On Friday, we had three visitors from the International Association of Special Education (IASE). The Toa Nafasi Project are a volunteer project site for the organization where members can come to see the project and volunteer their time and expertise as current or former special educators to support the work. Mary Gale Budzisz, the former president and coordinator of the volunteer projects and Dr. Iris Dower, current IASE president came and were taking in all the activities and the students.

She escaped my picture, but Meghan Gallagher, a special education assessment specialist in the US was also in the group.

The teachers very much the day and appreciated the praise for their work and the suggestions that were given. One suggestion was implemented right away, we rearranged the desks so that they were in a semi-circle. Because we are bringing in larger groups for the opening meeting of each group session, the larger number of kids required a different arrangement so all children had good access to the teacher and the board and the teacher could see each student well.

After school, we went shopping for some new classroom supplies for the teachers and students. I am most excited about the new individual chalkboards we got so that all the students can participate individually doing what the teacher is doing on the board or give their own answers before the answer is shouted out.

This week, we have more visitors, some of Sarah’s family and friends of her family. We have been hanging out with them over the weekend and they are very nice. I am sure they will be featured on the blog sometime this week.

Teacher training makes me so happy! I think it is so much fun to see the teachers really get it. Last year I taught our first teacher Veronika about using number lines and teaching kids to start from the biggest number and count up and she understood, but had not necessarily seen why that was better than their traditional ways. Traditionally, the kids will see a problem such as 5 + 3= and first count 5 bottle caps and then count 3 bottle caps and then count all of them to arrive at 8.

Teacher training time

We are working on getting the kids to start at the bigger number (5) and just count out 3 bottle caps and add on 6, 7, 8 to arrive at the answer or to use the number line and start at the 5 and jump up 3 places to get 8.

counting for math in the traditional way

Today, we went over these techniques again. When she worked with individual children, she showed them this new way and told them she wanted them to try this new way to find the answer faster. They didn’t understand at first, but she stuck with it and worked through their confusion. I know that it will take awhile for them to adapt, but it was fascinating to see how they realized that it could save the children time and work towards the automaticity of their basic facts. When a different teacher was working with a child and reverted back to the traditional way, Veronika encouraged her to focus on the new way and offer him more than one way to find the answer.

Counting using the new way

Because they teach small groups of children, we have instituted a “morning meeting” or a whole group instruction time at the beginning before the students do their individual work in their notebooks. We made a calendar and the teachers are doing calendar and counting and days, month, year activities at the beginning of every group. On literacy days, they are reading stories and working on word building and on math days, like today, they count the number of students, desks, and windows in the room and identify shapes and colors from cards and around the classroom.

The students also really enjoy these new activities and are so much more animated and excited to do calendar or stories or counting their classmates. It was really fun and gratifying.

A student excited to be at the board participating in class and giving their answer

This week is dedicated to teacher training. Last year when we did teacher training, I was working with one teacher and we did it when the students were on school vacation. I was able to give ideas and I showed some techniques, but if I did modeling, it was to Sarah and the teacher.

Building words with syllable cards

Modeling read alouds

This year is very different in many wonderful ways. First, we have three teachers. Second, Veronika is very knowledgeable and has been with the project for over a year and really understands the point and why we need to change some of the teaching techniques. She is a mentor for the other two teachers and she directs them. Third, I got to do teacher training while children are present. That means that we are using a much more effective model of training, practicing, and more modeling by me, and some coaching as the children are present and they are working together. It is really awesome to see the teachers pick up so quickly on the new ideas, but also to have a vibrant conversation with Veronika about pedagogy and how to balance their traditional pedagogy with new ideas. We are slowing introducing new concepts, but at the same time because these children will go back to the typical methods of teaching in their general education classroom, we need to continue to respect these methods and find ways for them to learn in that situation. Some of these children have made astronomical gains that I didn’t expect. I think it will be critical to see how they continue to do in their general education classroom next year and the year after. Was this enough of a boost? Are they now learning from that teacher and that classroom?

Teacher training with our three teachers

Children practicing writing during individual work time

This has brought me also to think more critically about training in other countries with different techniques that we typically use. First, they need to teach Swahili differently than I learned it, because it is their native language, but also because Swahili functions as a language much differently than English and some of the ideas like rhyming just don’t work well. Furthermore, I think that to make teaching methods sustainable they need to be modified and enhanced slowly so that there is buy-in and comfort with the procedures and teachers continue to use them. In addition, we want to develop a model that is transferable and sustainable across many schools in Tanzania. Because that involves working with many teachers and principals, we need cooperation amongst all. To gain that support and cooperation, it will be important to provide a model that has proven results but also is feasible and functioning with the resources available in a typical Tanzanian school. Change is slow, but then leads to last changes and lasting success.

Beyond the pedagogical techniques, I believe strongly that the growth has been made because of the individual attention that children have received. If you have been in a large classroom (70-100 students) in Tanzania or another country where class sizes are large with one or two teachers, you will observe that children fight to be noticed or to answer and make sure they are right or blend in and get lost in the crowd. Children give choral responses to questions and copy and fill in answers off the chalkboard. If they make many mistakes, they have to go back and do it again and again. Sometimes, they will copy off their neighbors, but that doesn’t help them to learn. While the best and brightest can thrive in this environment, many children in the middle get lost and may or may not catch up over time.

I have observed through the work on this project the real power of working children individually and in small groups doing much of the same thing as in a big class, but by giving them the opportunity to express themselves and frequent practice and feedback. Because these children come to work with Veronika and the other teachers in small groups 4-5 days a week, they receive an immense amount of feedback and support to learn their basic skills. Children with learning disabilities need that additional support and feedback. This alone has made huge difference. When children aren’t getting something, they notice and try something different. But, I think the most important change for many of these children is that they have found their voices. Some of the children I saw last year were timid and knew that they were not doing well in school and hid out of shame, because that was how some were taught to feel. They thought it was their fault or they were doing something wrong. This year, the children have come out of their shells and are confident and talk to us and joke with us. Many of them I see are smiling and more confident. Finding their voice is the best outcome, even though we can’t measure it.

Veronika reading a book

We are focused on strategies to enhance literacy and math skills, but as I mentioned earlier in other posts, we work on many different skills.

On Sunday and Monday, Sarah and I made the long drive to Lushoto from Moshi. It is not nearly as far as you could go, but it is 4-5 hours and it seems long because there are long stretches of road with similar scenery. As many people know, I don’t like to drive and I really don’t like car rides. But, I am thankful to Sarah for driving so I didn’t have to and for driving so that we didn’t have to take the bus. On this trip, you pass through at least two different biospheres (Tanzania has 5). The lowlands are tend to be hot and dusty. Going to Lushoto, you drive up a road that is literally on the edge of the mountain. Since they drive on the left, driving up can be a little scary as cars, buses, and trucks come by at high speeds on a road that was’t really made for two cars. Luckily, there are often little extended spots to stop and let the larger vehicles pass. In addition, there are not tons of paved roads in Tanzania. In cities, like Moshi, the main roads are paved, but sides roads are still dirt. The road Sarah lives on is dirt but connected to a paved road.

Here is a video of some of the landscape along the main highway between Moshi and where we turn to go up the mountain to Lushoto. Please note these clips are not necessarily in order.

In Lushoto, there is one main paved road. While we were there, they were fixing/enhancing it. In addition, they were paving the road up to the Irente Viewpoint and up to Irente where Keith and I lived and worked for a year when I did my dissertation.

In the morning, I was walking up the road to Irente to go visit the school where I did my dissertation research. I passed a group of women with what seemed like garden tools and a man with a notebook. They were walking up the mountain. Several of them wanted to be my friend and asked me where I was going and if I would come to their house later. I asked where they were going and they said work. I enquired as to the work. It turns out these 20 women were making the road. Trucks had dumped piles of rocks at various places and they had to move and smooth the rocks so that the steamroller could squish and mold the rocks together for a road. They also had to break the bigger rocks apart into smaller chunks. There were no men working. Now I know the road to Irente is being build by strong women. Here are some pictures of the road as dirt and  packed stones.

Stone road

Dirt Road

On Friday, the project does art activities and games with the students that are different from the normal small group instruction they receive Monday through Thursday to support their academic skills. These activities are designed to be creative and let the children experience additional opportunities to work on their social skills, social-emotional development, and their executive functioning. In addition, these are activities that would not occur in a normal primary classroom in Tanzania but are designed to support their development by thinking in different ways. Given that we are trying to help these students make big gains to close the achievement gap between them and their peers, it is important to use multimodal teaching techniques and multisensory activities to help them integrate what they are learning.

This week we taught them to dance the Makerena, we bowled, and we made paper bag puppets. This was all really fun, but a different type of fun and experience than in the United States. I will post pictures later of the Makerena. The biggest challenge for both the Tanzanian teachers and students was the idea that this activity was creative and there was no right or wrong answer. We had to keep saying that “Usiwezi kukosea” or you can’t make a mistake. Sarah had made an example, but at first they all wanted to copy the example. After a while, the teachers started to understand, but the children were still timid in picking materials to use. They were expecting to be told what to do and how to do it and whether it was right or wrong. This was the first time they had done an activity like this. Typically, art in Tanzanian schools is drawing and they draw and color pictures based on real objects and there is a right and wrong way to do it. This is very reminiscent of the Harry Chapin song “Roses are Red and green leaves are green.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeJJOjb7fj4

 Overall, the kids did great. Here are some examples of their work.

Today, we started to assess the students who started with the project last year. These students are in standard 2 (grade 2) now and are making tremendous progress, in general.  We did our first round of assessment of the students in grade one in June 2013. I used this data to determine who needed Tier 3 services and Tier 2 services based on a Response to Intervention (RTI) model. The NGO provided Tier 3 services to a group of students based on their needs exhibited in the general education classroom and on their assessment scores. The classroom teacher offered after-school and vacation time tutoring to students who needed Tier 2 services. The Toa Nafasi students were retested after six months of Tier 3 services and one year of services. These services included small group and individual tutoring in various subjects and group games to promote executive functioning and social skills.

For more information on the RTI model see: http://www.rtinetwork.org/essential/tieredinstruction

Or watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkK1bT8ls0M from AtlasInitative.org

The missing link in the Tanzanian system is that it does not offer evidence-based practice or any level of differentiation for Tier 1 students in the general education classroom. The teachers we are working with are aware of the issues and would like to do more, but have trouble with so many children in the classroom and limited pedagogical options with this situation. The teacher shortage in Tanzania is a real issue.

A Tanzanian teacher assessing a student in the new space

We will finish all the assessments for the third time on our first cohort and see what type of progress they have made since the first and second assessments. As with any project, a few students have moved and a few students have already been sent to a special school because of their needs. We tested 21 the first time, 18 the second time, and are testing16 this time.

I am thrilled to be back in Tanzania and with the Toa Nafasi Project. I had a great trip and got here just fine and Sarah picked me up last night. Today, we saw the kids and started reassessing the kids from last year for the 3rd time and then started doing some planning  for the weeks that I am here.

The new Toa Nafasi classroom at work

And, I got to see the mountain again. Yeah!

The mountain, but not a great pic. Still beautiful