“Mother,” a photo reflection by Jenny Sherman

I didn’t take this photo. I wasn’t even there when it was taken. I saw it for the first time yesterday, actually, at our final exhibition for all the LTP work that’s been done this summer. It was in the middle of an alphabet project that some of the teachers at Meru School had made with Yvonne. Can you guess the word this photo is showing and the letter of the alphabet it represents?

Choosing a photo for this reflection was a daunting task. Looking back on literally thousands of photos from this trip, how could I choose just one moment, one of the many things I’ve learned here, to talk about? I decided to start with a photo I loved. So here it is. Out of two months worth of photos, this is the one I love.

This photo stopped me in my tracks because I recognized it. Even though I had never seen it before, I instantly understood it. I know the feeling of being held exactly like that. I’ve seen that look on the faces of my aunts and my mom. I used to hold my little sister like that, my legs stretched out at just that angle, not wanting to move even though my legs were slowly going numb.

In the midst of the crowds looking at the projects at the exhibition, every so often I’d hear the excited yells of people finding themselves in a photo or identifying a photo they had taken. I overheard one little girl joyfully explaining to her friend: “Mimi hapa. Wewe hapa. Na mimi hapa!” I’m here. You’re here. And I’m here. The girl was maybe seven years old, which explains why I was able to understand her Swahili.  But I think she was on to something. Recognizing yourself where you expect only strangeness is an amazing feeling. Looking at all their LTP work, the kids—and even the teachers—were seeing themselves as part of something that’s always been kept separate from and above them: their education.

In another area of the exhibition, Anneliese’s after school group of young inventors had hung posters of their designs for new inventions. One girl who had invented a more affordable alternative to shoe polish wrote about how she had been making this polish for her shoes long before she ever came to the inventing club. But when she got there and her teacher started talking about inventions, she realized that she was, in fact, an inventor. She had joined the ranks of all the famous and lofty inventors she was learning about in that moment when she couldn’t afford shoe polish and decided to do something about it. In that moment, her inner world and her education came together.

In most schools in Tanzania, students are not learning to be creative. But most children in Tanzania are incredibly creative—the way they play, dance, doodle and solve their own problems shows extraordinary imagination. But they see these two worlds—the worlds outside and inside the classroom—as irreconcilably divided. When we ask kids to use their imaginations to solve problems creatively in the classroom, we are hoping to bring these two worlds together, to show that you can be your creative, playful and innovative self as you go through your education.

In my own life and in the lives of the students here, we’re constantly given images of what we should be or what our education should look like. But what if those images were our images? The pictures in our heads, our dreams, the things we see each day, the things we recognize: what if those were in the textbooks or hanging up in the classroom for all to learn from? And what if we saw ourselves in the images of others, saw that we had the same fears and hopes? And after seeing what we have in common, maybe we would be able to understand the differences a little better.

For me, LTP is first and foremost about moments of recognition, of seeing yourself in the story of a great inventor or in the wary eyes of a child wrapped in a loving embrace.

M is for mother. Do you recognize this picture? Do you know it from your own life? Or from some outside idea of what “mother “means? Do you think this woman’s expression ever crosses your face? Does the child’s? When? What is different? What is the same?

In this photo, I see a late, hot night in footie pajamas, a hope for the future and a home waiting at the end of a long flight that leaves tomorrow.

What do you see?

Success, a photo reflection by Kyle Kunkle

As I reflect back on the last two months spent in Tanzania, I find myself trying to define success. With our LTP work, there is no big finished product that we built over time and our group really will never know if the teachers we taught embraced our method of learning or abandoned it to continue rote chalkboard ‘learning.’ Education has no scoreboard, there’s no number scale to calculate your impact as a teacher and no report back months or years later that automatically tells you how much of an influence you had on the students and teachers. Although tests are education’s judge of knowledge and understanding, they are not a grading scale for a teacher and how much success and influence teachers had on each individual. Tests can only give the answers to the questions you ask and for LTP and my Duke Engage experience, no matter how many tests I give out or questions I ask, I will never understand how meaningful it was for the students and teachers I taught, and I will never know exactly what they gained from our time together.

What is the full impact of the time I spent in Tanzania?

Although I leave Tanzania still wondering about the answer to this question, our final LTP exhibition reminded me of why LTP is such a unique teaching method and why it is so rewarding.

On our second to last day, I stood at Meru Primary School greeting over 600 students and teachers. Smiling faces walked past, accompanied by waves, hellos, handshakes, and hugs. With each person I struggled to connect a name with a face. Despite my lack of memory, this was still a moment of realization of the impact and success of my time in Tanzania. I realized I knew something more personal than the name of each individual. As people arrived to the exhibition, with each student and teacher, I saw a story, a memory, or a personality originating from their LTP project.

I remembered:
· A boy who dreamed of being a pilot
· The values of a Tanzanian proverb
· An artist who could draw a scene like you were actually there
· The ferocious look of a lion
· The memories of a home story
· Advice to prevent HIV
· And so many more.

LTP gave me the chance to see each person as an individual rather than another face in the blur of the crowd. Both my personal success and LTP’s success is brought to light by these memories. As a teacher these memories would have never been possible using only a chalkboard. Because of LTP I was able to learn more about students personally and create a memorable learning experience for both myself and the students.

Coming to Tanzania I knew I would not meet the end result of successfully integrating LTP into the Tanzanian school system. My goal from the start was, as a group, take LTP to the next level in Tanzania. I am proud I played a part in being a stepping stone for continued future progress and success, and I leave Tanzania confident our Duke Engage group left a positive impact on the teachers and students we worked with.

“If I were a heart…” a photo reflection by Yvonne Chan

心 (xin): Heart, Passion and Love

“If I were a heart, I will be loving people because we have to love each other so that we can’t have enemies. I love the word ‘heart’ [because] it means for us and if you don’t have heart how can you stay in the world[?] So I love heart and if you have heart, you will even love your parents, teachers, friends. So as I am love all of my friends, teachers, parents.”

– By Kabula from Arusha School

Out of all the students I have met in these two months, I build the strongest bond with my afterschool project students (they call themselves the Super Chinese Kids). Everyday from 4:30 to 5:30pm, I teach Beginner Chinese to 12 wonderful children. We started the journey with the basics of Chinese language: pingyin, phonetics, tones and strokes. Step by step, they began to acquire some basic vocabulary. Yesterday, at the end of our program, they performed four Chinese songs in front of 600 children and parents.

Having been working with LTP for the past two months, I tried to combine LTP with my Chinese class. One of the projects we did was the Chinese Pictogram Project. Pictogram (象形文字) is the earliest form of Chinese writing. These characters are stylized drawings of the objects they represent. In order to help my students better understand Chinese and have an easier time remembering Chinese characters, I decided to have them each pick a word with a pictogram origin. Then, they had to act out and use their body to represent the word they chose. Afterwards, I asked each student to write a story or a paragraph related to the word they chose. Without a doubt, my students enjoyed using their bodies to construct the word, but what I valued the most was the piece of writing they did.

As shown above, Kabula chose the word 心 （pinyin: xin) “heart.” Her writing doesn’t have the perfect grammar or fancy vocabulary, but it delivers such a strong message that one cannot ignore.

“We have to love each other so that we can’t have enemies”

What a thought that is needed in this unfriendly world! I am often pleasantly surprised when children are those who remind us grown-ups how the world should be. At the same time, this piece of writing reflects Tanzania’s peaceful culture-thanks to Tanzanian’s first president Julius Nyerere, who spread the ideology of peace, unity and family love in Tanzanian for 20 years. Some of the channels include education and the hip-hop culture – Nyerere encouraged rappers to include those ideas in their songs. It is not hard to see how his effort has eventually paid off now. Even though there is such diversity in the population, Tanzania remains to be one of the most peaceful countries in the Africa continent.

“… if you have heart, you will even love your parents, teachers, friends.”

Although we once had doubts about our children, all of us have grown to love and cherish our afterschool kids. We began to call them “my/our kids,” we began to know about each student’s personality, and we began to care for them as if they are our family. These kids found a position in our hearts. They were the anchors to my Arusha daily life and seeing them is what I l look forward to, no matter how terrible my day has been. They are the ones who introduced me to new Swahili words, to the school culture, to Tanzanian children games (“Mother in the Kitchen, cooking chapatti…”). At the same time, I was able to introduce a new language to them and provide them a haven to learn without worrying about exams and grades.

“… if you don’t have heart how can you stay in the world[?]”

In the end, we have given our hearts to each other. Like our favorite Arusha School teacher Mr. Rizone said at the closing ceremony today, “you all (the Duke students) gave your love [for different subjects] to us.” This afterschool experience helped me locate my heart for education, especially for teaching something I care about. At the same time, my students gave me their heart to learning Chinese. On the day we bid goodbye to our kids, my girls were all crying their hearts out. Although I was equally heartbroken, I find that morning very hopeful and calming. My children cried because they have made such a deep connection with the Chinese class, with me and with their classmates. It shows that they have devoted their heart to this class and that they have found someone they care a lot about. To me, I accomplished my mission here, knowing my kids have found something their heart would beat for.

With only 1 day left in Tanzania, how am I supposed to reconcile that I will have to leave all these loving children behind? My Super Chinese Kids, 你可以告訴老師嗎 (can you tell ‘teacher’)？

simmering down, a reflection on week seven by Leilani Doktor

“So next July when you come, we can do more projects like this?” Well, jeez we won’t be here next week, much less next July. As our last week of teaching boils down, the overwhelming feeling is out of control. No more lesson plans, no more out there ideas becoming afterschool activities, no more of our usual ‘hakuna matata routine’. Even as the most concrete form of our work—the final exhibition—comes together, our control over what we’ve set out to teach here for 7 weeks falls apart. We have no control over what people here take from our moments together, but in some ways that’s the beauty of teaching. You have no idea of what wonderful things could come out of your time spent.

photo: Students illustrate the word “doctor” in a visual alphabet about occupations.

So yes this may be our last Alphabet project with Class 3, and we may never get to do another Best Part of Me project with Meru students ever again, but who knows –there is always that possibility that some of us will be back here doing more LTP projects next July.

photo: Grace listens to a student’s story.

As the adrenaline rush from our brief Safari encounter with lions, elephants, and baboons, simmers down and we settle into those last moments in the classroom with our kids, we can’t help feeling the mounting anxiety that any goodbye brings. But we can also take pride in the enormous feeling of satisfaction that comes from knowing that we accomplished what we set out to do, and we did it well. I can take hope from the fact that the students are asking and expecting for more LTP, and I hope that they never stop expressing themselves.

photo: an aerial self-portrait

On Sunday we had our final LTP workshop with the Sakina Scholars, a program that provides scholarships to primary school students so that they may continue onto secondary school. Anneliese had worked with these students, who happened to be about the same age as us Duke students, for several years now and challenged us to come up with a fun and complex lesson plan. We decided to focus on the student’s personal knowledge by creating a ‘Book of Wisdom’. We spent our Sunday reflecting in the sun and sharing past events that changed us and then compiled these lessons and illustrative photographs into a book intended for future mentees. We laughed, we cried, but most of all we all were able to participate in an LTP project that empowered every participant, and we could not have asked for more.

photo: “The danger of drugs”

Over this week, I cannot help but relish every moment we have together whether it is the snorts of laughter while we sing “In the Jungle” Acapella style during car rides, our nearly religious reverence for chapatti, or our groggy and grumpy faces as we drag ourselves from our afternoon cat naps to our afterschool programs.

photo: Kyle and I strip pumpkin leaves.

We have finished our time as teachers in Tanzania and now it is time to tie up loose ends, its just too bad we didn’t get our cooking lesson until our last weekend here.

photo: Mama Mirambo teaches us how to make chapatti.

photo: The Sakina Scholars.

a photo reflection by Meaghan Li

On the first Tuesday of July, the campus of Shalom Primary School was littered with children writhing in feigned agony. Shouts of ‘Help! I’m on fire!’ and ‘Call the doctor now!’ rang across the school as the Grade Five students wrapped toilet-paper bandages around each other in panic.

Hanna and I were the designated leaders of the science lessons during our week at Shalom, and we deliberated for a long time when selecting a topic that was both stimulating for the students and relevant to their national syllabus.

We finally decided upon a lesson plan that was interactive and participation-based whilst also yielding practical benefits for students and teachers alike. The theme of the lesson was ‘First Aid and Emergency Response,’ and each group within the class was designated with the task of learning, photographing, and performing a common first-aid procedure before the class.

These procedures ranged from treating strains and cuts to CPR and the Heimlich Maneuver. It was apparent that the students had never been exposed to concepts such as washing out wounds and using ice to reduce swelling after an injury. Thus, in an environment where resources were limited and student access to first-aid was an exceptional privilege, it was important for the Grade Five students of Shalom to gain an practical and applicable experience within the classroom.

Participation was the major emphasis of this lesson. I was in charge of the ‘choking’ group; which was a much simpler term for the children to remember than the Heimlich Maneuver. After a short introduction, I led the students outside and had them pair up with a partner. Using instruction cards that Hanna and myself had prepared the previous night, I performed each step upon a student while ensuring that they were holding, striking, and positioning their partners correctly. It was rewarding to see that the students were increasingly comfortable with interacting with one another’s bodies, and this was an important barrier to break if we were to successfully fulfill the aim of our lesson.

After each partner had practiced many repetitions of the Maneuver, we chose two students to perform the Maneuver before their peers while the rest of the group contributed by performing a mini-scene that was set in a restaurant. The boy leading the class presentation, Baraka, elicited many laughs as he stood behind his classmate and clasped his hands around his navel. Impressively, the he was not fazed, and completed the segment after ensuring that he explained the importance of each step in a loudly projected voice.

With the photos that we took during the group session, the Duke students assembled a poster entitled ‘First Aid and Emergency Procedures.’ With the combination of humourous photos, lively illustrations, and simplified steps for each method, we hope that this poster will serve as a valuable resource for Shalom School.

The most rewarding moment of this experience was the day that we returned to Shalom to exhibit the posters that the students had created in class. The lunch bell rang as herds of excited students stampeded out of class and flocked around the first aid poster. I could see that they had surrounded the wall in a tight semi-circle formation, and I craned my neck in curiosity for what lay between the sea of bodies and the wall.

There, I saw the stout figure Baraka as he pointed at the poster and belted out in a booming, authoritative, voice: ‘First, you check the mouth for obstructions…’

Creative Renaissance, a photo reflection by Leilani Doktor

Over the past eight weeks, I have had a sort of creative renaissance. Throughout the program I have been pushed to find solutions where I thought they couldn’t be found, and push others to do the same. Our director Katie once said in discussion, “They say genius is the ability to take two totally unrelated things and connect them.” Over the hours toiling over work at my desk in America this was essential fact that I may have forgotten: critical thinking is inherently born out of creativity. Ideas, connections, those bits of tangential information I am renown for, they require critical and thus creative thinking. That is where my creative renaissance began.

I have loved this photo more for the experience it represents rather than the actual picture. When I gave these Shalom Primary School students the assignment of enacting the first aid procedure for a burn victim, I dreaded the idea of lecturing each step as the students acted out my words for the photos. Instead, these students began jumping at the opportunity to be actors, volunteering the idea that the kitchen in the school had caught fire and several students were trapped perilously in the flames. I handed the camera over to Collins, our designated Class 5 photographer, as the students burst into action. First they were screaming from the fire, while firefighters (students) ran onto the scene. Pulling yelping victims from the kitchen, they laid them out on the ground as the nurses (also students) tended to their wounds with toilet paper bandages, and all the while Collins snapped one excellent shot after another. Finally Eric, the ‘worst’ burn victim, was picked up by his fellow students and carried in the ambulance all the way to the classroom, wailing the entire time. It was as if I stepped into a movie, and I did not have to do any prompting. I was shocked, until I realized that I was shocked because the students had thought creatively and executed a collective idea without any interference.

One of the greatest challenges teaching here in Tanzania has been the uncertainty about whether the students will even respond. Sometimes we will begin a lesson, hand out photos, ask the students to invent a name for the person in the picture and then receive blank stares. This experience has left me hopeless for the few seconds it takes me to recover and come up with a new way of posing the question so that the students will be more receptive. It was through these lessons that I began to reevaluate my priorities as a teacher and see the importance of creativity.

LTP makes room for creativity, whether it is through participation, pictures, or play; it is a process that engages the creative process and successfully channels it directly into curriculum. My Shalom students were able to take the idea of a burn and connect it scene by scene into a story. They took on roles and personas they didn’t know and had fun while doing it. It was a critical thinking process that inspired education, and allowed students to discover their own knowledge.

Over my time as a teacher I have begun to see that teaching is more about facilitating learning rather than actually teaching information. And thus the onus is on me to be creative and find the right questions to allow students to discover their own knowledge. I have spent countless nights here debating the pros and cons of one lesson plan versus another, racking my brain for a new approach that could solve all my problems. The good news is that it is getting easier- my mind jumps, and sometimes it wanders; but overall I have seen the value in creativity. Most importantly I have given my own creativity room to bloom.

At first I thought I was here to inspire creativity in others, but I have found that in order to do that you must inspire creativity in yourself. You need creativity when you take a photo, you need creativity to write a word problem from a picture of goats, you need creativity to ask questions, and you need creativity for genius. I have seen students and teachers alike light up when they discover a new answer. It is that illuminating effect, which has driven me to make creativity a priority.

Taking a new directions is necessary sometimes, a photo reflection by Grace Shin

This is a memorable photo for me because of how much action is captured in it. The photo was planned and taken for Rose, a student at Usa River Academy. We were working with Usa River students for the day with The Foundation For Tomorrow, and our main project was a Dreams Project. We wanted the students to think back and remember a dream that they had dreamt before, while sleeping. The final product would be a poster with a picture representing the dream, and a written narration of what the dream was about and what the dream meant to its respective dreamer.

Right off the bat, there seemed to be some confusion because a large number of the Usa River students started writing about their future dreams—what they want to be when they grow up. Students started writing about becoming a football player at Manchester United, becoming a teacher, flying planes as a pilot.

I was working with three young ladies that afternoon. They were also confused because they could not remember any specific dreams they had dreamt. I felt like I was at a dead end. I thought pessimistically to myself, “The kids don’t remember any dreams, and this is a project about real dreams from the past, so…how can this possibly work? What more can I do? I can’t just keep telling them to try and remember…”

Now that I look back, there’s a lot I could have done. But at the time, I wasn’t quite sure what direction I should take next.

But then came Rose’s idea. She suggested that if they absolutely could not remember any dreams, they could make up their own dreams, from their imagination. I had been so caught up on the aspect of real dreams that I made myself get completely stuck at a dead end. Even though the dreams hadn’t really been dreamt, the students would still get practice planning for and taking photographs, and they would be using their imagination to make creative stories. That sounded like LTP to me.

Rose’s dream story was about running into a live and hungry lion. She kept running away and running away, but she kept meeting more and more lions that continued to follow her! This was a dream that had been created on the spot, but to me, this didn’t make it any less real. I was most surprised by the way her photograph turned out. Rose planned for her friend to act as the lion and pounce on her, and she herself would act shocked. But when it came time to take the photograph, even though Rose knew her friend was going to jump, I don’t think she realized how startled she would be. We can see the surprise not only in her facial expression, but also in the angle of her body and the position of her arms—we can see that she tried to back off, alarmed by the abrupt jump of her friend, the lion.

Sometimes, even when we Duke students plan for lessons, we have to do away with some parts of it, or even the whole entire thing. This isn’t because we didn’t plan carefully enough or thoroughly enough—it’s because nothing and no one (especially young, energy-blasting children!) turns out exactly the way we expect them to. The mood of the students, the mood of the local teachers, the extent of the language barrier, and other factors all affect how the day’s lessons will go. My students on this day were having a hard time remembering a dream from their sleep—maybe they were tired, maybe they were distracted by an event that would follow that evening, maybe they felt pressured by time—but the day had to go on! Thanks to Rose, and the flexibility of all of the teachers and students in the room, my group was still able to go through the LTP process together.

So the secret is out. Some of the Dreams Project posters from that day aren’t based on real dreams. But I’ll bet that some of the conjured-up dreams were dreamt that very night after our day at Usa River Academy.

LTP Arusha Week 6: reflections by Jenny Sherman

We began our week at Shalom, returning to show the students the posters we had made from the work they did with us last week. Shalom is an important place for us—I think we really came into our own as teachers there last week and now we feel at home among the supportive teachers and the incredible, creative students.

This is one group of the hundreds of Shalom students who rushed out into the school courtyard to look at their finished work. Standing in the midst of the chaos, I realized how important this part of the process is: following through to help teachers preserve the work of their students so they can create visual aids for future classes. I also noticed that among the many thrilled students, there were a few who looked disappointed. When I asked them what was wrong, they said that their writing or their favorite photo hadn’t been included. We had worked with eighty students each day and had small posters, just a couple per class, to work with. So we couldn’t include every photograph or every piece of writing. This is something to think about for the future: we shouldn’t take students’ work for granted and should think carefully about how to make sure everyone is represented when it comes time to present the finished result of an LTP activity. It is something really special to be a part of a work that will live on at your school.

On Wednesday, we held a teachers’ workshop at Meru School. I was nervous as I always am before teaching teachers, but I am learning to trust the importance of sharing new ideas and not to be intimidated. As an LTP instructor, I have something to offer and it’s important to be confident about that, just as it’s important to listen to where the teachers are coming from. This workshop was something of a turning point for me. As I took the teachers through an alphabet project, creating 26 photos on the theme of home according to the alphabet, I had the incredible feeling of knowing what I was doing and how to answer the teachers’ questions.

Even with the considerable language barrier, there were a few concepts I was able to communicate to the Meru teachers that I hadn’t been able to articulate before. The first was the idea that things are more than what they seem. We began the workshop by reading a photo, coming up with all the information communicated in the photo and thinking of possible stories. When we moved onto the alphabet, we created word association webs from a single word from our alphabet. I explained that just as we found stories in our photo that weren’t apparent at first glance, each word in our alphabet could also give us many stories if we dug deep enough. This idea seemed to really interest my group.

The other concept was communicating in a photo how each word related to the theme of the alphabet, in this case “home”. The photo above represents V for “vitunguu” or “onions”. The teachers initially wanted to take a photo zoomed in on several onions, but I pushed them to think about giving the person who would see the photo more information with more details in the photo. How do you use “vitunguu” at home? They then came up with the idea of showing the cooking scene that you see here. I was so impressed by the Meru teachers’ openness and willingness to try my ideas and left the workshop feeling proud of them and of myself.
We spent the rest of the week with Grade 3 at Meru School, working on another alphabet project. Meru is a government school, which means that instruction is in Swahili (as opposed to English in private schools like Shalom). While the Grade 3 teachers helped translate our instructions to the kids and we spoke a little Swahili, communication was still difficult. “Subiri” (wait) and “sikiliza” (listen) became the most important words in my vocabulary. Taking photos with the students was overwhelming, simply because of the large size of our groups and their boundless excitement. I include this photo of “orange” to illustrate this point. Notice in the reflection that this photo is being taken by not one, but ten people. I rest my case.

At the end of the project, I was worried that because of the chaotic lessons, the students hadn’t learned what we had set out to teach. My groups’ last photo helped convince me I was wrong.

This is a photo of Christmas (or X for X-mas to be exact). After much whispering and deliberation, the group led me to this spot behind their school and were very particular on how they wanted the photo taken: just the flowers. I’m still not sure exactly why they chose this photo and what the significance of the flowers is, but I know that when I see this photo, I see Christmas. Out of all the tired ideas thrown around—gift giving, decorations, feasts—my third graders chose to communicate a familiar concept in a new and creative way, one of the most important goals of LTP.

“Nothing you do for a child is ever wasted.” Last week, we discussed how this quote by Garrison Keillor relates to our work here, and I thought of it again at Meru. Trying to share new ideas in a system we don’t understand with a language and culture barrier can be overwhelming—sometimes I feel despite our best efforts, we are not always able to achieve what we want to in a given lesson. Instead of getting discouraged, I’m trying to think of it as a learning experience where each day we get a little better and learn a little more about teaching. We don’t know yet what our impact will be, and this is both a responsibility and a reassurance. There are so many things at work within our students that are invisible to us except for maybe a fleeting instant: lightbulbs going off, questioning norms, speaking up, etc. We have to let go of the idea that everything will go as planned and hold on to the knowledge that as we work to continue and improve LTP, nothing we do is a waste: everything has an impact.

Deal or No Deal. Reflections on Week 5 by Tracy Huang.

This week, while Katie and Anneliese conducted a workshop at Patandi Teachers College, we taught at Shalom Primary School in the morning and continued our LTP projects at Arusha School in the afternoon.  For Shalom, we were broken up into pairs and assigned a subject to teach to each grade, working our way up from Standard 3 on Monday to Standard 6 on Thursday.  Jenny and I partnered together in creating geography curriculum during the week, while the other students led classes in English, math, and science.  Every morning, seventy-some students would gather in a large classroom, squeeze together on wooden benches, elbows resting on the table, bodies leaning forward as they waited to see how we, the wazungu (foreigners), would conduct the lessons.  The following images showcase the variety of teaching styles that we use to engage the students in their learning.

Meaghan looks out across a sea of raised hands and eager students.

Shalom students act out a “crocodile” to learn about the habitats and movements of animals.

Yvonne demonstrates how to use a camera as a student takes a picture of a triangle.

Shalom students look at their pictures of shapes during the math lesson.

Students work together to build their own frequency graph in order to learn about data collection and statistics.

Although “LTP” stands for Literacy Through Photography, Jenny and I decided to concentrate on the “learning through participation” part of this hands-on education methodology. Instead of forcing photography into the lesson plan to make “good” use of our resources, we sought to teach by actively engrossing the students in the curriculum. Several hours and twenty sheets of paper later, Jenny and I had created a game based on the economy whereby each group of students represented a country or region (Tanga, Ruvuma, U.S.A., Kenya, China, etc.) and had a list of “imports” that they needed to obtain by selling their “exports.” The first country to acquire all of their imports won the game.

Students trade “goods” in the classroom market.

I wanted the students to have fun, but I also worried that the students would not see beyond the physical motions of barter trading with paper cards. I could not have been more pleasantly surprised. As the kids stood up one by one to report on what they had learned from the game, I realized I had underestimated their intelligence. Perhaps the students at Shalom are just smarter than most, but I truly believe that the fact that LTP had been previously practiced at Shalom is an important contributing factor. Just like reading a photograph, the students at Shalom delved into the details of the game, and used their creative and critical thinking skills to apply their classroom experience to the world economy. Although it has already been a full month, I still find myself getting caught off guard by all the students with whom I work—whether it is because they exceed my expectations or murmur something with such precocity. Thus, I cannot wait to see what next week has in store; but for now, “peace, Shalom.”

School bus for Shalom Primary School.

Bringing out the best in students, a picture reflection by Kyle Kunkle

(drawing by David A.)

At Usa River Academy we divided the class into groups and asked each group to pick one photo from a pile of four or five pictures. Then we asked groups to imagine a story about what might have been happening before during and after the picture was taken. Finally we asked them to draw another picture that corresponded with the story and the original photograph.

My group chose a photo of a police officer driving a car. David, in class four, with confidence, took the pencil and paper and began to draw the elaborate details of a thief who robbed a bank and used a scooter to get away before being shot and arrested by the police. David’s drawing was incredible, realistic, and perfectly matched with the group’s growing story. With David’s artistic ability, the group was able to add new exciting details and tell David what was missing from the drawing. The final drawing paired with the original photo told a complete story that sparked your imagination to feel like you were actually seeing, hearing, and doing what those inside the pictures felt. The group was able to come up with a list of possible titles for their picture story and present their project to the group so that fellow students had no trouble following the intense experience of the police officer.

(photo by Joan Liftin. ‘Haitian Roving Patrol volunteer Wilner Athouriste on Duty. Delray Beach, Florida, 1999. http://www.indivisible.org)

While working with David and his group on their story and drawing, I observed a unique proponent of the LTP process. LTP allows learning in the classroom to explore beyond the curriculum and use the different strengths and skills of each individual to facilitate the class’s learning experience. In many classrooms in Tanzania, students simply spend class time copying notes from the chalkboard and are rarely asked to participate. As LTP explored and demanded different skills of the students, David’s artistic talent was discovered and soon transformed into a learning aid for himself and his fellow students. David’s drawing helped push students imagination, explore specific details, and enhanced the thinking of each individual.
LTP reaches beyond the subjects the students are working on, and builds skills in various areas. Over the past month, much like with David, I have observed numerous students excel in different areas including:
• Acting: performing emotions and expressions of people and animals
• Writing: creating unique stories with well-constructed details and imagination
• Teamwork/Leadership: organizing and instructing the group
• Public Speaking: speaking loud and clear with confidence in front of a group

All the students who demonstrated these different skills raised the level of knowledge in the classroom by setting examples and encouraging further critical thinking. Without giving students the opportunity to bring their strengths to the classroom environment and without teacher’s exploring individual’s unique skill levels, students lose one of the most impactful influences in education: Learning Through Peers.