‘Determined To Up Pass Rate’

23 Sep, 2016 - 00:09 0 Views
‘Determined To Up Pass Rate’

The ManicaPost

Morris Mtisi

A SCHOOL is as good as its headmaster or mistress. Of course, common sense will tell you it is also as bad as its head.Have you ever imagined how difficult it is to head a school in the dust behind sticks in the countryside?

Well, whether the school is state-of-the-art with the best teachers on earth… whether it resembles a school in heaven or an orphanage, may be a refugee camp type school, a good school head will make the best out of what is available. That is the story of one secondary school located off the Hauna-Mutare Highway, 10 to 12km from Hauna Growth Point in Honde Valley, south eastward along a tired dust road along the Jombe-Penhalonga Road.

On Diamond FM Radio recently on a new educational talk show- HEAD-TO-HEAD WITH MM, Mr Moses Mukoyi, school head of one of the most famous schools in the country, arguably the best in Manicaland, said there was always something to learn in every school, regardless of its status.

Said the almost national hero-size school head, on HEAD-TO-HEAD, “It is humbly encouraging to see a school with hardly any resources at all doing the best it can to offer a meaningful education to a humble community.”

This reporter who is also an independent consultant in the teaching and learning of English Language and Literature was recently at Sahumani Secondary School at the invitation of the school head, one Mr Moses Nyamukungwa.

It can only be awesomely amazing to imagine how Mr Nyamukungwa managed to purchase a bus for the little rural school. And how there is now electricity in the school and computers ready to fully implement e-learning in his school! “In the middle of nowhere?” you may ask. Yes, right there in the middle of nowhere!

Precisely what the iconic St Faith’s Mr Mukoyi was saying! “A school is as good as its head. Without anything, something can be done, found and learnt at a poor school.”

All that aside for a while! Sahumani’s is a good story to tell but can and will wait for another day. The import of this report is to highlight Sahumani Secondary School’s determination to improve the pass rate from a pitiful low index to a significant level. Mr Nyamukungwa, the SDC and the department agreed that one way of engaging a heavier gear in this respect was to higher the services of an expert consultant to share or distil teaching and learning wisdom with, for the benefit of both teachers and students.

Thus I was at Sahumani for two days. I came. I saw. I left. But not before establishing a seventh heaven for the teachers and students busy preparing for final examinations in October. When I left, the English teachers involved in the preparation exercise were on cloud number nine assured that their students were now invigorated and highly charged, and ready to turn a new leaf in the context of pass rate.

That is the right attitude for best-teaching-learning practices. Thinking outside the box in search of answers to challenges and problems! Pride and know-it-all vanity maintain and sustain empty vessels. Good schools learn from others. Good school heads learn from others. Likewise good teachers learn from others.

Once upon a time St Augustine’s –Tsambe, was the country’s model of serious education. The rest is on record. The major reason for such an outstanding legacy was a school head or school heads who hustled for resources of sorts from outside, including classroom personnel (teachers). I was at Tsambe for a number of years.

Father Kebble Prosser would source for relief teachers from overseas to come and share their knowledge and wisdom with the local establishment. This made the teacher-pupil ration convenient and ideal for meaningful learning. This is or was why Tsambe maintained the national educational or academic flag that high…and so high that everyone ended up saying before you arrived at TSAMBE to acquire an education, you had not started going to school. You could go anywhere you wanted but before you came to Tsambe, you had not gone to school. It was not magic or divination that made Santa a fountain or spring of academic excellence. It was the school heads’ innovativeness and creative ingenuity.

Back to Sahumani.

It is not surprising if one day Sahumani becomes a Tsambe of Honde Valley. The signs are already there. A new bus, electricity connection to the school, prospects of e-learning kick-starting soon, now the engagement of expert resource persons to demonstrate and share teaching and learning best practices.  A willingness to look and think outside the box!

Here are my recommendations for the English Department arising from my two days as a resource person at Sahumani (many school heads don’t want to call me a consultant for fear of paying me well. (Hamunyari here Mahedhiticha? Munoda muri imi kubhadharwa zhinji, tavesu moti mavara azarevhu):

  1. Learners cannot learn English from one source only, their class teacher. Please beg, steal or borrow reading materials; novels, magazines, newspapers (especially old newspapers). What can be learnt from these resources is inexhaustible. Put up form or class libraries before you can think of a standard library with lots of reading material for various study areas. A teacher’s office or cubicle can be a small class library.

I offer myself to start this at Sahumani. Let us keep in touch. I saw you don’t have one dirty or dusty novel for students’ reading pleasure. Hazviiti pachikoro kudai varume! Students must read and read and read to be exposed to writer’s styles, vocabulary, use of strong verbs and adverbs, adjectives etc, descriptive detail, imagery, figures of speech etc.

I will talk to my boss at The Manica Post to donate the first library ‘old’ newspapers to Sahumani English Department. You will have somewhere to begin to whet this culture of reading. You heard him (my boss, The Manica Post editor committing himself to doing what the paper can to give education a sense of uplift in Manicaland. I will talk him to him. He is a very understanding man and ever ready to do whatever he can for education. Asi munombotengawoka Manica Post yacho, handizvo here? A reasonable subscription wo ka, handiti?

2.The teachers must realize they are a team, a department and not individuals with different visions and agendas selfishly going it alone. It is important to teach as a team. Scheme-cum-Plan together. Identify strengths and weaknesses and bridge the gaps. Share these classes.

Teach every student and class the area you are strong at and don’t hesitate to ask a colleague to teach for you an area you don’t quite like or are not good at. Hazvimbonyadzisi to say. “shamwari you are better at this than I. May I ask you to take my class this afternoon?” All civilized teachers worldwide do this; the same with preachers and even doctors. Even some of the best politicians and presidents in the world do not write their own speeches for delivery. They ask experts to write them for them. It does not mean they cannot write speeches. They only realize and acknowledge that there are people not very far from them who can do it better.

  1. Form study groups of four to five a group. Slower learners or underperformers can benefit from the goodwill and push of fast learners. Sometimes students learn better from each other because they are free to continue to ask if they do not understand something and they hardly have any of their egos and airs destroyed in this method of learning. So long as the teacher knows what the group leader is doing and teaching!
  2. Photostat model compositions, reports, articles, speeches, letters etc written by outstanding students at the school or from other schools. These exhibitions, illustrations, models, allow me to call them PROTOCOLS, can be better than a library of novels and glossy books. All you do is source them, photocopy them and file them. Students study them and return them to the file (to you).

Teachers must be creative an innovative especially in schools where resources are hard to come by.  Again I offer to help your English Department start this kind of library. Let’s keep in touch!

  1. Debating and Public Speaking clubs are not a waste of time at a school. They develop students’ language levels, their confidence and social interaction, all which are perfect platforms for learning English Language. For English learners, nothing sharpens eloquence, confidence and other aspects of verbal intelligence better. You can do this as a school, then as clusters and later zones etc.

If you need expert advice and counsel, again I am free to offer that on request…kamari kenyu chete! There you go again! Munoda zvemahara all the time. Education is not cheap ladies and gentlemen! In fact it is cheap compared to ignorance.

If you think education is expensive -TRY IGNORANCE!! Ehee try ignorance if you think paying a good consultant to help you is expensive.

6.Desist from crisis-managing completing classes (Form 4s) all the time. Target Form 2s and 3s. These need the fundamental skills training and they have time to practice and perfect their skills before national examinations. Is it wise to be concerned about the roof and not the foundation of a house? Food for thought!

Finally, to the whole Form Four Group at Sahumani Secondary School, please, keep the kettle boiling! Keep revising the notes I gave you. If something is not clear, ask your teachers. Do not forget the SIDES acronym and how it will help you to write distinction compositions, use of the THESAURUS and avoiding clichés, use of an interesting, captivating, gripping BEGINNING, use of direct speech (dialogue) in Narrative composition writing,  the KISS tip-(Keep It Short and Simple). This refers to your sentence construction. Do not forget the use of direct speech in your story composition (mind punctuation). No two speakers in one paragraph!

Skip a line when a speaker answers or replies. And do not forget to say who said the words in quotes and avoid use of he or she said. Your Thesaurus will give you better options…. “she or he announced, she/he revealed, asked, replied, retorted, reiterated, commanded, emphasized, whispered, ordered, instructed, exclaimed shouted etc.

Of course you cannot forget the long list of common errors I gave you. The famous ones were “you do not call the first child in your family the first-born. He or she is called the eldest (not the oldest, please note.) And the last in the family is the youngest, not the last-born. Last-born is functionally an adjective, meaning which child? Answer> The last-born child. Otherwise the easiest and more English is ‘the eldest / the youngest.) Let me add one more: Those who live next to your house are not next doors. They are neighbours. If you want to emphasize how close they are to you, you say ‘My next-door neighbours.’ Remember Zimbabwe has no special Zimbabwean English. We use, for both speech and writing, Her Majesty, the Queen’s Language. The queen’s language does not say ‘I wash my body…” It says; ‘I take a shower / I bathe.’ It does not say ‘She was clapped on the face…’ but ‘She was slapped on the face.’  You don’t go for shopping, for swimming, for hunting, for fishing. Remove the ‘FOR’ all the time! What do we do? We go swimming, we go hunting, we go fishing, and we go shopping. Anditi munozvizwa? Tinobonga!

How are you students? Chirenje Faith, Takunda Deranyika, Wilberforce Tore, Effort Magobeya (headboy), Raymond Mutsingo, Jeldin Betera and Marilyn Mwaridzika. Don’t forget what you learnt, please! Thank you for your active participation during my presentations. Keep the ball rolling!

And to the class teachers, Mr V. Mariano, Mr G. Mhangara and Ms S. Maudzwa, what a pleasure to have had you around! Continue to push and exert power on the students’ elbows. Add value to the children’s performance. Make a difference in the process of turning a new leaf at Sahumani. Rome was not built in a day.

You will get there one day soon and very soon. And Sahumani will soon be a force to reckon with…a Tsambe or St Faith’s of Honde Valley! Why not? Do your best. God will do the rest.

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