Hip Gyrations and Kinesthetic Teaching Techniques

Students and volunteer teacher Allison at the Kilimanjaro 1/2 Marathon two weeks ago.
Isaya and Tumaini in cooking club. Notice Isaya's hat and apron!
Isaack and a university student paint rocks for the garden during the university student's visit.

Clubs

Every week we do clubs. I'm still doing the woodworking club. Lisa is now doing a leadership club. They are fun! One of the clubs that students really enjoys is cooking club. Go figure! Every week Jane leads students in cooking something they enjoy. Then, they feed the teachers and club members!

University Guests

We had a group of visiting university students this past week. They were all students focused on community development and were doing a month abroad through a university. They visited our school for the day and did a tour. One thing I had them do down in the garden was to paint the names of our students on rocks to help label individual student garden beds. It seemed to be a hit! Lisa organized the tour and I think they all enjoyed themselves.

Form 4 Examinations

We were required to send in pictures and signatures of every student for the national Form 4 Exam. We did this. But, of course, they weren't the right size. So, on Friday, we (and by we I mean Lisa) had to re-take the pictures, re-size them, and then Thomas raced to Monduli to get them to the correct office in time. Thank you bureaucracy at work!

Student Elections

In addition to the race-to-the-deadline picture taking, Lisa was trying to prepare students for the student elections on Thursday. Her efforts paid off because we had a great turnout of students running for student government positions! Our president is a student named Saingorie and vice president is a student named Margaret. Only two votes separated them! They each had to give speeches and were GREAT! Students were cheering and clapping. It was a good way to end the day on Thursday.

Staff Retreat

Yesterday we cancelled classes and had a teaching and support staff retreat at the school. We did workshops on classroom engagement such as group work, celebrations, visual/auditory/kinesthetic input and board work. I thought the day went well. It was especially good to have volunteer and Tanzanian staff interacting in a more casual environment. My favorite part of the day was our school counselor, Paul, practicing kinesthetic movements to teach girl's life skills to a group of us teachers! He would get really animated with his point. It was fun watching him try something new.