Encyclopedias, the Horror!

As we've started unpacking the boxes of books from the container, the students have been quite curious.  One thing we received was a set of encyclopedias (from 1975, but better than nothing).  The students had never seen anything like it.

I was explaining to Nelson John (the boy with the red-checked backpack straps in the picture): back before everyone googled things on their phone, we had to actually look things up in this huge set of books.  His response?

"Oh, the suffering!"

Michela working hard on cataloguing the new books

Sigh.  Sometimes I feel old.  (Also when I mention my age and a student says, "Oh, that's the same age as my mom!") And true, these kids are all of the just-google-it generation, but they aren't allowed phones at school (and not all have access to them at home, either) and the computer lab isn't open all the time, so these will still be handy here.

I explained to them about how to look things up alphabetically and such.  I also explained how my fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Goodman, would punish wayward students by making them copy pages from the encyclopedia.  Five pages, seven pages, or even ten pages if you were particularly in need of a set-down.  You had to stay in from recess and write until you finished.  (And no, I never had to do it).

They were horrified.  Especially as I realized that now I could follow his example.  I've been making students write definitions from the dictionary, but now with a whole set of encyclopedias at my disposal...this may be a fun year in teaching.

The Container!!

Since January of this year, we've been expecting a container from the US of new and donated items for the school. There have been many delays due to Tanzania changing some regulations, causing the paperwork to have to be redone, and various shipping issues.  We then thought it would come in March, and then July...well, here it is, August 26th, and IT'S HERE! 

All the way from Nashville, Tennessee, trucked to the coast (not sure which port, New Orleans, maybe?), across the ocean on a freight ship, a nice long wait at the port of Dar es Salaam, and then trucked across Tanzania to Monduli!  Everyone was excited and curious to open it. 

Below, Oscar realized that I was taking photos and hammed it up.

There was equipment both for the school and for the clinic inside. One of the major things for the school was a large set of matching chairs.  A church in the US was redecorating and donated their used chairs that were still in good condition.  Our dining hall is one huge room with tables and benches to eat at at one end, and the other end is our auditorium.  Up until now, the students had to move all the benches and chairs from the dining end to the auditorium end anytime we had an activity, and then back again.  Now we can set up auditorium chairs permanently and stop wasting time moving chairs around all the time.  I'm also hoping that now that we have more chairs, people will stop taking chairs out of the library and forgetting to return them!

There's quite a pile of boxes and things to be sorted out, temporarily in the dining hall.  One whole pallet of boxes is books for the library!  We've been really looking forwards to it; currently, the library has about six hundred books, but there are supposed to be about 3000 books in the shipment, which will really change our library!  We have new shelves, just built, ready to be filled.  It's going to be a lot of work over the next few weeks (months?) to get all of them sorted, stamped and labeled and ready to go on the shelf.  

We also received a new iron bell for the school.  This thing weighs a ton--possibly literally!  Currently, our school "bell" is a piece of scrap metal and a chopped off piece of metal rebar--it works pretty well, but is rather inelegant.  It'll be a while before we startle the neighborhood with the peals of this new bell, though; first, a sturdy bell tower has to be constructed. 

We're all excited it's finally here!

Welcome Back Exams!

There's a rather odd thing that seems to be a Thing here in Tanzania: Welcome Back Exams.  Yup, the day after we return from a vacation, boom: exams for two or three days.  It's supposed to motivate the kids not to forget everything over the break, I think.  Anyway, as a teacher, it's kind of nice because invigilating exams is a pretty easy job to ease into the new term.  Welcome Back Exams are also meant to encourage students to return to school in a timely manner--the tendency here on "African Time" is for most students to return on the Sunday afternoon they're meant to, but for a good number to trickled in over the next three or four days.  But if there's an exam, you better arrive on time.  

Yard Work Without a Yard

You would think, seeing as my house is completely surrounded by pavement and I have no yard at all, that I would have no need to do yard work.  Unfortunately, you would be wrong.  My driveway and patio are all covered by paving stones, which are not grouted in between, so weeds grow up quickly between them after we get any rain at all.  

Fortunately, there are bored children around willing to work for soda money.  Tammy sent Deborah and Camara (a high school student) over on their bicycles to help me pull the weeds.  They worked hard! I hadn't cleaned out the weeds since the rainy season ended in June, so they'd been growing for a good three months.  

Studying the Eastern Hemisphere

Since May, I've been meeting three or four times a week with the Shorts' younger two daughters to help out with their homeschooling.  I am teaching them history and geography; they have a curriculum from Sonlight that I really like the format of.  We're doing the Eastern Hemisphere curriculum. 

I really like this study because it goes fairly in-depth in the history and culture of countries that American schools don't usually spend much time on.  I remember doing a lot of American history in school, and world history usually seemed to be more just history of Western civilization.  Admittedly, it's been a while since I was in school, but I don't remember doing more than glancing at anything outside the US other than Egypt, Greece and Rome.  I also really like the study because I've been to some of the countries we're discussing, so I can share my experiences, and I'm learning a lot, too, as we study the ones I haven't been to or spent little time in.  

Each unit involves labelling a detailed map, doing a history timeline, discussing cultural items such as religion, art, music and current political structure.  We also have pages to fill out about famous sights in each country. We started with China in May, and then their Aunt Alethea took over while she was visiting in the month of June finishing up China and talking about Taiwan, and Tammy did part of the India unit with them while on a trip to Dodoma. In July we've covered the Koreas and Japan.  We're finishing up Japan now; the photo is from an activity page for Japan.  The girls each made a dictionary of Japanese words and decorated the front with a symbol of Japan--Deborah chose Mt. Fuji and Rebecca chose cherry blossoms.   

Next up: Russia!