Nipo Mang'ola Chini

Well mimi ni mzima, naomba kutao ka taarifa kuwa kwa sasa sipo tena Edmund Rice bali nimekimbilia porini wilaya ya Karatu ka shule kanaitwa Anna Gamazo. Huko hakuna internet hivyo habari na picha zaidi labda at the end of the moon nikija town. Kuna mengi ya kueleza, picha na matukio. Hivi unajua kuwa vitunguu unavyoungia mboga viinatoka mitaa ya huko nilipo? The land is fascinating dry, stony, windy but deadly rich-soil valley where maize, onions, rice and many others grow.

Huku wamejaa WaTindiga, WaIrawq, na makabila mengine hasa yale ya Stone Age
pia WaChagga wapo wengi na ndio wamiliki wakubwa, kama kawaida yao, wa maduka na baa.

Climate ya huku very frustating, you can't tell whether its semi-desert, but it has a valley whose land produces hefty.

Shule iko financed na lady toka Spain called Anna Gamazo thru her organisation called AGH (Anna Gamazo Humanitarian Foundation?) well kitu kama hiyo.
Kama kawida nafundisha Geo na Eng, classes are smaller here and students though not very able but can!
Next taim!!

MWUCE shall live in me!

Hizi photos ni za grad. 'Twas early Feb. As I'm here for a seminar I came across them on the internet computer at the college and thought it'll be good I have them for you ndugu mdau.

This is the way (road?) to the dorms; on this one some friends in Y1 diploma, (L) Agripina and (R) Rosalia






This another 's SantaClaus and Agripina, one of the my favourite girls. 'Twas in the night, full of 'boob', we were having Serengetiz kwa kwenda front that day. See the man....

Na MissMacha yupo!

Hapa ilikuwa grad. She's in Vunjo Sec now. Malamiko tuuu ohh mitoto haielewi Maths. Halafu inafeli mitihani yangu. Basi tu tulipiga mistori! Kushoto kule ni Madame Mariaflora sasa yupo Tanga kuna kashule ka girls kule anapambana. Taarifa nilizonazo 'kachana' huyoooo!

Nimepa-miss 'home'

We are here for a seminar? workshop? titled 'Teaching in Action'. Did not come as many may be others are busy or couldn't afford staying for 5 days 'free!' Meals isn't what people need most when it comes to a semina! Salamu zao
Started yesterday morning with address from the Principal and the #1 case study was 'Large Classes' presented by Mr Nnzao. 'Twas fine though started boring. More news later I'm going for lunch

Whaaaaat!

Did Laura see this? And who's that guy down there? And godamnit, the 1 behind?

ETW

Sat 26th May 2007

The GraveSide

• Lost my phone
• It started late
• Hated being there
• Hated being there
• Bit boring; same, the taught and ‘taughter’! read Freire

What had me there!

• Programme: English Teachers’ Workshop (ETW)
• Venue: Makumira Secondary School
• Facilitator: Mr. Tamamu, Deputy Zonal Inspector of Schools, Northern Zone.
• Theme: Strategies for Presenting Language III texts.

How it went

1. Introductions; just your name and school you are from as plain as that, my name is so and so from there! (do not ask me what I expected!)
   
   Do you know what are frozen relations? So we started off the day with an Ice breaker:
   a. What dries as it gets wet?
   Towel, tissue paper
   b. How many eyes do you have?
   Two (2)! Damnit that’s obvious! even a blind would say so. Be ‘eyes’ though this is a distracter.
   c. Which river in the world has four ‘aiz’?
   People were caught and started asking which ‘ai’ but the answer was the Mississippi. Therefore the idea of Homo-phones, nyms, graphs etc.
2. Then followed a Warm up activity; facilitator was really pressing on this that teachers do apply this in class. An example; gone into a class that had Maths the preceded period, got in, start right away with your English lesson! Phew!
   So we did an activity on Anagrams: more on wordsmith
   
   Sort out the following anagrams as shown in the example below:-
   Change agree into another word for keen= eager
   Now you can do this:
   Change asleep into word used by polite people
   Change beard into something you eat
   Change below into part of the body
   Change bleat into an item of furniture
   Change cheap into fruit
   Change swap into an insect
   Change thing into time of day
   Change cruelty into word for knives, forks, etc.
   Change chain into a country
   Change flog into a popular sport
   Change flow into (a) an animal (b) a bird
   Change super into something you keep money
   Change lamp into another part of the body
   Change hated into something that comes to everybody
   Change rat into a substance used in making tarmac roads
   More on anagrams on the net including this one from manythings.org, I liked this site, this one creates anagram after you've put a word. To be honest being a student is one of the most few sweet things in the world that I enjoy
3. Now to the THEME
   

   HANDLING LANGUAGE III TEXTS

   
   Some questions rose as ‘why should it be called lang. III?’ etc. (any guess?)
   Some flashback followed thing like
   The theory of Literature
   The definition:- artistic use of lang. to reflect social realities.
   More on Internet Public Lib and on Wiki

Consider:
Marriage has lot of problems (plain lang.)
A husband is a band to bind your life
A wife is a knife to cut your life

So we agreed that literature is

• Imaginative
• Artistic
• Uses lang. as medium
• Expresses social experiences, realities, problems etc. political, cultural, economic etc.

Then followed lengthy discussion on figures of speech; similes, metaphor, hyperbole, irony, satire, and well you know ‘em. <more on fig. o speech; activity, wiki
We went through topics as Literature and Society and saw that lit. develops from the society as it draws political etc. experiences from that society. Consider Hugh Langston’s
‘The Ballad of the Landlord’ or Claude Makaay’s ‘If we must Die’.
Followed by Literature and Culture and concluded that lit. is an expression of culture. Consider ‘Three Suitors one Husband’ and Ngugi wa Thiongo’s ‘The River Between’.

We then did Types of Lit.(oral written), their differences, Forms/Genres of Lit. ( non-fiction fiction drama poetry), form and content, and wind up with Functions of lit. (didactic aesthetic)

The day was steamy and hot, we took a break.

The following session was mainly on teaching strategies and methods; specifically how to get pupils interested, motivated etc.
The facilitator introduced two excellent methods on ‘Characters and characterization’ namely; Name dropping and Cross Word puzzle.

An example of Name dropping taken from 'Things Fall Apart'
I innocent
K knowledgeable
E energetic
M martyr
E entertaining
F friendly
U unexpectedly meets death
N naive
A adaptable

After general introduction and quick explanation of the two method we got into work; trying to create the two activities using different texts. Before we left we had to display what we did in the groups, I enjoyed group work dearly.

Bwawa la maini!!

Kwanza hongereni kwa kipindi cha kwanza cha soka la kuvutia na poleni kwa kipigo. Lakini dont mind even the coach himself appreciated the good job done by the The Rossoneri labda huniamini hebu soma hapa mwenyewe.

Mwl. Chum wah key upo?

Kweli kazi ipo!

Halafu mlete ubishi, eti ualimu Kazi?

Mi sijui sana lakini hilo jibu lina look korektle muno hadi nakuwa konvinsd!

Do I need a title?

No idea!

Sina hakika lakini nafikiri naanza kupotoka! Hivi nilipoanza kublog what did i wanted to show the world?

Teh tehe!

Who's who?

Cjui ncheke?

Sanaa ni Kioo

Sina hakika lakini nafikiri bado unamkumbuka Bi. Mkora wa Majira, gazeti huru la kila siku. Mcheki hapa! Yuko full ooi!

Ze Dustbin!

Ndugu wadau haka kaPasaka kanakoishia-ishia nilikuwa mgombani aka Moshi. Leo naandika kwa sababu kuna vitu viwili hivi nilivyoviona nataka ku-share.
Kwanza, usafi. Inawezekana na ninakubali kuwa Moshi ni kamji kadogo, pia hakana population kubwa hasa ikifika jioni kwani waChagga wote hukimbilia Machame, Marangu, Kiwoso, Mwika na kwingineko kulala lakini jamani Moshi kusafi. Kilichonivutia zaidi ni hawa akina mama wauza ndizi mbivu. Wako wengi siku hizi pale Moshi. Wanatembeza ndizi zao kichwani mji mzima. Wao tofauti na sehemu nyingine, ukinunua ndizi na ukaonyesha dalili kwamba utaila hapohapo, watakusubiri umenye, ule halafu wachukue ganda. Nilimuona mmoja kabeba ndizi kwenye sijui tenga lile? Pamoja na maganda yake. Halafu akafika kwenye “dustbin” (Kiswahili hapa nini?, kopo la taka?; kiwekea taka?; Msaada kwenye tuta!) nakumbuka ilikuwa ni pale Kibo Coffee Bar, akasimama aka-unload maganda aliyokusanya kwenye mizunguko yake akaondoka. Umombo hapa ; I was really moved!

Pili, vitambulisho kwa chingaz pale bus stand. Kumbe hili nalo linawezekana, kuwawezesha vijana wajasiriamali kutambulika kama waajiriwa wengine. Pale kituo kikuu cha mabasi wana kautaratibu ambako kamenifurahisha. All chingaz aka wamachinga aka marching guys/ladies wana vitambulisho na sare? (uniform). Wauza mkate, wauza matunda wote, moja wanavaa makoti (kama yale ya waganga) meupe au hudhurungi mgongoni ymeandikwa kwa maandishi makubwa:

• Muuza mikate Stend: Fuata sheria za Stendi
• Muuza matunda (ndizi?): Fuata sheria za Stendi
• Chinga Room No. XX: Fuata sheria za Stendi

Mbili wana vitambulisho vyenye picha, jina na stamp ya meneja wa stand. Safi hiyo!
Mimi nafikiri hii ni changamoto kwa town councils, municipalities na city councils nyingine hapa TZ na East Africa kwa ujumla na pia kwetu cityzens kwamba usafi unaanza na sisi wenyewe. Halafu baadae waje site (soma ilivyo sio neno la kiIngereza) au manispaa.
Kalaghabaho!!!

AFTER LONG!

Hullo outta there! It has been long since I last wrote phew! My fault? May be! Well, I had this two-week time stuck up for the Nashunal diploma in Education Exams and then goes to this other side of the country where Internet is an alien thing. After a long walks and fruitless effort over getting a job, I finally struck one at Edmund Rice Sinon Secondary School in Arusha. I’m yet to get settled. Lots to do, plan, write, mark, just a hectic of a thing!
So wadau, be informed that I’ll be coming to you live from ERSSS in A-town. I’m getting to know around and I think there will be much to talk about over few days.
At present I’m teaching something like 25 periods a week. Geography in F.3 D, Civics in Form 3 (About 200 kids!) and English in Form 4 B. To be honest I never wanted to do any Civics whatsoever, but well I’m doing it. Be told, the thing is boring and I really hate it and it does hate me too, equally!

The 'un'grad Grad-new

Don't be suprised and think i was enrolled for a degree programme somewhere and i did not tell you.
Its just a 'kokoto' you know dis days even in kindergarten they are wearing this big, black, ugly, unfitting gown. @@##$%^^**&&Y(*((

The 'un'grad Grad-contd

Wakati wenzangu wakiwa wanajaribu grad gowns zao mi nlikuwa niko kwenye display ya Geo. Huyu mzee nnamwelezea kuhusu kutumia ICT in Geo teaching and learning. I sometimes wonder I've got this very serious looking face that I'm afraid to take photos of me.

(Ma)geuzi/pinduzi ya Web 2.0

Siyo tu kwamba sasa webuni hakuna mmiliki, bali ni juu yako wewe na mimi kuangaza na kujidai.
Lakini ni nini hasa, hebu jifunze hapa

The 'un'grad Grad-contd

Siku ya grad nlikuwa na cam, ndugu yangu askwambie mtu kalinipa shida sana hasa kupata pics za watu important kama liMbwambo(kulia) shot kabisa ni Digna-deg 2 na Emma.
Yeye: Oya Nderu ntakubonda #$%^&* zako!
Wao: Mwache apige afu tunataka tuone tutatokaje! Eti utaziprint?
Mimi: Mwana tulia basi, weka na pozi afu tuone ztatoka vp mbona unataka kumind ishu zenyewe laini tuu....