepts instead. Things like when to use much, many, few, a lot...There are a lot of apples. There are many bees, that kind of thing. It can at times be hard to teach using nothing but a blackboard and chalk. The teachers there have no teaching aids. They are lucky to have chalk. Since they don't use them it is hard to tell you what kinds of things to bring with you. I had very little flexibility to deviate from the curriculum. The good part of that was that what I had to teach was pretty much laid out for me eliminating a lot of the work. The bad thing was that I didn't always feel like I was teaching them the most useful things.
There are a lot of basic supplies at the CCS homebase. If you want to bring things, I would suggest sticking to the basics. The last thing you really want to do is show them all the things they don't have and will never have again. There are many kids in need of pencils and pens. I bought a bunch of pens, pencils and exercise books for the school as a gift before I left hoping that they would distribute them to the kids who needed them the most. You might just want to give yourself a $100 budget to buy things when you get there. A good gift would be buying textbooks for the classes that don’t have enough. Saying all of this, you don't have to spend any money if you don't want to. I didn't use anything that I couldn't find at CCS for my day to day lessons. The pens, pencils and exercise books were just a thank you gift from me to them.
The kids are amazing but there are so many of them. It isn't like the US where you will learn all of their names. Some of them are so smart and others can barely write. There is very little extra help available for the kids since the teachers are so overworked. Anything you can do will be helpful. Just relieving the teachers of teaching a class will help them prepare better for their other ones.
I tried to play games in the class to get them involved. Having them come up to the board and write answers was a good trick. They would pay more attention because they didn't want to be wrong in front of the class. The older kids were much harder to engage. The kids in class 4 were so happy and excited to have me there. The class 5 kids treated me like a substitute teacher for the first three weeks. By the end though they had settled down and were doing much better.
It was a great work environment. Each class had their own classroom and the teachers rotated around. There is one teacher’s room for all the teachers. Classes are 40 minutes long with a break in the morning for Tea and a break at 12:20 for lunch (when you will go home).
Something to be aware of is that corporal punishment was banned from schools recently but it does still exist. Most of the younger teachers will not use it at all but some of the older teachers are really bad. One day a group of kids were brought into the teacher’s room and brutally beaten with a stick. It was awful. I had to get up and leave. However, you will most likely just see a slap on the shoulder. It didn't happen often but it did happen and you will see and hear it at times.
The great things about this placement are that it is a 5 minute walk from the homebase and all of the kids live in the neighborhood. You will see the kids all the time when you are not at school. They will yell your name and walk with you when they can. There were a group of my students who walked me to work every morning.
As for Rau and the homebase, everything was amazing. The living conditions were completely reasonable. Four beds to a room with one bathroom. The rooms and common areas were cleaned every morning by the staff. There is not privacy so know that going into it. The food is amazing. You will not loose weight even though you are in Africa. The staff and neighbors will become your family and you will not want to come home.
I spent my afternoons teaching computers to the teachers at the school and other women of the community. I also spent a lot of time volunteering at Matumaini, one of the local orphanages. If you would like some additional information on either of these opportunities let me know.
If you have any questions or want to talk before your travels please feel free to contact me at sarahdcohen@gmail.com.
Please give everyone there my best.
Sarah
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