The teaching I do in Tanzania is one of the most rewarding elements of my experience here, but since my arrival I have been frustrated with the wide range of abilities in my classes. This is especially problematic in class with Form III and IV, as the syllabus takes on more advanced English topics like essay writing, and reading analysis, while many of the students in these forms still struggle to write a simple sentence. In Form IV, for example, I’d say about 50 of 200 students are at a point where their language skills are developed enough to write an essay, and most of that 50 still struggle with writing. Even in Form I, the wide range of abilities is difficult, despite the fact that I am teaching them basic English. So, for the past 3 months I have been advocating for streaming students by ability.
This advocacy has mostly taken the form of having conversations with a variety of teachers, the “academic office,” and the headmaster, about how streaming would be beneficial to not only the best students, but also the worst. My strategy has been a form of mild advocacy, characterized my consistently approaching the topic from a variety of starting points (typically brought up by teachers themselves), making the argument about how in the end streaming students would be better for everyone involved. Specifically, I had been emphasizing re-streaming the Form I students, as the Academic Mistress had told me they were going to be re-streamed anyway, as the streams were haphazardly assigned based on when students reported for school. But, I was also advocating more generally, emphasizing also the benefits for Form IV students, who I think will face the same failures of last years Form IV students unless the teachers try something new.
Most of the forms at my school have 3-4 streams (classes), each stream containing students of a wide level of ability. For instance, in one of Form I streams I have a student that scored 89 on her midterm, and a student who scored 1. This makes teaching class very difficult, as the more advanced students get bored, and the least advanced students don’t know what the hell is going on, as I typically aim my lessons at the ability level of the middle-of-the-road students.
After three months of advocacy, I was starting to feel like nothing was ever going to happen. Mostly, people responded positively to the ideas I was presenting, and the Academic Mistress even said “I will talk to the headmaster, but I will re-stream them anyway” but of course nothing happened. After I marked the midterms for my Form I students I decided it couldn’t hurt to write her a letter, specifically outlining why I thought it was a good idea. Here is the letter, written in a Tanzanian style, and emphasizing the issues I thought would be the most compelling for the Academic Mistress (ultimately I gave her a copy I wrote by hand):
STREAMING FORM ONE STUDENTS BY ABILITY
As we have discussed, I am an advocate of streaming students by ability. At Ngara Secondary this would have a number of benefits, and I think has the potential to greatly improve test scores not only among the strongest students, but also among students with weaker English. The following are some important reasons to seriously consider streaming students by ability:
- It positions the strongest students to help students closest to the ability achieve success, and creates a competitive academic environment for those academic students.
- It creates an overall more competitive academic environment, as students will realize that their success or failure will mean moving up, or down, a stream as a result of their exam performance (I would suggest that they be re-streamed at the start of each academic year based on class rankings).
- It allows teachers to teach to the unique abilities and challenges that each stream, with different average levels of ability, presents.
- It allows the streams to move at different speeds, depending on the students’ ability and understanding of topic material. Grouped by ability, each stream would have a different pace that would be better adapted to the average ability of each class.
- It allows the weakest students to get more help, as the average ability in the weakest stream would be much lower, so these students’ lack of understanding would have to be addressed, rather than allowing strong students to dictate the pace of the class.
Obviously (if you have read some of my previous posts) not all the teachers would actually adapt their teaching the different levels of ability-based streams, and probably some teachers would simply not bother with these lower-level streams, but on balance I think it’s a great idea because most of the students who will end up in these lower-level streams aren’t learning very much anyway.
I gave the Academic Mistress the letter, mentioned the topic, and said she should read it at her convenience. I was leaving for spring break in a few days, but on the next day both of the teachers who comprise the “academic office” told me they though it was a good idea. I left for break (missing four days of “school” – “school” because no classes were held on those days), and returned, without much hope of ever seeing the school stream students by ability.
But, this last Friday (the end of the first week of classes following the break) the “academic office” re-streamed Form IV, and it sounds like the other streams will follow. I have no idea why they waited so long (or even what specifically was the final impetus for the re-streaming – for all I know it could be something the district has suggested), but this is Tanzania, so I’m not going to question it, and have simply resolved to be happy that progress is being made.