Pommern School Visit

We left Bomalang'ombe to visit Pommern.  Pommern, the longest running DIRA school, started in 1989.  They now have 890 students and about 40 teachers with about 5 degree teachers.  The headmaster was not present and had not alerted Flora Sanga, the Second Master, about my visit.  She quickly organized the science teachers to meet with me, after chai (tea and mondazi) of course.  I met with the Science coordinator and six science and mathematics teachers. They were very excited to have the more sensitive digital balance and had asked for such in order to prepare quantitiative solutions for the volumetric analysis practicals.  They were also very excited about the science activities in the Shika Na Mikono (Hands On) manual I brought.  I felt that they really will take advantage of the ideas and do a lot of experiments with the students.  Two of my students from last year are now teaching at Pommern, Inukia in Mathematics and Reuben in Chemistry.  Unfortunately, Reuben did not know I was coming until we were ready to leave and I met with him in the computer lab and gave him some digital materials on disk for their lab.

Teachers preparing solutions with the new safety glasses.

More manageable class size for the practical.

The class had a majority of girls and they did a good job with the practicals.  I was impressed to see a group of girls complete all of the calculations for the unknown without needing any further instructions.

The Discipline room has a sign that says "Speak English or no Service" I guess if you don't speak English you won't get disciplined.

For any chemists out there, here are photos of the practical that they were doing.