Teaching Duty, Kids are going to Vomit, How to make a Virtual Mission Trip and Sarah Silverman reads to our Kids

So this week was another very full week at the school.  It started with end of month testing and finished with a tribal conflict in the village that required Police presence.  Yeah that kind of fun.

sometimes it is just exhausting to be at school

The first three days were filled with the kids taking their end of month tests.  I normally plug into whichever class they ask me to help with.  Normally it is Pre-Unity which has the second largest number of kids but they are doing more "real" testing than the largest class which is the Baby pre-nursery.  This was the first end of month testing to use the test kits I made for each class.  One of the things common here is for students to constantly being going to other students to get a ruler, pencil, eraser and you get the idea.  This also happens during testing.  So I made up bags for each class that have enough high quality pencils (the ones they normally use I have to constantly sharpen for them because the lead is broken inside the pencil from being used weapon like on the tables and chairs) for each student plus erasers and sharpeners so no one has to get up and "borrow" from another student.  The Standard 1 grade also have rulers for each student since they may need to draw things like shapes.  The Pre-Unity has a handful of rulers as well just in case.  The students were a little frustrated without and excuse to go visit their friends during the test.

the Pre-Unity test kit

After testing I normally get moved over to the Baby class who need to be entertained somewhat during their free period while the teacher grades tests.  So I show a lot of videos from Akili and Me (the educational cartoons for preschoolers produced here in Tanzania).

The next day we had planned to post grades so I could hopefully brag again about how well the students did, but instead we had some type of tribal conflict in the village about a mile away over land.  It was bad enough it required police presence.  This somehow translated into two of the teachers never making it to school (when you only have three teachers that is a lot) and about 17 kids never showing up.  So I got actual class duty again.  Pre-Unity was no problem, but Baby started off fun with one of the younger kids throwing up his porridge all over the classroom about 15 minutes in.  So I spent the next 20 minutes trying to control the other 20 students (4-5 year olds) while I also cleaned up the vomit.

I did notice one of those odd visuals caused by the shoes and clothes they get being knock offs, misprints and sometimes them just not understanding what it says in English.  Notice what it says on the boys shoe.

Wednesday is when we do our Reading with Barnabas program and that was also Halloween.  So I told some lightly scary (more funny voices) stories and used a Storyline Online Video of Sarah Silverman reading "A Tale of Two Beasts" by Fiona Roberton.  Not really scary or halloween related but close enough.

At the end of the day I had a bag of lolly pops for the kids as their treat for Halloween.  As always I had one of the teachers or headmaster pass out the candy instead of doing it myself.  More of it coming from the school than coming from the white guy.

Last up I am still working on the washcloths for the Christmas gift bags.  I am doing a new pattern using some of the yarn I bought locally.  They turned out pretty good I thought.  I had a slow week due to the trip to Arusha last weekend and the trip to Moshi this weekend so I am only at 29 completed but still well within the range of being able to complete them in time.

As promised I have a couple of videos to show how to do a virtual mission trip for the Reading with Barnabas program.  While Storyline Online is great it is great to get videos from friends as well.  I am super stoked because the youth group at my church in Mauldin, SC is making videos for me next weekend.  

The first video is an example of a video I made by myself using my smartphone.  I do the introduction in selfie mode so I can see if the book is visible as well as myself .  Then I normally read the book with it in my lap or on a table and switch the smart phone to normal mode (not selfie)  this way I can see the picture I am recording to make sure everything is visible and the phone can still pick up my voice reading the book.  Here is the example below after I combined the two videos.  If you can't combine the two videos send them to me individually and I will do it for you.

Next is a video of me making this whole video taken by a second camera.

This last video shows how I upload the video to YouTube.  If you have a Google account you have a YouTube account because they are linked.  It also shows how to share the video with me.