Model Secondary School f/t Deaf

Well, I am not talking about the Model Secondary School f/t Deaf in Washington DC, but rather the one at Machakos Deaf School.  The school itself is actually closed for the Christmas holiday (a month off), but the Peace Corps "hired" the school, 5 teachers, school kitchen staff, and 45 kids (out of 280 kids) to stay on for an additional week and provide us a Model School.  This way, we can practice our lesson planning, get immersed in Kenyan Deaf classroom environment, learn and practice their language, and so forth.  I selected to teach Form 1 (freshmen) maths (mathematics but they call it Maths), and Physics.  There were 15 kids in my class.

Being Deaf myself, I do find it easy and enjoyable being able to engage the deaf students because of our natural sign languages as our communication did not even get in our way, which enabled us to interact easier and more naturally.  I do see that good and natural communication do make a huge difference in their learning.  We were able to practice, review, challenge, and do other techniques to ensure they understood the material that is being taught.  I avoid asking them with "you understand?", or "you know?" because they will aways respond with yes even when they may not really understand.

I never thought I would ever fill up the wall-to-wall blackboard with mathematic numbers and graphs.  I taught the class "coordinates and graphs".  Then I went further by adding linear equations.

Yeah, wearing a watch, a pen in my pocket, and my reading glasses, wherever it decides to run away from me -- from my pocket or my desk or the floor nearby.

Near the end of the week, I was hoping to teach physics and have a lab.  I wanted to demonstrate an experiment that maybe every American kid knows -- dropping mentos in a liter of diet Pepsi.  I was able to find Pepsi (not diet), but could not find mentos anywhere.  I tried another candy that seem to look like mentos but the experiment failed and did not even erupt into 10-15 feet tall.  I did not have much time to research alternatives to mentor, so I changed the class to "life skills" and did several team building activities.  The picture below -- the boys (they usually do not mix girls and boys in activities like this where there are close body contact) were to find a way to fit everyone on a small piece of poster paper on the ground.  They made it.

The girls did the "trust" activity where they catch the person falling backwards with eyes closed.  I even  challenged them by having the falling girl fall backwards from a chair.  

On Thursday evening, I was assigned as a Teacher on Duty (TOD) where I have to sleep at the school and monitor the campus.  The kids were well behaved and they basically took care of me rather than the other way around.  Its amazing to see them do their own manual laundry and hang up their own clothes, even when they are young.  For those who are very young they have older kids help out.

They gave us a talent show, and unlike in America where it meant skits, they were mostly tribal dances.  There were a skit or two, but all involved dancing.

No, this one isn't tribal, but floor swirling dance -- the kid was good at that, especially the body wave on the floor.

 This is the bed I had for the night.  No, I have not slept on it yet, and I am not that heavy anymore.  The bed mattresses are all foam, and worn out.  I tried putting two foam mattresses to straighten it out but its so C-curved.  I did not sleep well, especially with a large florescent light shining right through my window from outside.

The kitchen had three large vats to cook our meals.  Everything is heated by firewood.  Lot of smoke coming outside, and sometimes even inside.

They seem serious with the flag raising ceremony.  The three selected kids who work together to hang the flag had their "military" movements with locked knee walking etc.

An 8 inch centipede (or larger) visited us in our teachers staff room.  I was not sure if it was begging for more education, or sacrificing itself for biology class.  No, these are not my hands, but someone else, I only took the photo.  Not sure if I want to handle it ha.

My Form 1 class -- enjoyed them very much.  I did once give them a practice Chemistry exam three weeks ago, which they failed miserably.  See my earlier story on that.  But with four days of teaching them Maths, and giving them an exam with content that I know I taught them, they did extremely well this time.  9 of 15 students earned an A.  Yes I know I am comparing Apples with Oranges but I like to think I am maybe comparing Big Apple with a Small Apple (grins).  I believe I have proved that a teacher (Deaf or one that is fluent in sign language) will help any class improve their grades.  I will observe that more when I teach for the next two years at my school. As a reward, I manage to get 11 student "exercise books" to give to those kids who earned an A.  I gave two books to two kids who earned 90 and above.  Exercise books are those cheap recycled paper bound into books that they use to copy everything off the blackboards.  They cannot afford to buy more so they try to use every paper they can find, so getting these books as their rewards brought big smiles.  Sigh, that would not even work in America, except maybe giving them iPod Touches.  

The Peace Corps gave each kid certifications which they were very happy with.  I guess it meant a lot to them than how much it would have meant to the American kids (we probably make paper airplanes out of them).

The kids were very sad to go home.  This is typical for deaf kids with families that have no communication for them at all, so they always felt residential schools are their real homes, and dread to go home.  One principal told a girl that her parents are now here to bring them home, she got upset and begged the principal to tell her parents to come back tomorrow instead.  Nope, that cannot happen because many kids live far away from the school.

This "model school" week was a great change in our training routine.  Time went by so fast, and that wraps up our week 8.  Next week will be our "last full week" of training.  The following, and final, week will not be a full week, with us traveling back to Nairobi and get ready for our swearing in ceremony on December 14th.

I was asked to represent the Deaf Education group giving a speech (short one, whew) in KSL to the VIPs at the swearing ceremony.  I will also have two other volunteers giving the same speech (maybe one sentence at a time) in Swahili and English.