Jambo, and Greetings from My First Visit to Sagam Primary School!

My first visit to Sagam Primary was an amazing adventure. The school is only a short drive outside of Kisumu, but there is no question that you are in the country. The countryside is lush and green, with all sorts of vegetables growing. Each home here, country or city, has what is called a “kitchen garden”. Various sorts of kale, greens, spinach are a staple of the Kenyan diet, and the they are often picked fresh and cooked for dinner. Often the kitchen garden includes corn, herbs and a range of other vegetables! In the rural homestead areas, you have the treat of fresh milk from the cow and fresh eggs as well.

As you approach Sagam from Kisumu you have to pass over the equator from the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere! My father tells me that when one passes the equator for the first time, you are supposed to be thrown a party to celebrate! While I am not sure that this was the reason for our celebration, my first day at Sagam Primary was quite eventful. I spent the first day talking with the head teacher (head master) and getting to know the teachers. The girls’ dance in my honor gave me the feel of a visiting dignitary! The school is large (over 900 students) and the classrooms are often quite crowded. Still the feeling of energy and excitement for learning is very powerful.

On the second day, I had the opportunity to talk at length with Peter Onyango, the head master. We compared the educational structures of our systems, and found that they have more in common than they are different. Kenya works on an 8 – 4 – 4 system for schooling. Eight years of primary education (our grades 1- 8), four years of high school, and four of college. Early Childhood Classes that house students from approximately 3 1/2 years on take the place of our traditional Kindergarten. Parents pay a nominal fee to send their children to this special preparatory program. While it is not much, this can be prohibitive for some. The provincial minister of education says that these fees are being phased out! Keeping students in school is an important part of Kenyan’s educational strategic plan.

Highlights of my first trip to Sagam were many… but I will just share a few. First, I love the commonalities of all children! On the playground you can see multiple games of soccer (in Sagam they call it football) hopscotch, and jumprope! In walking round to the classrooms, I was greeted warmly by all, but was especially taken by the youngest class. Told by their teacher to “greet the visitor” they did just that. Each little child crowded in to personally shake my hand and offer me greeting! It was a little bit like an enormous group hug!

Most often with the slightly older students, my greetings and actions were responded to with giggles and stares. An occasional brave child would greet me with “how are you?:. As the Kenyan English accent and the American English are very different, even though most of the older children speak English, my speech is considered very funny, and students have a great deal of difficulty understanding me!

My first major challenge was being escorted by the headmaster to an eighth form class (Grade 8) and being invited to “teach writing”. The headmaster assured the students that he had been talking with me and although I was “hard to understand” that he knew they could if they listened carefully. He then instructed me to give them an assignment that we would grade later together. For the next 45 minutes, with only chalk and a blackboard, I tried to recreate from memory some of those classic graphic organizers that have helped our students over the years write stronger essays. Certain ones didn’t make any sense! If you don’t eat hamburgers, the metaphor of an essay like a hamburger, doesn’t really cut it. Students were very respectful, though I question how much they actually learned. Since the teacher left me with the group, it was hard to tell about the response. Needless to say it was quite an adventure.

Later, I had the opportunity to see a number of teachers in action. In some ways the school is totally unlike ours. There are no books except required school books. There are no manipulatives for math, extra resources, or even worksheets to complete. There are no cupboards or book shelves. In some ways the school is just like ours. Each room is filled with smiling and eager students looking to learn. Each class has a teacher that sincerely wants to bring out the best in each child. The missing materials can be deceiving and one can come to the wrong assumption about the instruction! I was very fortunate to see a number of terrific lessons. One was a science lesson that could have been taught in either location. A group of fourth grade students (about 60 of them) were learning about plants and the parts of a plant. The teacher led students through a classic lesson, first reviewing what they had studied before, next taking the students outside to get their own leaf to study and finally using a diagram on the chalk board and a call and response pattern to help children identify and label the parts of a plant in their science notebooks! Other than the size of some of the leaves, and the lack of magnifying glasses, this was a lesson that would have been well received in our classrooms as well.

In a math class that I observed, students were learning to multiply a fraction by a whole number. Using the materials available (chalkboard and chalk) the teacher modeled TWO ways to find the answer, and encouraged the students to figure out which one worked best for him or her. He walked students through the problem on the board, used diagrams and pictures to remind students of equivalent fractions, and still was able to circulate the room and check on student answers. It is always a pleasure to watch such wonderful teaching!

In addition to trying out my hand at teaching in the eighth grade, I also got to teach the 120 second grade students. In Kenyan schools students learn THREE languages. They start their schooling in their home language (at Sagam this is Luo). In first grade they add Kiswahili and English! The proportion of classes of each changes as they go through the forms (grades) in order to insure that every child is able to communicate well in English and Kiswahili! So my form two class consists of relatively new English speakers! We decided I would focus on a subject I knew, English! Although they couldn’t help giggle at my pronunciation! I thought I would be clever and teach them “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”, but they already knew it! I ended up teaching them “Little Cottage in the Woods” and nursery rhymes! I have some wonderful video clips to upload to our blog to share – but the internet connections here are not allowing us to get more that a few seconds up!

The opportunity to spend extended time in a school other than one’s own is a true blessing. Sagam Primary School is an vibrant academic environment, supporting many children who have few resources! I can’t wait to share this wonderful place with my teacher team!

Mary