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Pictured left to right: Tanzanian teacher, Ms. Parker's daughter, Ms. Waber, Mr. Gilligan, Ms. Fox-Jones, Ms. Parker, Ms. Parker's husband, Mr. NealePhoto courtesy of Mr. Neale
In mid-June a group of Masterman teachers embarked on a trip to Arusha, Tanzania, where they spent approximately three and a half weeks, one of which focused on collaborating with Tanzanian educators in order to better the teaching style and learning environment under the duress of horribly insufficient finances and resources. Mr. Neale acted in a leadership position for the trip having been to Tanzania six times himself, as well as being the official recruitment officer for the teacher training program in the United States. This past summer Mr. Neale (English) recruited Ms. Waber (English), Mr. Gilligan (History), Ms. Fox-Jones (Sixth Grade), and Ms. Parker (Science), who requested to attend the trip before she left Masterman last year.
To organize the trip, the teachers worked with Mwangaza, an organization that trains teachers and runs courses surrounding safe school culture and female empowerment. The Mwangaza Project allowed them to cooperate with existing Tanzanian teachers in an effort to conduct professional development for newer Tanzanian teachers. “Some of the classes we saw were a bit more lecture style, but teachers were looking for ways to make their lessons more interactive for their students, so that was something we were able to help with,” said Ms. Waber.
In addition, Tanzanian high schoolers are enrolled in a program in which all education occurs in English despite having grown up speaking numerous tribal languages. In application to the students of Masterman this program would translate as: “Imagine you’re taking Spanish 1 as a freshman in high school and your Biology class is in Spanish 1 and all the tests are in Spanish 1,” prompted Mr. Gilligan. In this sense, the English speaking teachers were able to offer insight into another aspect of Tanzanian teaching, “so we went over there to assist experienced Tanzanian teachers to basically implement what is an ESL (English as a Second Language) curriculum, and so teachers, when they’re teaching, they’re thinking ‘oh my goodness, the kids don’t know the vocabulary I’m using so I have to teach them the vocabulary,’” Mr. Gilligan explained.
In Tanzania, the poverty and lack of resources tested the teachers’ abilities to create interactive and engaging lessons without the help of many pieces of modern technology. “They’re doing so much with so little resources. So the one lesson that we watched they were talking about an invitation and they really didn’t understand what an invitation was, while here in the states we would’ve had, you know, different types of invitations--you would’ve made copies. It’s not a lot of that, the resources are limited yet they’re doing biology and doing science labs with very limited resources,” said Ms. Fox-Jones. An experience in a poverty stricken area such as that, they agreed, has the ability to put ideas about wealth and privilege into perspective: “Americans, we think, ‘Okay Philadelphia public schools don’t have a lot and private schools have everything’. When you go to Tanzania you see what the rest of the world has, you know people outside the developed world… they have rusty old chairs, old wooden desks, and cracked slate chalkboards at the front of the room,” Mr. Gilligan illustrated.
Despite the disparities in wealth, class size, and language, the Masterman group found that they shared more similarities than differences with the Tanzanian teachers. The phrase “teachers are teachers” rings true to Ms. Waber. “We’re so similar, we really are… We had conversations that felt like I was having a conversation in the staff room at Masterman with the teachers. Kids are kids, teachers are teachers [with] similar goals and [we] had a lot more in common [than not],” Ms Waber rationalized.
In general, the people and teaching community seemed to make the trip most enjoyable for the band of educators. “The people are just so amazing, all the people we met were just so lovely, so the culture and everything is something I feel like I took away from there,” said Ms. Fox-Jones. The Masterman teachers, though foreigners, were often welcomed by villagers into their homes for tea and the like despite their hosts having almost nothing. Moreover, besides fulfilling their passion for teaching, the group was bound to enjoy the trip between the beauty of Tanzania and the richness of their friendship with each other.
Since their return, the teachers have certainly not forgotten both their impact on Tanzania and the impact the hardworking and eager educators in Tanzania had on them. “We talk on WhatsApp all the time to the teachers that we met, it was really exciting to exchange educational practices and ideas and talk about the similarities and differences between our cultures,” said Ms. Waber. In fact, there are already plans for the future to combat discrimination of women in the teaching industry in Tanzania: “We’re trying to, this year, read a book- have girls from Masterman read Becoming by Michelle Obama with girls in Tanzania,” she added. The trip served as a life-changing experience for the group of teachers. “When people ask you about this trip, it’s really difficult to put in words what it was like. It was just a whole different culture; it was just amazing and the people were so kind,” said Ms. Fox-Jones. Ms. Waber added, “It just made me really proud to be a teacher… I came back with a lot of pride for the field and wanting to travel more and do more work collaborating with teachers within Philadelphia.”
You can read more about the Mwangaza Partnership at https://www.mwangazapartnership.org/ !
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