Teaching Practice

A few pictures of some teaching practice students in a school near Lake Victoria not far from the college. The compound is better than many I have visited with plenty of space and some swings for the children to play on. It is however on very low lying swamp land and is prone to flooding if the level of the lake rises. Kampala has many properties built on swamp levels and they regularly flood. This is the foundation or 'baby' class and this one has only a few pupils. The students here worked hard to produce some colourful charts and teaching aids to help their teaching. The number cards are made from old cardboard and soda bottle tops. Balls, skipping ropes and dolls are made from polythene, palm leaves and banana fibre. There are no ready made resources in most classrooms.

Another school where I was observing in baby class had 40 pupils squashed on benches in a 'lean to' wooden shed on the side of the building. The young boys and girls are still pretty amazed to see a 'muzungu' (white person) and come to touch my arm to check the colour doesn't come off!! Some days I am stroked by many small black hands and scruitinised very closely! It is very funny and I feel sorry for the poor students trying to teach. In this class I went along the benches so they could all shake my hand so we could get on with the lesson!

At break they all run off to get their 'porridge' made with maize meal, looks and has the consistency of polycell wallpaper paste! They always offer me some but I had some once and that was enough! It is a hot filling mid-morning snack for them though, many families are very poor and have a very poor diet. At college the students are fed 'porridge' for breakfast and break, posho (another maize meal delight, white and solid and tasteless) with beans at lunch and supper. The fruit here is abundant and for us very cheap but it is never served at meals. If they want fruit they have to buy it themselves which is a luxury most cannot afford.

Teaching Practice is over, the external examiners came last week so I hope most of the students have passed. They now have a couple of weeks to revise before their final exams.

I have designed a simple sheet on the computer which I hope the college will let us use as the 'Examination Seating Plan'. Last year I was amazed when they gave me paper and a ruler so that each invigilator could draw a plan of the exam room and fill in the student code numbers for each exam. The cultural paper has four parts(music, art/craft, R.E. and P.E.) and you have to do a plan to go in each envelope of answer sheets! So I hope my 'inovation' of a pre-printed pro-forma is accepted which will make it a bit less tedious! I only hope college has a bit of money to print them out............watch this space!!