It is a luxury to live on campus and not have to battle traffic to get to work or run for the bus.
The staff have been eager and receptive learners. They come to ESL twice a week in their department groups. There are six departments: Languages, Vocational Studies, Business and ICT, Maths, Science and Humanities.
Once a week I have a class with the administration staff and another with the boarding teachers - 14 one hour periods in total.
The admin team at morning tea. Everyone has a mug of sweet black ginger tea at 10.30am.
The total group numbers 61 and I am pleased to say I have learnt all their first names at least. Their names are both Anglicised and local. They include Ernest and Daniel, Stella and Mary as well as Mcharo, Oisso, Mwita, Elibariki, Koringo and Fauz. There is also one man named Forehead and a woman named Charisma.
Some of the secondary teaching staff
As the end of my time approaches I can feel that I have achieved what I set out to do in terms of assisting the ESL department. Firstly, with the terrific assistance of Laura Commins (who some of you will know) we have formalised the teaching syllabus so that those volunteers who come after us will have a program to follow and staff will know what they are aiming for at each level.
In addition, we have devised test specifications so that versions of a test benchmarked to CEFR Level B2 (some of you will know what I mean) can be used when recruiting new teachers and to measure the improvement in the English of the current staff at both the primary and secondary schools.
The next step is to create the C1 level syllabus and test specifications. As the school is aiming to be an international school, they want and need to have teachers with very high levels of English proficiency.
So that the individual teachers could feel that they had made improvements in their language over the last five or six weeks, they have all set and are working in their own time on a language goal. This week the timetable has been completely changed for exams so, instead of lessons I am seeing a steady stream of teachers either handing in their work or coming for assessment in relation to their personal goal. Some of them have made an enormous effort considering the conditions they live under at home with an irregular power supply for light and generally none of the resources we take for granted.
While I would have also enjoyed working with the children, most of my experience is with teaching adults so this was the most appropriate role for me. In fact, there are very few non-Africans who work directly with the children. These are Ian (secondary art), Helen and Sarah (teacher librarian) and Cam and Lucy (PE). Most of the other volunteers are teacher mentors or are involved in senior administration roles, marketing and visitor services.
There are always opportunities here so, if you're looking for a complete change, have a look at the school website under positions vacant. I would thoroughly recommend it.
