The School

As we have mentioned a couple times, we spent most of our time at Chidamoyo helping teach English at Dandawa High School. This was a new experience for us as we are both elementary teachers. We taught students in Form 1 and Form 2 in "small" groups ranging from about 8 to 20. Coming here, we didn't really know what exactly we were going to be doing. We just figured we would fly by the seat of our pants for awhile until we would figure it out, and that is exactly what we did.

One of our "small" groups
 Our very first lessons we just introduced ourselves and tried to gauge how well the students could speak English. The first couple days we were faced with a lot of blank stares and confused looks. We would soon learn that a big part of this was our accents. It was pretty tough for the students to understand us and they were also nervous to speak to us. After having them write, we found out that their English was better than we thought, and they just weren't as comfortable speaking it aloud. To combat this we had to be goofy, make a fool of ourselves sometimes, and try to learn some Shona. We wrote lesson plans that would create opportunities for the students to talk to us, each other, and write in English. We naturally have a bit of a different teaching style than the students were used to, but I think we adapted to each other well. A main focus of ours was sentence structure and cleaning up broken English. Having good English is a necessity for students in Zimbabwe because all of their national standardized tests must be written in English. For example, if a student is excellent in Mathematics, but doesn't have strong English, he won't be able to advance his education. Imagine having to take the SAT's in Spanish.

On Mondays and Thursdays (and sometimes just whenever people would show up) the school has Games in the afternoon. All of the students play a sport, but they can choose which sport. Dandawa had JUST decided to start a basketball team before we arrived. I think I was there for the 2nd or 3rd practice. The students and coach would come to an old basketball court on the mission after lunch. The court was half covered in dirt (you couldn't dribble at all on the right side) and the goal had a rotting backboard that parts would break off of when you hit it, and a rim that was about 8ft high and tilted significantly downwards. I had the opportunity to see a basketball team start from literally nothing. I tried helping where I could and teaching them the rules of the game. They had very little knowledge of basketball (how many players, how possession switches, dribbling, etc.), but I thought it was interesting that they were instinctively good passers. I had a blast playing with them and getting to know more students that way. Our friends Carlton, Michael, and Skumbuzo would often come down and play with the students as well, and Ngoni was always watching practice and dribbling with an extra ball. He is going to be the future star at Dandawa! It was also a great time to get to know the coach, Mr. Magazine. When Rileigh's family came, Tod brought a new ball and was able to put up a new backboard and rim. The kids (and Magazine) were so excited. It was awesome being able to watch them practice the day before we left. It was NOTHING like the first practice we watched. We had a blast scrimmaging with them until well after practice time was up.
Mr. Magazine, Rileigh and I

Ngoni

One of the things we will miss most about Dandawa is tea time with the teachers. Every day the teachers would come up to the Culture Center (the area where we taught) and we would all have tea together. We were able to make many friends during this time. We will miss all of them!

When Rileigh went to pick up her family at the airport, I went to school to teach one last day before we began our travels. I was very honored when Mr. Muhuyu, the headmaster, called a staff meeting where we could all say goodbye and then he presented me with a chicken!

Our chicken

  • fire-eating high schooler
  • ahyesthatisquiteapredicamentisntit
  • Zimbabwean Peanut Butter Sandwhich: bread, PB, bread, PB, bread (at least)
  • MAZITAAAA
  • I made spaghetti

-J

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