TGD Team visits Mary in her school--praise God for personal attention to each child!
Here is a report from Joseph:
Judy, Agnes and Christabel. David, Eric, Agnes and Judy all joined Emelda on Wednesday to visit her midwifery clients. Jack visited Beverline and Cynthia while Lawrence juggled between being at Center, training the new students at Shibuli and crowning it with visiting Chrispinus at St. Mary’s Mission Hospital in Mumias on Friday.
WEDNESDAY
This was Ebulechia’s day. Eric, Christabel and myself begun with Ebulechia Cornerstone School where we handed over a ball. For Christabel and Eric, it was their first experience at the school. Christabel had a one-on-one with Shaline and Fredrick’s teachers regarding their academic progress while Eric kept the young ones busy outside with the new ball. In the beginning of the term, we had paid the school a visit and realized that they didn’t have a single toy for use during the Physical Education lessons or games. We all understand how important it is to have our sponsored children participate in games and other physical exercises. Our Ebulechia Cornerstone School family seemed to be pursuing a one sided endevour – academics only. They needed a change badly for balance’s sake. The ball thing brought in the change they craved for. It was evident from the reaction of the teachers and pupils alike. You would have plainly seen an expression of relief on their faces and joy of playing football was in the air. Thank God for Kevin. The pupils really needed the balls and Ebulechia School was enjoying its share of delight in the same.
Next was Mung’ang’a Primary School where Zainabu and Brenda learn. I introduced the team to the administration before engaging our sponsored children’s class teachers in a discussion on their academic progress. I let Eric and Christabel engage the class teachers in the discussion. I hope you received their individual reports. I asked them to write a report on each individual child and send it over before Friday the 31st March 2012.
Mungabira was the last school we visited on Wednesday. This is Mary Baraza’s school. She was doing her end of term exam. The head teacher, however, made sure we had a talk with her before the afternoon exam session begun. We discussed at length about her dwindling academic performance and the administration promised to schedule for us an appointment with the guiding and counseling teacher-in-charge. She wasn’t in when we visited the school on Wednesday. The class teacher is yet to furnish us with a detailed first-term performance record, which he said was in the guiding and counseling master ‘s office.
By 3:00PM we were back in Shibuli. The afternoon students were already in class waiting for me and I immediately joined them for the day’s lesson, which ended at 5:35PM.
I observed a number of things during the visitation. Issues like our sponsored children performing poorly in English related subjects. Vernacular is rampant in most of the rural schools and story books are insufficient. I believe our TGD Library services will go a long way to boost our sponsored children’s performance in English-related subjects. Lack of toys and other physical education paraphernalia has contributed to a lot of imbalance in our sponsored children’s learning atmosphere. Ebulechia Cornerstone School is a case in point, as earlier highlighted. More foot balls and small ‘throwing’ balls need to be added to both of the Cornerstone Schools. Maybe Anita can bring a few of them with her (hope she hasn’t packed her luggage yet).
THURSDAY
I spent the day at Center and Shibuli exploring the TGD Kenya ‘‘Joomla-based’’ website progress and planning on setting Friday’s ‘Introduction to Computers’ exam respectively.
FRIDAY
The new class sits for its first exam. Later on at midday, I receive call from a Good Samaritan about Chrispinus hospital admission case. I leave immediately, taking Christabel and Lawrence with me. We find Chrispinus on the hospital bed, receiving intravenous quinine. This appears to be the third bottle, though he is still weak. He is vomiting and has no appetite. Taking to him we realize that he had been admitted the previous. The doctor mentions that he is Malaria positive and some sort of fever that causes temperature rise. Realizing he has no appetite we decide to get him Lucozade (an energy drink) to boost the body strength and appetite. There might have been an outbreak of malaria in their school because they we re three of them in the same ward from he same school and yet the school is about 10 KM from the Mumias town.
No comments:
Post a Comment