curriculum updates.

john paul II secondary school.

week MBILI of teaching over.

may 24- may 29

teaching form three with matt and angie this week at john paul II secondary school in kibera was unreal. the class was so energetic and hilarious. we have a rap that we teach our students whereby we ask “are you somewhere, in the future, do you look much better than you look right now?”. and they chant back “I’m somewhere, in the future, and I look much better than I look right now”. basically everyday they made us both start and end class with this rap.

the questions asked at this school, although similar to those asked at other schools, had an emphasis on leadership and success in our class. we had students asking:

“do you emphasize on leaderships and if please, when?”

“is it true that the road to success is always under construction?”

“is it true that whenever one gets the key to success,

someone comes and changes the lock?”

although the overall goal of our curriculum is to empower students by providing them with information to make positive, responsible decisions in their lives, leadership is not a topic that is specifically addressed. for this reason, at the end of the week, in our final empowerment speech about positive self-esteem, matt created a new section on leadership. although brief and informal, his speech on leadership consisted of the following five steps:

1. take initiative
2. look beyond personal interests
3. set an example
4. consider all options and ideas
5. never give up on your goals

our class was very receptive to all of the ideas and topics that we discussed earlier in the week, but during this talk about leadership, every single student was listening intently. not only were they giving matt their full attention, but they were even taking notes.

for this reason, we are currently performing extensive editing of the curriculum to keep the information we teach current and accurate. specifically, we are applying the past five years of our teaching experience to update the kits with material pertaining to the issues facing our students, especially those raised in anonymous questions.

this is a huge task to undertake during the project, in the midst of teaching, planning outreach activities, organizing mobile VCTs for each of our schools and networking for the YESS organization, however the individuals on our team are extremely motivated and willing. i know that their hard work and dedication will translate into a new and amazing curriculum, and hopefully these edits will be incorporated into our future teaching on project.