Today was our first day working at the Malambo School! After a surprisingly comfortable night in our tents, we woke up to a delicious breakfast of eggs and toast. We left the campsite around 8:45 and after a walk through the village we arrived at the school. Malambo is a government school in Zambia (which are administered in ways as public school in the US) and teaches grades 1-7 with a total of 6 staff members. After a brief introduction, we split up into our smaller groups to teach different grades for the day.
I worked with the 5th grade with Lilli and Brandon. The kids were well behaved, as always, and seemed excited to see us and ready to learn. However, the language barrier at Malambo was very difficult to overcome because it is so rural and many have never met someone from outside the farm (Monze). Even though they were 5th graders, I have no idea how much English they really know or how much of our lesson they really understood. As expected, the kids in each grade did not know nearly as much as kids in the same grade in the US, which was another challenge we had to overcome. We had to adjust, on the spot, our expectations of what they would be able to learn, which obviously altered our lesson plans.
All in all, today was another wonderful learning experience. Visiting a significantly more rural part of Zambia, faced with challenges in the classroom, and becoming more and more aware of differences between the US and Zambia, all contributed to a great new experience.
Kate M., Sidwell Friends School