Wow, so it’s been about a month and I’ve already covered 3 out of the 8 topics I need to cover for my Form IV class. It’s like all the knowledge I got from teaching last year and knowing all the crazy problems that would happen is totally helping me. I guess this would be even more so if a teacher would set him/herself down and stay at a school for a long time and actually care about the students understanding it. If they took the time to research what they are doing and how to make it better, it woud. Maybe this happens at alot of U.S. schools from time to time, but the fact that teachers come and go here it doesn’t ever seem that way.

I breezed through the topic of Coordinate geometry because I knew exactly what they needed to know and how to cover it quick. During the teaching of this I spent many afternoons planning out this elaborate lecture/activity set for the next topic:Linear Programming. For those non-math people, or even math people who forgot (cuz let’s face it-when do we actually use it in real life?), linear programming is where you have a desired outcome, such as high profit or low cost (trying to find extremum values), of two different items. Basically I did a ton of research into the types of answers required for NECTA (National Examinations Council of TZ) plus just into the basic nature of how they should be turning sometimes long English paragraphs into mathematics. I made a specialized worksheet that I designed and then a very large similar version that I put on the board in front of the class. I had the questions written out with pieces of the problem i could ‘pluck’ off and put onto the worksheet thus illustrating the process. All the while they used the worksheets for notes. Then after doing several examples, I had them work in groups to figure out a problem on their own, which they did quite well. Then the next day I brought in many national exam problems and split them into groups and had them use the sheets to complete the problems. I was quite impressed with the comprehension. Last year I had several students who got the concept, but I think they might have already studied with private tutors. This year I gave a test and had tons of students do well. It really made me happy that I succeeded in getting the concept across. I put up the finished national exam questions on display for the whole school to see and I see students coming by everyday to look, stare, and learn something from their fellow studets. The other great thing is that one of the highest grades on my test, a 100, belonged to a girl, which is very different for this country. I also had several high girls getting 85s, etc.

I should take this as an aside to talk about the exam results from last year. So, first off, they completely screwed over our results. Somewhere in the creation of our school’s spreadsheet they made mistakes and it consequently ran amok through the data of students further down the line. The form had great students getting the lowest scores and some of the poor students receiving top marks. So, they had to submit a plea to redo our school scores to get them proper. But even though the order was wrong, the actual grades for math all seem to be there i think. Turns out I added a few more Bs and Cs from the year before, and considering most fail and only few get Ds, I was really happy. Plus, the errors on the spreadsheet began after most of the girls names so I’m pretty confident that those are correct. I had 3-4 girls pass (get a D) in mathematics which is a first for the school, even though its only the schools second year in the exams. One girl got a Division II, which is astounding. This year I expect so many more As, Bs, and Cs than last year. I’ve been spending a long time grooming this class for success and that includes the girls. I have high hopes that one of my female students will get C or higher.

So, with all that in mind, I’ve been working my ass off going fast for them, but doing it methodically and making sure at every turn they grasp the concepts. My third topic was probability, which was a trouble topic for me last year. Not because I didn’t know it, because I was extremely fluent in all the methods and problems, but because I was trying to find the best method to teach them. I think I confused alot of kids last year by trying to break it down alot to all the different things you can do and they didn’t just have a way to figure it out. This year I took some time to give them a tried and true method to solve all the problems. Sure, they can use some other methods and shortcuts if they get them and want to go a few extra steps, but what counts now is that they understand the basics of probability and are able to answer the test problems. Since I know they were doing alot of problems on their own and failing and now are breezing through them after my classes, I think it’s safe to say they got it down-pat. I’m giving a test on Monday to make sure it’s all in their heads still then I’ll move onto next topic. Was going to teach alot of areas and volumes, but since it’s just alot of easy to grasp formulas and alot of review, I think I’m going to jump forward to their harder topics of trig, vectors, and matrices. The plan is to finish at least 2 more topics before mid-term break. Yep, that means I’ll have finished over half the year’s worth of topics in a quarter year. It sounds crazy, but last year I learned one of the major hurdles in teaching form 2 and 4 is that you can’t teach second term because of tons of factors. So I figure if i can move fast and accurate it’s best for everyone. I can’t help but feeling though that me going fast and finishing topics also makes me feel like I’m finishing my service. I mean teaching is my voluneering, so the faster I’m done the closer it feels to heading back. It’ll be a good year though.

Well, that’s my time for today. Sorry I loaded it with tons of stuff about math and school, but that’s been my intense life for the past few weeks teaching a ton, so there’s my life for ya! In other news, books I’ve read lately: Watership Down, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Shantaram (total must read for you all), Forge of God (sci-fi but very bad), and now I’m finally making my way through Fountainhead even though I tried many times in the U.S.

All the best to you all in America!