One month

One month has passed since I came to school in Jinja. I have enjoyed staying so far.

So, this time I am going to explain what I have done for the past month.

First, I had some lessons. As I have already told you the first lesson is P4 class and the topic was circle. It was not easy for me to teach them because of two reasons. First, it's not easy for pupils of P4 to understand English. Second, it was not easy for me to teach by English. Because of these two reasons the first lesson was not easy but I enjotyed it. As for P6&P7, it was more easier for me to teach them because they understand English well compared to P4. Since not all topics I have taught in Japan sometimes it's not easy for me to understand the contents of the topic. So, my colleague, Joseph, he helped me to understand. He is very good at math.

Second, I am going to explain my life in Jinja. The working hour starts at 8 am. until 5 pm. After I finish working I go back home. My home is located in the school. It takes only 1 minutes from the school. What is good I can easily access to the water (There is a tap at the school.) and safe. Since I live with Joseph and two other people who are relatives of Joseph, they normally made suppers for me, which means I don't have to cook. I only cook in the morning to make a sunny side egg.

Third, since I brought a soccer ball from Kampala I can play football with kids in the village. They play football in bare feet. Though some of them have sandal, they took it off. Maybe for them it's more easy to play without having anything. On weekends, I sometimes go to a bar to watch premier league with Joseph. He support Manchester United and I just started to support Arsenal because I support Fry Emirates. The game which we saw at the bar was ManU VS Leichester. Since Okazaki, who is a member of Japanese national team was in Leichester I had to support but there were plenty of supporters of ManU at a bar. As a result, Leichester was lost.

So this is briefly what I have done for the past month. I enjoyed so far. I hope it will last for the next two years.

Kenya @ Jinja

P.S I am going to travel for a fortnight heading for eastern part of Uganda.

A Lecture at Teacher's College

Since I have an oppertunity to have a lesson for the future primary school teacher at Jinja Teacher's College. I went there last Saturday and had a lecture for the differences of education between Japan and Uganda.

I had two lectures. Each lecture lasted for 50 minutes. After I explained what is the difference of lessons for math between Japan and Uganda, I had a model lesson. The first period I taught about ratio related to pie chart and the second period I taught about finding area (rectangle). It was challenging since I didn't have much oppertunity to talk in front of college students, and math taught by English. But somehow I managed it.

The script as follows came from those lectures for the first 15 minutes each. I hope students at teachers college learned something from my lecture!

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Good morning, ladies and gentleman! My name is Kenya. I am from Japan.

Do you know any cities in Japan? I am from Tokyo, Japan.

Today I am going to talk about three stories.

First, I am going to introduce myself. Second, I am going to talk about the difference between Japan and Uganda, especially the math education. Third, I will have a model lesson which is based on my experience in Japan as a primary school teacher. If you have any questions please ask me at any time of the lecture by raising your hand.

So, let me introduce myself. Do you remember my name? My name is Kenya and I am Japanese. I will turn to 30 this year and I am single. I have worked as a primary school teacher in Japan for the past three years. I taught mainly math. I have a family of four my father, mother and my brother and me. I have learned politics at my university and then I travelled throughout the Europe by bicycle for ten months. During that travelling, I thought it would be interesting for me to work with kids. But in order to be a teacher in Japan I needed a licence. After I went back to Japan, I went to teacher’s college like you and I spent three years (normally it takes two years) and I got a licence for teaching at primary school. At that time, I worked at primary school to help the class teacher as a part time job. Then, the headmaster of that school offered me to work as a teacher at different primary school and then I took that offer. Luckily, I had a job and started working as a math teacher at primary school. At first year, I taught math from P1 to P3 and for the next two years I taught math from P3 up to P6. Then, after finishing the school year in 2016. I left Japan and came here!

Any questions so far?

OK, then I am going to talk about the second story, the difference of math education between Japan and Uganda for primary school. I will talk about three points.

First, the biggest difference between Japan and Uganda for math education is the value of math. We think math is important to make a think logically. Here in Uganda the answer, or the result is the most important for math, or to get a high score of the test, which means accuracy and efficiency is the top priority. Of course, we think that it is important to get a high score of the test, but we, especially the teachers impressed from the students not because of that they got a high score but because of the way of thinking, or how to solve the questions. We think how and why the key words for math, not what are.

Second, based on this idea, we consider the value of expressions. I noticed expressions are not so important in here when I marked. For example, in Japan when pupils solve the sentence questions in math exam they got 5 points for the expressions and another 5 points for the answer. So, there is a difference between 2 times 3 and 3 times 2. If the answer is 2 times 3, you must write 2 times 3 for the expression. Otherwise you lose your points.

Thirdly, I will talk about the lessons. In Japan, we do question-solving method. Have you heard about this phrase? In this method there are six steps mainly. We do it in one lesson lasted for forty five minutes. The first step is question. Ideally, it comes from the pupils, but mainly we give them. The second step is to think about the clue or hint to solve the question based on what they have already learned. Normally the question which is given shall solve how to solve the former lesson. Third, solve the question by themselves. Forth, share the idea what they have found or how they reached the answer. Fifth, we conclude how to solve this type of questions. Sixth, they do some exercises. Sometimes we skip sixth because we give them homework every day.

Well that briefly what I have done for the past three years as a primary school teacher in Japan and what I have felt since I came here. Any questions so far? If not, let’s try a model lesson.

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Kenya @ Jinja

The First Lesson

One week has passed since I came to my primary school in Jinja.
I did my first lesson in Africa yesterday.

It was unexpected lesson. Since one of my school teacher absent from school, I decided to have a class instead of her. It was a math lesson and I did it for primary 4 (P4).

The topic was circle. The contents of the lesson was not so interesting because I had to explain a lot of things in order to teach what is circle and other things. The things I taught them were, a centre, circumferences, a radius and a diameter. I thought it was not so difficult because some of the pupils have compasses and I could borrow the one for teahcer. Even there were some chalks of different colors.

But it was not easy. They always say "yes", so I though they can easily to understand but it was not true. I think there were maily three problems they have. The first problem is my English. Of course, I could speak English but they couldn't understand what I said because I couldn't use suitable word for instructions. It is because I have no experience to teach math in English. The second problem is my pronouciation. Sometimes I felt they couldn't understand what I said. So, I explained it in different way. The second problem is thier language. The pupils in Uganda they started to learn English from Primary 4. It means they just started to learn Enlish. Since they only use English at school it's might be hard for them to use Enlish especially for speaking in class. And finally, their personality, I feel they were a little similar to Japanese pupiles. Even they can freely say what they think but they sometimes afraid of mistakes. When something happens, for example, a younger pupile was crying, they just had a look.  I don't know the reason why, so, I said "Take care of him."

Though my first lesson was more difficult than I expected, I will be better next time.

The pupils, they are pure and I feel I will be in good with them for the next two years.

Kenya @ Jinja