Lukalo and Mushiru Primary Schools

My job here is to help teachers with teaching, subject matter and technology and to help the teachers and community to implement sustainable programs they can carry on after I leave.

Lukalo Primary School

Mushiru Primary School

I have been assigned to two rural primary schools in the villages of Lukalo and nearby Murshiru. The school attendees are called “learners” as the term “students” is reserved for those attending institutes of higher education. Lukalo Primary School is up the hill by the water tap and Mushiru Primary School is about 2 KM down the road. They are both primary schools with grades R - 7. The rooms empty to the outside so the schools are what we would term campuses. The kids may have a book for a class but usually the books are kept in the classroom and they have to share.   New curriculum is being implemented in some grades and new books have been ordered.  I have suggested that several old books be put in a library and the rest given to learners so they can have a book at home.

Usually everything is written on the chalkboard and they have to copy it. I spent 2 days this past week trying to clean the chalkboards at one of my schools because they were so full of chalk that it was hard to see the writing for me so I thought it must also be for the kids. Needless to say the boards are getting full of chalk again. Their chalkboard erasers leave much to be desired. They are pieces of wood with a thin piece of foam or felt on the bottom. I shredded 2 washcloths trying to get the grime build up off the chalkboards and found out after school that one of the cloths I shredded one of the learner’s brought to school from home to wash the classroom floors.  The girls wash the classroom floors once a week and sweep the other days.

This week I saw a boy with a stub of a pencil and no eraser trying to sharpen the pencil so he could write. Sometimes they share pens and pencils and the rulers they use to create lines in their notebooks to separate one day’s work from another or for content purposes. I have seen children come to the classroom of a sibling or friend to borrow a ruler.

All the schools in our district have received 2 small Acer laptop computers, 2 projectors and 2 tripod screens recently. The laptop is preloaded with a program called “HeyMath!” to be used for math education purposes in all grades. It also has Microsoft Office Suite preloaded but the product key for this software has not been entered and without the product key the programs can only be used a maximum of 22 times. No USB drives are allowed to be put in these laptops per the Circuit Manager because computer viruses are rampant here and they want to protect the “HeyMath!” program which costs some sum of money - don't know how much. The laptops have big hard drives with lots of extra space for learning software but it can’t be installed because of the no USB policy and the fact that the laptops do not have a floppy, CD or DVD drive – they only have a USB interface. The result is that the laptops can only be used for Math classes. I have been working with some of the teachers to use this resource in class but usually it sits in the storeroom unused and underutilized. One of my goals while here is to help the teachers learn to use the available technological resources.

The schools I am in are small. The number of teachers allocated to a school depends on the number of students enrolled. There are eight grades (R – 7) but each school has only been allocated 7 teachers, including the principal and heads of department, due to enrollment. So the principal and department heads teach all day and someone either teaches two grades together or one class does not have a teacher. Teaching two classes at once is difficult because the curriculum is different for the classes so sometimes a teacher moves between two classrooms giving one an assignment while teaching the other. But this requires a very dedicated, organized and motivated teacher. Many times there is more than one class without a teacher as principals and teachers go to meetings, higher education classes, workshops or are absent for other reasons. This week several teachers met with other teachers in the district to write circuit-wide exams while, at the same time, other teachers were at workshops for the new curriculum. There are no substitute teachers for occasions such as this. One good thing I have seen is learner-lead study/learning sessions when a teacher is not present in the classroom.