Professional development of our teachers is very important to us and we are always looking for ways for them to learn new teaching methodologies or resources in their classes.
This month, a group of United States teachers volunteered their time to come to our school to share their knowledge and expertise with our Tanzanian teachers. Most of them come from Louisville Collegiate School except for two, who teach at other schools and institutions and all had to apply to be part of it. Collegiate and St Jude’s are developing a partnership and it’s the second year that the program has been running at our school. It proved to be a big success.
Each of the American teachers teamed up with one of our Tanzanian teachers for two weeks, to do team teaching, planning and delivering lessons from the NECTA curriculum together. Some took a biology class together while others took technology, English and various subjects. Our teachers were enthusiastic to learn from them about how to improve their teaching and learning skills and were able to absorb the information more fully as the American teachers were by their side and in the classes with them.
James Calleroz White, who is the Head of the Louisville Collegiate School, visited classes and held a series of conversations about teaching, learning and leading with the leaders across the campuses.
“We’re very happy with how the exchange program worked and we found with an extra teacher, you got a better lesson as the student was able to learn something that had much better detail because of the good preparation and cooperation between the two teams,” said St Jude’s Upper Primary School Headmaster, Peter Manjalla. “Our upper, lower and secondary primary school leaders have now decided that we’re jointly going to look at ways to improve maths results and we’re excited about further looking at how to mprove learning and teaching so as to benefit our students.”
As well as in the classroom, the US teachers set up a ‘club’ with the Standard 7 students so they could do fun yet enriching activities with them. They included science demonstrations, vocabulary games, outdoor running games and a range of other exercises.
The American teachers also learnt a lot from our teachers as well about including more designated reading times for students and they gave them an overview about Tanzania which they could share with students and colleagues back at home.
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