Teaching At Mzumbe

Form V HGL Classroom

Now that I’m a bit more settled in the community, at my home and at my school here at Mzumbe, I wanted to share a little bit more about the class I’m actually teaching.  First, I should explain a little bit about the way that the school system works here in Tanzania, especially for secondary education.  After completing 7 years of primary school, students will usually begin secondary school at what is called the O, or Ordinary, Level.  I say usually because the government does not pay for secondary school, so not every student starts secondary school right after completing primary school.  Students at the O-Level will complete 4 years (also called “Forms”) studying typical subjects such as science, math, English, geography, and history.  At the end of Form 4 they take a National examination based upon all of the subjects they have taken.  From there, students can elect a number of options (depending on their marks on the national exam), including going to technical school, teacher training school, or continue on to what is called A, or Advanced Level studies.  This is essentially two additional years of secondary education for students who intend to go on to study at a college or university (sort of like Jr. College).  Usually A-Level is broken up into “streams” or “combinations,” each having a specific focus.  For example, if you want to go on a path to becoming a doctor, you would take a combination called PCB (Physics, Chemistry, Biology).  These are the only subjects you would take at the A-Level.  There are many combinations that include subjects such as History, Geography, Mathematics, Economics, and English.  At Mzumbe, the A-Level streams are HGL (History, Geography, English Language) which is considered an Arts stream, PCM (Physics, Chemistry, Math), and PCB, which are science streams.

At the moment, what I have been assigned to teach here at Mzumbe is English Literature for A-Level Form 5.  This is part of the HGL stream for the A-Level.  There are 31 students in my class (an average number for a class in Tanzanian secondary school).  As they are taking the HGL stream for their studies, most of the students are interested in going to Law school, becoming teachers or working for the government in some capacity.  The classroom is a bit small, but comfortable enough for the students to have their own study space, as opposed to some classrooms where students may have to share desks and even chairs.  The students also remain in the same classroom for the entire day, and the teachers will rotate from class to class, as opposed to the U.S. where a teacher will have their own classroom and the students will change classes from period to period.  Each period is 80 minutes, and usually the students will have 4-5 80 min periods each day.  In O-Level, sometimes the periods are 40 minutes.

While the subjects themselves maybe similar in Tanzania as they are in the U.S. the system and guidelines for teachers is also unique, especially for English teachers.  Since there is a uniform syllabus and reading list for the entire country, I have to select specific novels, plays and poetry to discuss with my class.  What is interesting about this from a foreigner’s perspective is a majority of the literature on the list is from African authors.  Since it’s not common in the U.S. to study African literature, I was a bit unfamiliar with a lot of the texts that I found I would have to be teaching, and had to familiarize myself with the books and plays.  While the texts might be different, teaching literature to Tanzanian students is the same as it would for any student in the U.S.  Currently in my class we are discussing one of the novels on the reading list, and analyzing many aspects of the book including characters, themes, figures of speech, etc.  One of the great experiences has been seeing how involved the students get in the discussion of the literature, and how truly perceptive they are about the subject matter.  Every student is eager to participate in discussions and to engage with their teacher and fellow classmates.  They also speak English with ease, so it makes the discussions that much more interesting for me to lead, participate in and observe as well.

At first I was little unsure about teaching English Literature at the A-Level because it wasn’t what I expected to be teaching, and as I mentioned, I was unfamiliar with the texts that I would be teaching.  However, thus far I’ve really enjoyed getting to know my class and teaching them about Literature and how to analyze it and think about it critically.  It’s been very rewarding, and there are many moments when I do truly feel like I’m helping to make an impact on their educational experience.