Education in Kenya

Earlier this week, one of my friends recently alerted me to the fact that I have yet to write about my actual teaching experience thus far in Kenya.  I was a bit shocked to realize I had forgotten to write about such a large part of my time so far in Kenya, and agreed with my friend that I  should write something on the topic.

I will start by explaining what I am doing while here.  I am teaching math and physics classes at Oruba Mixed Secondary School.  Last term, I had two physics courses (one Form 1 and one Form 2) and one form 1 math class.  This term, I have two physics classes and two math classes (one Form 1 and one Form 2 for each) and I am assisting with a Form 4 class.

To clarify, there are four Forms in Secondary School, with Form 1 equivalent to 9th grade in the U.S, Form 2 equivalent to 10th grade, and so on.  Also, subjects are done slightly differently here.  Every subject can be taken for the full 4 years.  All students take the same 11 subjects in Forms 1 and 2,  Then, when they move to Form 3, they can drop 3 or 4 of the elective subjects, so that they are taking 7 or 8 subjects the last 2 years.  So, this means that some students take physics for four years in high school.  Not many do (like in the US, physics is the least popular science), but all need to take it for at least 2 years.  Since students are taking physics from Form 1, this means that a lot of the topics covered for the first two years are done mostly just conceptually, because the students have not yet gained the mathematical skills to do many quantitative problems.  This has been a bit frustrating for me at times, since I have always studied physics with a very large mathematical element involved.  However, it is also teaching me how to explain physics concepts without getting too technical, which has been good.  Math is also taught a bit differently here.  Math is one of the compulsory subjects, so all students must take if for four years like in the U.S.  However, unlike how the Mathematical topics are split up by year in the U.S,, they are all thrown together in each year here.  So, you may go from an Algebra topic, to a Geometry Topic, to another Algebra topic, to a Trigonometric topic, and so on.  Another thing that I found interesting about the math syllabus here, is that it covers a bit of Calculus in Form 4.  It is by no means like an AP Calculus course in the U.S., because it is only an introduction that takes about one third of the year, but it means all students here learn some Calculus before leaving Secondary School, unlike in the U.S.

Now, onto my personal experience with teaching.  I will start with the frustrating parts of my experience, so I can end on a happy note.  One of my biggest challenges with teaching here, especially initially, has been the accent barrier.  Since I am always surrounded by Kenyans, I have become used to their accent and can usually understand them now, but my students only see me for about 40 minutes a day, so at times they still struggle with my accent.  They say Americans "swallow their english" because we slur all our words together.  So, I normally try to slow down and pronounce every syllable clearly, but at least once or twice a day, I forget and get lazy.   When that happens, one or two of my students will say "pardon", meaning "please repeat".  That is happening less and less though now, thankfully.

The other two main frustrations I have had deal more with aspects of how education is done in Kenya.  One of these, is how the school days are structured.  Students must arrive at school by 7am for Preps, which is like a free period, where any teacher can come in to do some extra teaching, or if no teacher shows up, it is a time to do homework.  However, more often than not, a teacher does come.  Then, classes and lunch fill the time from 8 until 3:20pm.  At 3:20, there is another Preps time.  And finally, from 4:00 until 5:00 is games/clubs.  Then after 5, students are allowed to go home.  My problem with this is that it does not leave a lot of time for students to do homework.  Especially, since a number of student do not have electricity, so it is too dark to work by 6:30pm.  Perhaps this is my American bias talking (and I realize that education in America is by no means perfect) or I may just have been out of high school for too long and forgotten what it is like to have class more than 2 hours a day.  But I am of the opinion that students need a chance to practice things on their own in order to really learn, and that does not seem possible with Form 1 and 2 taking 11 subjects.  To be honest, they do not have all eleven subjects every day, but there are 9 periods in a day.  So, to try and help deal with this, I try to leave between 10 and 20 minutes of each class period for them to do exercises while I walk around and check if they are correct.  This also helps me give the students some feedback, because it would not be possible for me to correct all 50 assignments from each class every day.

My other frustration has been the fact that exams are the soul mode of evaluation.  There is one exam that determines what Secondary Schools students can go to after Standard 8 (8th grade in the U.S.) and one that determines which University, if any, a Secondary Graduate can go to.  Also, at my school, there are three exams each term.  The first two are 15% of the grade and the final one is 70% of the grade.  I believe this varies slightly per school, but the fact that exams are the only factor in determining grades seems to be universal.  There are two reasons for why I don't like this.  One is that if a student just happens to have a bad day, that can completely ruin their grade for the term, or if it is during the Standard 8 or Form 4 final exams, it can mean they do not get into as good of a school as they should have.  The other reason for why I don't like it, is the fact that some people just are not good test takers.  I should mention though, that this system does have some benefits.  With such large classes (normally around 50 students per class) continuous evaluation would be very difficult.  Also, the national exams for determining what schools students get accepted to make sure that the evaluation is standardized.   However, I feel that the system can be improved, but I am not sure how it should be done, and if it is changed, it will take time.

In the end, I think that most of the things that frustrate me come from the fact that there is a shortage of teachers in Kenya.  That is why most classes have to be around 50 students.  And based on the teachers I have met in Kenya, I think most of the teachers are truly trying to do the best they can with the situation they are given.  Also, if anyone reading this thinks I have been too critical with my frustrations and has any comments or an alternative point of view I should consider, please let me know.

Ok, now onto the positive experience I have had.  Probably the best part of my experience teaching here so far has been the students.  They are all great kids.  They are incredibly well disciplined.  Even with the large classes, I have never really had much trouble controlling them.  In fact, at first I was worried that they might be too well disciplined, because not many talked much in class.  But I think that that was partly because of the fact they could not understand me well.  After they got used to my accent a bit and I got a bit better at talking more clearly, they began answering my questions and were more comfortable asking questions when they did not understand something.  Some of the bolder ones have even become comfortable joking around with me, which I like, because it means they are not intimidated by me or anything.  As most of you know, I don't like being too serious all the time, and like joking around with people.  They definitely know that I am a teacher and they respect that, but are still ok with joking with me.  For example, just last Friday, as we were getting ready for class, one student asked me how my night was.  I said, "good".  And he then asked, "How is your fiance?"  I was a little shocked and just said "Hakuna" meaning, "There isn't one".  Then another student asked if they could find one for me.  I obviously said, "no", and when they asked why, I said, "because I don't trust you".  And after that, we started with class.

Another positive aspect of my experience so far has been my fellow teachers.  I get along pretty well with all of them, and there are a few just a couple years older than me, whom I have become good friends with.  We all share the same staff room, and it can be a lot of fun to just sit and talk in there during lunch or between classes.  Also, on the weekends, I usually meet up with one or more of the teachers near my age.  Along with my host family, they are the people I have gotten to know the best here in Kenya, and they are a lot of fun to hang out with.  They have tried to teach me to dance on a couple of occasions, which just left them laughing.  We'll see if that changes at all before I go back to the U.S.

Sorry, this blog turned out to be pretty long.  If you read all of it, I hope you found it interesting.