Feed A Hungry Mind

The workshop for District Education Officers and Chief Inspectors of Schools for the Kilimanjaro region was conducted by facilitators from the Business School of the University of Dar es Salaam. This was a great success. Since our last workshop in 2008 some new officers are in post, but all appreciated the opportunity to be together, and to learn about and discuss management and communication issues. We hope that we will run another such workshop soon so that this valuable forum can become an established part of their work.

In June, immediately after the primary schools closed for the long mid-year break, Mr Evans Lushakuzi worked with us again to facilitate a three-day training course for head-teachers. Head-teachers from thirteen primary schools attended. The aim was to enhance skills in leadership and management, and thus improve their capabilities to communicate with their teachers and to create happy, loyal teams. There was much discussion of specific problems in each school such as staff absences, staff arriving late to work, parents unable to pay mandatory contributions. The head-teachers participated enthusiastically in the exercises given by Mr Lushakuzi, and Mr Lushakuzi notetd that there was evidence of skills development in the head-teachers' ability to develop action-plans to address the challenges they had identified in their schools. It was suggested that the training sessions be offered to assistant head-teachers.

In July Jane Firth visited again. Jane visited teachers who had attended her previous seminars for teaching early-years mathematics. Jane also gave a four-day training seminar for 22 teachers who were chosen from the Moshi rural district. The District Education Office was keen for Jane's valuable work to be shared as widely as possible, and wanted recognized, good teachers to benefit from her in-put so that they could not only improve their own teaching but also start to impart some of the teaching methods to their colleagues. The seminar was on methods for teaching basic mathematics to pre-primary pupils of five and six years old. Jane was greatly encouraged by the teachers' ability to pick-up new ideas and to understand the reasons behind each stage of teaching the numbers and number-bonds.

All these training sessions were conducted in Swahili so that the participants could derive maximum benefit. Jane Firth works with someone to translate for her. George Kasenga, the manager of the Whole School Development Programme, organised all the sessions. George is also carrying on the weekly visits to local schools as part of the in-service training for the teachers, and particularly for the school management teams.

July 2010

• Photographic update July 2010 (DOC)