Sunday School: Calling the 12 Apostles

It's Sunday, so time for Bible class again! Today we were talking about Jesus calling the apostles. We played a matching game (pelmanism) with the 12 apostles as our activity today. We also enjoyed singing some of our favourite songs.  The one song that is requested every week (so now I just start with it) is My God is So Big (so strong and so mighty...).

We also practiced some new-to-us songs that we've been learning: the Sea of Galilee song (they love trying to keep up with all the hand movements) and I am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N. We also sang a song about Jesus calling the disciples, but it was set to the tune of Jesus Loves Me, so it was really easy to learn. 

I've mentioned before that I've been using the Mission Bible Class curriculum the last couple of years, although rather loosely these days as the kids in my Bible class are all twelve years old now, and we rarely have younger visitors, so we've started reading the stories directly from the Bible instead of me telling them as a story, and discussing the Bible discovery-bible-study style. One thing I really like about Mission Bible Class is that they have videos of people teaching a lot of different children's songs, so it's easy to teach new songs. 

Here is the curriculum: 

https://missionbibleclass.org/

Here are the videos:

https://youtube.com/c/MissionBibleClass

Student Life

A day in the life of students... in the first picture, some form two students are writing the answers to some questions I wrote on the board.

At lunchtime, I had to go up to the dining hall to find someone, and I got a couple of pictures of the normal chaos of the dining hall during lunchtime.  Ugali and beans today!

 

Peer Pressure Lesson Part 2

Today in Life Skills, the students acted out the skits I assigned last week.  We had some interesting stories about handling peer pressure! 

 

Peer Pressure Skits

In my form 1 Life Skills class, we talked about peer pressure last week. This week, I assigned each group a prompt for a skit showing different examples of peer pressure and how to handle it.  Here are the prompts:

 

 

School Days

We're reading Mabala the Farmer in Form 1 right now.  It's one of the kids' favourites of the stories we're required to read; it's about a very silly man that leaves the big city and thinks life on the farm will be easy.  His long-suffering wife tries to tell him things, but he has to make his own mistakes. 

I often take pictures of the pages on my phone to read from, as there aren't quite enough copies for everyone and that way it frees up one more. Below, Melau poses with the stack of books. 

The form one students love taking silly pictures, of course.  I've met very few students that don't...I can only imagine how many we'd have taken back when I was in high school if we had phone like today; we took enough as it was, but we were limited by the cost of developing film. :) 

In the late afternoon, I was watching out the library door and I saw several students gathered around the bell tower.  Mr. Mngoma, the headmaster, had some maintenance to do on a bicycle, so he brought it up there to do it so that some interested students could see the process and learn how to do some basic repairs. Nice to see students learning even outside of class! 

Friday Night Lights

We don't have class after lunch (which is from 1:00-2:00 pm) on Fridays.  The afternoon time is for clubs, family groups (small groups led by teachers/staff that are in charge of cleaning certain areas of the grounds as well as meeting for various discussions of life skills sorts of topics not covered in class), or other school events like debates with other schools.  The science club meets in the library, led by form four students Baton and Shuaka.  Sometimes, they ask to borrow my laptop to play educational videos.  

On Friday evenings (about 5:00 pm to 6:30) we have football (what you call soccer), which is the BIG sport here.  Sometimes, like tonight, it's teachers against students; sometime's it's one class against another, or sometimes against another school.  

Mr. Mngoma, the headmaster, was doing something or other up by the dining hall with his pickup truck.  He let some of the students have fun by piling in the back when he moved it back around to his house.  

Above, some after-football stretching. Below, here's me with form four student Elisha. 

 

Quiz Time in Form 2

We had a vocabulary quiz today in Form 2! Everyone is working hard...

...but after class, there is time for some being silly with selfies. :) Below: Doreen, Victoria, and Benson. 

 

Form Four is Working Late

The form four students have a big project due soon, so they were all in the computer lab this evening.  It's not unusual to be working in the evening; they usually have Preps (study hall) time in the evening after devotional anyhow.  It was a nice night, though, with a big, bright full moon.  I tried to get a picture looking back over the campus in the moonlight as I waited at the gate for my boda boda (motorcycle taxi) to go home.  

 

Processing New Textbooks

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, most of my free time this week is taken up by processing our new textbook shipment.  It's quite a process of stamping, labelling, and taping the books, so I'm grateful to this group of form four girls who spent their Friday afternoon in the library taping books with me. 

Also on Friday afternoons, we have club time.  Baton is the student in charge of the science club, and the students meet in the library.  He borrowed my laptop to show an educational video to the group. 

 

Invigilating Exams

Exam time again!  I have a few exams to invigilate this week.  Below, I was with form four for their English exam.  Several students had forgotten what the word 'synonym' means and tried to get me to tell them, but they had to figure it out for themselves.  That word is used from form two on, so they should know! 

 

Visit from a Former Student

A former student who graduated in our first graduating class in 2019, Faustina, came to visit the school today.  She stopped by the library to say hi and we got some selfies.  It was good to see her again.  She's from Monduli, but is studying at a pharmacy school in Moshi (three hours away) now.  I remember her as a very kind girl; once when I was revising adjectives with preform one of the questions was "___________________ is a kind person.", and several students put her name.  

Below, one of my students got a quick photo of me talking to students as they left the classroom for lunch. 

 

Back to School!

Well, the two-week Easter break is over, and it's a Monday back in class for our students.  The form one boys were still in a bit of a silly mood today.  These photos will be fun to pull out someday when they are graduating... 

 

Yardwork and Chocolate Cake

I recently wrote about how some of the boys who graduated last year came to visit me. When they visited, they saw that the weeds in my yard were getting out of hand. I usually hire some students during school holidays to clean the weeds out because there are always students needing some pocket money, but it's been awhile since a school holiday! They said they'd come back on the weekend and help, and they wouldn't take any payment. 

Four of them were free the day they decided to come, so it didn't take too long. They were almost finished, just leaving a couple of piles that needed to be carried out, when the rain hit. It's still rainy season here, so it can come quickly and with a vengeance! It was pouring, so everyone ran for the house. 

Since they had said they wouldn't take payment for helping me, I made them a chocolate cake to say thank you, so we sat around eating cake and listening to music until the rain finally slowed and they were able to walk back into town. I did worry a bit about Bahati's blood sugar...he ate three big pieces of cake and four pineapple sodas. I think he bounced all the way home... 

 

Celebrating Last Year's NECTA Results

At the end of last year, form two scored very well on their national exams--38 division I and 2 division II!  The results don't come out until January, usually, so celebrating takes place after they've already started form 3.  It turned out tonight was the night!  For students who eat in the school dining hall three meals a day, a home-cooked meal is a special treat.  The students decided they wanted to cook themselves, so the school provided the ingredients and they got to work.

It took a lot longer than they thought it would to cook so much food--it was well after eight before they finally ate.  But they enjoyed their meal!  They made rice, fried potatoes, cabbage slaw, and a tomato-sauce-based goat stew that is popular here, to be eaten over rice. 

Congratulations to the students for their good scores! 

 

Visit from Last Year's Graduates

Some students who graduated last year contacted me and asked if they could come to visit me. On Thursday (the day I don't have any scheduled classes at school), a group of six students who graduated last year came over.  I made some no-bake (chocolate oatmeal) cookies and got some sodas, and we had a nice visit.  It was good to see them all again! Above are the boys: Innocent, Paulo, Daniel, Bahati, Gabriel and Meleji.  Most of the boys live in this area.  Gabriel and Daniel are from a town in central Tanzania, but they are visiting Monduli right now.  

We had a good laugh because Bahati is still as crazy as always--he decided to have a picture with long hair, so he sat next to me and draped my hair over his head.  😂

 

In Tanzania, form 4 ends in November, but form 5 (which is often a different school, and definitely a different program; Tanzania's system is similar to the British system with O-level and A-level) doesn't start until July or August to allow time to receive test results, apply to schools, etc., so they have several months' gap in between.  It's hard for teenagers to find jobs here as everyone knows they'll leave after a few months and even low-level jobs are mostly needed by adults, but they find what they can to do, and many of them are taking some enrichment classes at a local college, like a computer class or refresher classes in various subjects so that they don't forget everything before going back to school.  Most of the boys want to continue in the sciences in various ways; Daniel really wants to become a veterianarian, especially for livestock.  

The boys also noticed that the weeds around my house have gotten high, so they said they will come back over the weekend to do some yardwork for me.  I usually pay students to do it, but they said they don't want any payment.  Maybe I will make them a cake...

I enjoyed the visit from the boys!  It's good to see how they're doing and to know they haven't forgotten us from their old school already.  I look forward to seeing what they will do next!