Fun fact: They use A4 legal size paper here. Luckily that’s the kind of paper I brought because that’s what I use at school for doodling and printing out rough drafts of papers. Perfect!
This morning we went to Elerai Secondary school, where four of the scholars attend. I talked to the assistant headmaster for almost 2 hours and he patiently answered all of my questions. Some basic observations before I give the full school profile: big class size, growing, in need of textbooks, teachers, and other teaching resources, very new.
Key Contacts
Headmistress: C.P. Kawala
Asst. Headmaster: Peter Bejumora
Quick Facts
Founded: May 2006
No. of Students (2009): 1439
No. of Teachers (2009): 45
No. of Classrooms (2009): 26
Class size: 60-63 students
Days of School: 194
Uniforms: Navy blue pants or skirt and dark green sweater
School year: Begins early January, ends early December
Laboratory: No
Library: No
Computer Lab: No
Electricity: Yes
Daily Schedule
7:30 First Bell
7:30-7:40 Attendance
7:45 Morning Assembly
8:00-11:20 Classes
11:20-11:50 Midbreak
11:50-2:30 Classes
2:30-3:00 General Cleanness
3:15 Departure
3:00-4:30 Club meetings every Wednesday
Student Services
Health: First aid kit and periodic health seminars by medical professionals
Field Trip: Organize student-financed safari for form II students
History
The idea for Elerai Secondary School originally came from members of the community, who took the idea to the village leaders. The issue was that Burka Primary School children had nowhere to go to secondary school because it was too expensive to send the children to the nearest secondary school, which was so far away they would have had to pay for room and board. The leaders met and agreed to start construction on a new school.
In 2005, construction started on six rooms and in May 2006, it became a government registered school, starting with just 200 students and 4 teachers. The construction of the school reduced the number of street children because families who previously couldn't afford boarding school could now send their children to secondary school.
By August of 2006, there were 10 teachers. In January 2007, there were a total of 10 rooms, 4 of which were built by the community, 20 teachers, and 693 students. By 2008, there were 35 teachers, 1078 students, and 17 rooms, 3 of which were financed by the Ministry of Education.
Future Plans
Elerai School is starting to outgrow its space. The school’s goals are to expand, buy more textbooks for the students, create a place for vocational training, open a laboratory, and establish a space for a library. It would also like to add form V and VI, but the government will choose which one of the 14 municipal schools in Elerai will teach form V and VI. The law mandates there must be one school in every municipal area with form V and VI, but there isn’t one yet in the town of Elerai.
Clubs
Subject clubs (English, Math, etc)
Scouts (co-ed)
Choir
Health Club
Debate Club
Club against Corruption
Classes
Forms I and II take 9 subjects:
• English
• Kiswahili
• Math
• Geography
• Civics
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Physics
• History
Forms III and IV must take at least 7 subjects (6 of which are mandatory) and can take up to 11:
• English (Mandatory)
• Kiswahili (Mandatory)
• Math (Mandatory)
• Geography (Mandatory)
• Civics (Mandatory)
• Biology (Mandatory)
• Chemistry (Elective)
• Physics (Elective)
• History (Elective)
• Commerce (Elective)
• Bookkeeping (Elective)
Learning Through Photography program: Emanueli and I went into town to meet Elena and Katie from Literacy through Photography (LTP), a Duke-based program that works with pictures to think critically about the environment around us. It’s a really neat program! Durham and Arusha are apparently sister cities. An art teacher from Arusha Secondary School named Pepe went to Durham in 2005, loved the LTP program, and wanted to start it in Arusha. This is the 2nd or 3rd year that reps from LTP in Durham have come. They do lots of teacher trainings and then guide teachers to implement them in the schools.
Basically, what LTP does is tries to stimulate creative thinking and critical thinking to learn about a topic. For example, they have a staged process where they give children a topic and have them write down all the words that remind them of that topic. Then they draw what they think of when they envision the topic. Finally, they work together to take pictures that symbolize the topic. The idea is to engage the student rather than just having a teacher lecture from his or her notes.
LTP contacted Sustain Foundation about the work we are doing this summer and we hope we can integrate it into our initiatives. It was a great meeting and Emanueli, who was an art teacher, was very excited about it and we spent the whole way home brainstorming ways to use LTP in our health assessment and with our scholars. One way we could incorporate LTP into our program is to take some health related pictures to our one on one interviews or focus groups and talk about the pictures (where they look at every detail, down to the button on someone’s shirt). This is called photo elicitation.
Another way we are hoping to use LTP is to connect our scholars program with the health assessment. We would use LTP as the second day of our scholars retreat and use the writing, drawing, and taking pictures stages to think critically about health in the community, with topics such as mental health, problems in the community, staying in shape, food practices, hygiene, first aid, HIV awareness, etc. The scholars could work in small groups\teams to create pictures. In terms of the health assessment, we don’t really have a lot of time to do the full process in focus groups or interviews but could take the pictures that the scholars took to the focus groups (with church leaders, parents, village leaders, etc) and have them do photo elicitation to get them thinking about the community critically. The fact that the pictures were created by students living in Sakina to show different health issues will force the community members to accept what’s going on in Sakina and not dismiss it as another community’s problem. We may also want to bring in pictures from the outside of things like clean water, etc. (ideal conditions or very not ideal conditions) to get them thinking about how these conditions are similar or different in Sakina.
LTP has a blog that you should check out! http://literacythroughphotography.wordpress.com.
Vocab word of the day:
Tutaonana baadae – see you later
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