African experience broadens teacher's, students' horizons
Imagine being crammed into a room with more than 100 other students, about to start your science class with one teacher and one chalkboard. The class will be taught in English, but your teacher is not fluent in that language.
This is the situation for many students in Iringa, Tanzania. Cardinal Mooney High School teacher Shaina Buckles visited the community during the past summer to help remedy that problem.
"We really take so much for granted here," she said of the United States.
Buckles, along with two others, gave up a month of their summer to travel to Africa to teach three classes: one to a group of secondary school teachers, another to the school’s headmasters and the third to a group of professors from Tumaini University.
Shaina Buckles stands in front of a tapestry she purchased during her working visit to Tanzania. Photo by William Mansell.
How to use Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the Internet may seem like standard knowledge in the U.S., but that is what Buckles focused on in her lessons for Tanzanian teachers.
"With PowerPoint, it was fun to show them pictures so they can show their students visually and show them online sites for experiments," Buckles said. "They don’t have labs, so to do experiments online was great."
The idea for the classes originated with Stan Muessle, who has been going to Africa for 13 years in an effort to help bring new technologies to Third World countries. Last summer was the first time he found three teachers who could make the trip. Buckles said he hopes to expand the program because of that success.
Stan had told Buckles, after the fact, that the second class with the headmasters was pivotal to his undertaking.
"The headmasters’ class was so successful," Buckles said. "We set them up with e-mail accounts and taught them how to budget on Excel, putting in grades, calculate formulas. Showed them what we showed the teachers.
"[If they] don’t have the headmaster’s backing, then those teachers can’t do anything with the knowledge," she added. "We had them laughing, joking around; it was just incredible. They took to it, understood it. I’ve never seen someone so excited to create an Excel spreadsheet."
Buckles said that while the new technology excited the educators, they also showed some caution. She laughed as she began to tell the story of a science teacher terrified of computers; he had seen one on only one prior occasion.
"He was under the impression that you could catch a virus from touching one," she said. "He had heard of computer viruses, and there in Tanzania, when they hear virus they think of HIV. So we had to dispel that.
"After that week, he was creating PowerPoints; [we were] showing him the Internet and showing him PowerPoints already made, lesson plans already made from teachers around the world that he could use online."
CONNECTING SARASOTA
TO TANZANIA
Buckles said the graciousness of the people in Tanzania is something she will always carry with her. She wanted to share that with her students.
Before Buckles went to Africa, she and some of her charges at Cardinal Mooney had begun video chatting with students from Africa. Now that she is back home, she hopes the chatting not only continues but expands.
"This concept of video conferencing around the world is not happening in too many places," she said "We’re exchanging ideas, cultures, and eventually it will be sharing curriculum."
The goal is for each school to teach one class to the other. "Eventually it will work up to a curriculum base," she said. "Do a book project, reading the same book, kind of like a book club; exchange ideas about the same book."
For the present, though, the video conferencing is more for cultural awareness.
"My students are just having a blast," Buckles said. "The look on their faces – they’re proud. One student came to me and was so excited that these African girls listen to Jay-Z. They didn’t realize that, yes, they do have the opportunity to listen to American music there."
Jennifer McDonald, Cardinal Mooney’s director of advancement, said, "I think Stan came to this school to talk about global outreach, and that’s something that expands the horizons of our students."
She added, "They have no idea these schools have no computers or electricity. It was eye-opening to know there was all of this going on in the world."
Now, Buckles, Cardinal Mooney and St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Bradenton are hoping to raise money to buy projectors for some of the schools Buckles visited.
Buckles said 12 projectors are needed. She hopes to deliver them in person next year when she heads back to Iringa.
"Unless you’ve been there, it’s difficult to describe," she said. "The hardships that they go through – and we just take so much for granted – but the people are always smiling. I just fell in love with Africa."
McDonald feels the program will have a lasting effect on her students as well as those in Tanzania.
"It’s a way of world understanding. It can’t really lead to world peace," she said, "but as long as we tolerate each other better and understand each other better, that means a lot. If we can do this with our teenagers, they are very impressionable."