Testing the waters of Teacher's Trainings

As a member of Shika na Mikono, my primary focus is to train students enrolled in teacher’s colleges.  I had the opportunity to work with a member of the Tanzanian Ministry of Education to set up a training for 145 people who will soon be entering the Tanzanian Education System as science teachers. Klerruu Teacher’s Training College is located in Iringa and focuses on training both science and arts teachers.

The four members of the Shika team facilitated the training inlcuding me, Joel, Caitlin and Megan . We all arrived in Iringa town the 15^th of October to solidify our schedule, plan intros and transitions and prepare and purchase necessary supplies. Bright and early the next day, we caught a taxi to the college and were shown around the campus, including the spaces that we would be using. 

We began the training by introducing ourselves and the mission of Shika na Mikono. Then the students were split by subject into 3 different room and our first session was Box of Fun. We chose a variety of topics from the O-level Syllabus from each subject and instructed the students to get into groups of 5. They were then numbered off and assigned a specific topic. The students then used the creativity and random, inexpensive, locally available materials to make a teaching aid to teach their assigned topic. 

A group of students creating their teaching aid during our Box of Fun session

Science can be fun!

A student uses his teaching aid to teach a lesson

After presenting/teaching their topic and explaining their apparatus, all students from all subjects reconvened in a large conference room and the most innovative design from each topic then presented the group as a whole. The aim of this project was to inspire creativity and improvisation while showing that even trash can be used to explain science concepts, so there is no excuse not to do demonstrations. 

We had a short break for Chai in which the members of the Shika team were introduced to all teachers and staff of the college. 

After completing chai, the students regrouped up the large conference room where Joel and Caitlin led presentations with the aid of a powerpoint about chemical and lab equipment alternatives. Many teachers make the excuse that they are unable to conduct practicals and hands-on demonstrations in the classroom due to lack of funding to buy materials. The aim of this portion was to inform them of inexpensive, locally available materials that they can use when conducting practice practicals at their school to save money. 

Once the presentations were completed, the students returned to the 3 classroom spaces, but this time were mixed subjects and the Shika members grabbed their materials to present several Shika Express activities. I presented biology activities, Caitlin covered chemistry and Joel did Physics demonstrations. For this activity, the students remained in the same classroom and we rotated. This method proved to be very efficient. 

Caitlin teaching Chemistry Shika Express experiments

The final activity of the day was a mini-competition to demonstrate that when you make learning into a came or competitive, the students are become very motivated to perform well. 

The students were instructed to gather into groups of 5 again, but this time they were encouraged to include all of the disciplines in their groups. We introduced the rules and goal of Raft Rally, distributed the pieces of foil and gave them 20 minutes to construct their boats. After construction, one representative from each group presented their boat, explained the reasoning behind their design and then placed their boat in a basin of water to test how much weight it could hold by placing individual and bundles of nails inside. The moment water began to leak inside the vessel and it began sinking, the nails were counted and recorded. The boat that could hold the most weight received 100 points, second place received 75, third received 50 and fourth received 25 points. 

The other portion of the competition included 24 Squares and began immediately after the testing of the rafts. 10 different problems were written on the board and each group was given 20 minutes to complete as many as possible. The members of the Shika team then corrected them and awarded 10 points for every correct 24 Square answer. 

The scores of both Raft Rally and 24 Squares were added together and winners were announced.

To wrap up the training, all the students returned to the large conference hall to recap the events and messages of the day as well as get feedback about the training from the students. 

Overall, the training was hectic, as it was our first one and the arrangement of work space was different than we had planned for, but at the end of the day, we accomplished the same goal. The students were given chances to express creativity and learned about how to utilize inexpensive, locally available materials to do demonstrations in the classroom. 

Shika Team members that were able to help with this training

We had a blast doing this training, and now that we have one under our belts, we are excited to schedule and put on more teacher trainings. Through training teachers, Shika is able to spread the message and importance of hands-on science learning across the country to areas where Peace Corps may not have connections.