The broken windows and doors are unfortunate. The lack of paint is regrettable. But without teaching materials, learning itself becomes very difficult. The children at the local junior primary, senior primary, and high school are very eager to learn. When there are not enough teachers, they sit in the classrooms and wait. Sometimes they wait for days in a row. The principal at Umsinsini Primary School says that teaching the children to read English is very difficult because they lack the necessary resources. As all textbooks and exams are in English, these children are put at a great disadvantage from the start. Due to illness of teachers and for other reasons, classrooms of 50 plus primary school-aged children are left unsupervised for a whole day at a time. Sometimes the principal is left to teach the class, but without teacher aids, it is hard to substitute and the time is not used productively. The teachers at St. Joachim’s Senior Primary School tell us that teaching science is hard because their classrooms don’t have any teaching materials beyond the chalkboard. They don’t have books that show the teachers how to conduct experiments or explain natural phenomena. These problems are still common in the high school. Last year, 16 students out of 80 graduated from Grade 12 at Khathi High School.
In response, the Thanda After-School Project has begun establishing a Teacher Resource Center at our offices. This center will contain a library of teaching books and materials (curriculum books, worksheets), teaching resources (globes, maps, science equipment), books (textbooks, easy readers), and reference books (encyclopedias, dictionaries). Teachers from the local community can become members of this library and borrow the resources for their classrooms as needed. Children at the Sacred Heart Children’s Home will soon be able to check out books from this library on the weekends.
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