This summer, with the generous support of the Charter Bursary, I was enabled to travel to Zambia to work at the ‘Lazarus Christian Community School for Orphaned and Vulnerable Children’ in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. I stayed for one month and had an inspiring, challenging and very rewarding experience.
Community Schools offer education for the poorest children in Zambia, as they (unlike government run schools) do not charge any fees, and children are not required to wear uniforms. They are run by volunteers, and the children who attend are from the local slums and compounds and often are able to eat only one basic meal a day. Class sizes are very large (I visited one school where 157 children were packed into one classroom!) and there is little money for textbooks etc, but the commitment and perseverance of the teachers I met was truly amazing.
The Lazarus Christian Community School provides for around 400 Primary School aged boys and girls. It is part of the Lazarus Project, which aims to rehabilitate street kids and bring holistic care to orphaned and vulnerable children and their families. I was involved with the younger years at the school, helping with marking, teaching English and Maths, typing up exams and running outdoor games sessions for younger and older groups of children. All of this was great fun; the children were all so eager to learn. I especially enjoyed my time teaching in the classroom, where I taught Grade 1 (who are all 5 and 6 years old). There were 57 in my class, and marking of the books is done as part of the lesson, which proved to be quite a challenge! This was especially difficult as I would have loved to have more time to give to each child to encourage them and help them see where they had gone wrong, but this wasn’t really possible with so many of them. Behaviour management and controlling the class was thankfully not a problem at all as all the children were very respectful and well behaved. Another challenge was the range of ability and language skill within the class; they all spoke some English but to very varying degrees. The variance in ability was particularly visible in Maths when some children understood what I was teaching and completed the exercises competently, while others found it very difficult to understand.
As teachers have had little training (compared to teachers here in the UK) and resources are scarce, teaching style in Zambia remains very traditional with lots of dictation and repetition from the blackboard. I tried to involve some more dynamic, fun and interactive ideas, getting the children more involved with their own learning, which they seemed to really enjoy. It was great discussing these ideas with the teachers at the school too, as they were really interested in learning new and better styles, and would love to improve education quality, but sadly the training and resources to equip them are simply not available at the moment. This has sparked an interest in me in the powerful potential of schemes which train up local teachers.
I was also privileged to be able to visit the Ministry of Education for one morning where I met with the Education Planning Officer and asked him about current policies and plans for the future, which was a fantastic opportunity.
I think that my time in Zambia at the Lazarus Community School has been beneficial to my classroom teaching in many important ways. It has prepared me for the challenges of dealing with mixed abilities within a class. It has encouraged me to be creative and flexible with my lesson plans and ideas, and helped me to get better at thinking on my feet (for example, the ability to think of new activities/demonstrations if one isn’t working well). To experience working with such a big class has definitely helped me to keep calm under pressure, and has improved my confidence in the classroom significantly. One of the most important things for me is also that my time in Zambia has enabled me to start my PGCE with an inspired and thankful attitude. We have so much to be grateful for here in the UK; so many resources and opportunities which create fantastic potential for education. Hearing success stories of boys who were abandoned on the street in Zambia , and then were taken in by the Lazarus Project and attended the school , and now have graduated from University has inspired me hugely and reminded me of the intrinsic value of education (despite its many difficulties and complications) and its power to change transform lives and communities. Hopefully I will try and remember this when I face tough situations and challenges in my coming years of teaching!
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to have such a beneficial and rewarding experience. I am now a UK ambassador for the Lazarus Project, and am currently setting up a fundraising campaign to buy a school uniform for every child at the school which I would love to tell anyone about when plans are finalised.
Rosanna Hartropp, B.A. (Cantab)
September 2011
