TUJATANEtujatane.com/newsletter/2015/Tujatane 2014 Newsletter.pdf · 2015. 2. 3. · TUJATANE...
Transcript of TUJATANEtujatane.com/newsletter/2015/Tujatane 2014 Newsletter.pdf · 2015. 2. 3. · TUJATANE...
TUJATANE Tongabezi Trust School
2014 Newsletter Thank you so much for clicking for the full version of this
Newsletter! (Regular termly Newsletters should resume from here on)
The Tujatane Team
In January 2014 we welcomed six new staff members to Tujatane! Obby, our computer teacher, Namukolo our grade 2 teacher, CK, Waku and Norah who are all grade 8 and 9 subject teachers and Bydon, our new maintenance man. It has been wonderful welcoming them to the School and watching them each add something special to the Team. We also had our first ever grade 9 class in 2014, which was exciting as this brings Tujatane to what we call
here in Zambia, full basic school. Clockwise from bottom left: Bydon, Waku, Namukolo, Obby, Norah and CK. We now have grades 1 through to 9 and this means that after school at Tujatane, the pupils now only have 3 more years of High School to complete their education and this means pupils can stay with us up to the age of 16. This of course brings with it a whole new set of challenges! Behavior management, increased demands on school facilities and teachers to name just a few. However, we feel that the benefits of this expansion are worth it! We are so lucky and deeply grateful to everyone who has given and continues to give the support we need. National Exams! In October and November both the Grade 7 (end of Primary – aged 13/14) and Grade 9 (end of lower secondary – aged 15/16) classes sat for their National Exams. Our Grade 7 results came out in early December and we are pleased to see that 100% of the pupils received a Grade 7 certificate!
Nearly all of these pupils have continued with us this year in Grade 8. Some of the children who are young for the class have been given the choice and accepted to sit Grade 7 again this year to try to get a higher pass mark and better fulfill their potentials. We also have seen a few pupils in this group move onto other schools in the area for their continued secondary education as they did not pass our internal Tujatane cut off mark.
For our first ever Grade 9 class at Tujatane, this was an exciting opportunity for us to see how the children could perform in their National Exams at the higher level. We are delighted to report that 19 out of our 21 pupils passed their National Exam and will receive a full Grade 9 certificate! This is considerably better than we have seen in previous years when the children have been
at other secondary schools and was one of the main reasons for our expansion into lower secondary in the last 2 years. Overall, the children achieved above and beyond our expectations and we are very proud that almost all of them have been accepted to high-‐level Secondary and High Schools in Zambia. Three pupils have qualified for a Scholarship and at least twelve pupils have been awarded Bursaries for this next stage. They will of course be required to maintain their efforts and report regularly to us here at Tujatane so that we can provide the support that they need. Huge thanks to all of you that are sponsoring pupils at this level! As usual we are currently still looking for extra funds for some of these pupils. To get more information or to donate to our bursary and scholarship fund please email Vanessa at [email protected] We also said goodbye to one member of staff in 2014, Mrs. Catherine Young. Kate had been with us for two years and during this time she set up our Math’s and Science lab, stores and management for all the development in this area. Kate fully trained and handed over to our teaching staff in 2014, giving us the tools we need to continue to make the experience of math’s and science FUN and accessible for all! We miss your creativity, fun nature and support Kate but we know you will continue to be a part of our family and hopefully we shall work together again in the future. Zikomo Kwambili! (Thank you so much – Chitonga)
This year in February we were very privileged and excited to receive a visit from one of our UK trustees, Julie Fewtrell. Julie joined the board of trustees in 2010 after first visiting Zambia in 2005. Julie visited Tujatane whist staying at Tongabezi Lodge and became a sponsor. We were so pleased to have Julie join our board. She is patient, kind and most importantly very experienced in working with charities, especially in management!
Julie’s visit focused mainly on meeting with the individual members of the school management team, both academic and administrative. Julie has helped us to develop and organize our management structure, identify our priorities, strengthen policies, help us to create better communication throughout all levels of the school as well as monitor and evaluate our progress.
Julie’s expertise and participation as a member of our UK Charity Board has come at a crucial point for Tujatane as we now have five members of the School Management Team. Our Head Teacher, Deputy Head Teacher, Fundraising Manager and Administrator, Finance and Administration Officer and of course our Director, Vanessa Parker. Tujatane supports over 260 children at the school as well as managing and administrating scholarships and bursaries to over 50 students at High Schools, Colleges and Universities in Zambia, South Africa and the US and we currently employ over 30 staff.
For the last 18 months our Head Teacher Mel has been working hard together with Sydney, our Deputy, to groom and prepare Sydney for his position as Tujatane’s Head. We are delighted to report that Sydney has taken up his new post as Head Teacher as of January 2015 and he has also been joined by Evans, our newly appointed Deputy Head.
We are so excited to enter this new chapter together and we are very lucky to have Mel for a further 6 months for a full and comprehensive hand over to Sydney and Evans. (Pictured above left to right: Evans, Sydney and Mel) Three of our teachers will also be taking up more senior roles this year. These are Mr. Richard Phiri, who has stepped up into the role of senior teacher for the upper school, Mrs. Susan Muleya, who is our senior teacher for the lower school and Mrs. Iness Chulu, who will be developing and managing a new literacy and reading programme throughout the school. Left to right: Iness, Richard and Susan.
Tujatane PTA 2014 saw the re-‐election of the schools local PTA board. We were very encouraged to see so many concerned and active parents willing to be considered for votes. Due to the increased classrooms and numbers at the school the PTA decided to increase the cleaning fee for 2015 that all parents must contribute for each child enrolled at the school. Since the very first day in 1996, the parents have been responsible for the cleaning of the school. This initially started with a cleaning rota for all parents to participate in (with only 15 pupils this was manageable!) but as we have grown the parents now elects to contribute a small fee for each child and employ a local lady to clean the school on their behalf. Our new chairman, Godfrey Matale, and the board are also hoping to collect donations from the community in order to build a shelter just outside the school gates for parents as they drop ad collect the small children in bad weather.
Volunteers This year we have had some wonderful visits from volunteers from around the world.
We were very lucky to have Ann Smailes with us for 2 months in May and June. Ann is an experienced teacher and teacher trainer from South Africa and volunteered her time with us focusing on helping develop our library further as well as offering many creative and fun workshops for staff, pupils and local parents. Beadwork, card making and crafts were extremely popular! Ann also shared her passion for books and reading by working with groups of children in a special reading club and
created lots of activity and competitions in the library. Thank you so Ann and we hope to see you again! We also welcomed two vibrant volunteers from the US, Kate and Livvy. Livvy, worked hand in hand with the Grade 3 class and left a ‘bamboo bee’ legacy behind! The pupils and teachers enjoyed her company so much and
enjoyed teaching her some traditional Zambian dances in return. Livvy was a very good storyteller and the children enjoyed telling her their stories as well. Livvy will always be remembered by the dance she performed as a farewell gift, wrapped in traditional chitenge material during her last assembly! Her grade 3 companions were very proud! Thank you for bringing such joy and fun to our school Livvy.
Kate joined our grade 2 class and brought a lot of fun and laughter to lessons. Kate works as a teacher in New York and is a very creative and dynamic lady. We greatly appreciated her input and reflections as a special needs teacher as this is an area that we hope to learn more about in Zambia and at Tujatane in the near future. Below is a message from Kate
“Tujatane is a truly magical place and you can feel it from the moment you walk through the school. Everyone went out of their way to learn our names, to interact with us daily and was eager to get to get to know us. The teaching staff was so interested and open minded to sharing and learning from each other. We were able to share teaching ideas, strategies, and different cultures. In the United States I work with and teach children with special needs, and I was so impressed by the teachers eagerness to collaborate
with me on different strategies and tools to help their own pupils. It is obvious that all the teachers at Tujatane have a genuine deep love for teaching and the well being of their students. They want them to succeed and everyday they work incredibly hard and do their best to help them reach their goals. I have a deep respect for the teachers, and during my time in Zambia developed strong friendships with many of the staff. Even though we are now very far apart I'm confident that we will continue corresponding and learning from each other”. “The hardest part of the trip for me to truly articulate into words is how utterly incredible and amazing the children at Tujatane are. Everyday their incredible spirits, eagerness to learn, playful sense of humor, and respect for others
in the face of many obstacles struck me. When you're around the children their infectious laughter and positive attitudes are catching. I realized quickly how happy they are to be at school, to be together, and to be in such an amazing community. They genuinely love and appreciate learning new things, and are excited to be in class. I was so impressed by their determination to master new lessons and tasks. I was even lucky enough to experience it firsthand and be able to teach them some Science and English lessons. Everyday even after the school day had ended, they approached Livvy and I, eager to continue the fun. They were excited to read to us, work on Math together, or tackle art projects. We spent many fun afternoons tie dying shirts, making loom bracelets, exploring model magic (playdoh) and dancing and singing. I will forever cherish their heartfelt cards, letters, and pictures and feel incredibly lucky to have been given the opportunity to get to know such incredible young children”. “My experience at Tujatane has without a doubt had a deep, lasting impact on me. Volunteering and having the privilege of working with the incredible staff and students has given me a new perspective, one that has already changed the way I think about and view things. It has re shaped my outlook on education and given me new ideas in my own teaching. I am so appreciative and grateful for my time at Tujatane and will be doing everything in my power to go back and visit very soon!”
Last but not least we welcomed Katie to the team. Katie joined our Grade 4 class and also spent many hours helping our librarians sort, organize and enter new books into our digital library database. We really appreciate all the effort and time that all our volunteers gave us this year and we shall remember your visits with a big smile!
Sports, Chess, Performing Arts and Clubs
Children’s participation in sports, music, art and other creative non-‐academic activities is crucial to their overall health and development. For many of our pupils, especially those who can struggle with class work, we have seen a lot of positive changes both in overall class performance and in personal growth. These activities also help build self-‐esteem and can reduce anxiety in children who are experiencing stress. All of our staff are involved with a co curricular activity or club at the school and here is some of their news from the year. Performing Arts – This year the performers and their teachers continued to wow the school with all their amazing performances in dance, poetry and drama. Our coordinators, Sydney and Grace, were joined in 2014 by one of our new teachers,
Waku. As Sydney has moved into his new role as school as Head, Waku has now joined Grace permanently as coordinator for performing arts for this year. The team fought hard to defend their title as National Dance champions in 2014’s competitions and did very well to come out 2nd overall. Competition was tough and the children learnt a lot from their experience. The group also performed at a special event this year, which was part of the celebrations for David Livingstone’s bicentenary festival. Sydney wrote and performed a special song called ‘Beautiful Livingstone’ together with one of our pupils, Esther Milupi, at the official opening of the Bird Exchange Art Exhibition at the Livingstone Museum. A rough video recording of this will soon be released on the Tongabezi Trust School Face Book page and it is a truly beautiful song! The exhibition showcased artwork from Scottish and Livingstone schools. Images from these celebrations will form part of a photo journal, which is going to be presented to the British High Commissioner and the Zambian High Commissioner to London. The performing arts department together with our music teacher Mike and the school band and choir, put on an amazing fundraising performance at the school amphitheater in September and raised over $1,000 for the performing arts department! For photos, video and more click the link below! http://savannabel.com/2014/10/07/who-‐needs-‐hollywood-‐when-‐youve-‐got-‐tujatane/ Sports & Chess– The children did really well in 2014, training hard and taking part in Interschool Competitions in football and netball. The competitions are long and exhausting, with over 20 schools represented at a time! But the staff and children are so determined in their efforts and we consistently have our pupils selected for the regional football and netball teams. The Chess club has been busy this year and we were very proud to see quite a number of children take part in chess competitions with other schools in Livingstone. Three of our players were selected for the regional rounds and one pupil, Esther Lichaha, made it to the National finals in Lusaka! Chess continues to be one of the most popular games played at school and we are very grateful to those supporters
who have donated boards, pieces and chess timers this year as well as other sporting supplies and uniforms! We have had some fantastic donations! The Girls Club, run by teachers Susan and Mable, continue to meet regularly with girls from the older classes, to discuss and take part in activities that help the children to understand their rights, their choices and how they can shape their futures. With Tujatane’s growing teenage population, Susan plans to expand the reach of the club in 2015 by developing a ‘Boys Club’ together with some of the male staff to avoid alienating the boys at school from the issues at hand. After all, the boys and men in our communities are crucial to the solutions of the problems that the girls and the women face. Susan has also initiated a local women’s group that aims to bring local mothers and women together for support and discussion. We also teamed up in 2014 with an organisation called ‘MARCH’ who have helped facilitate parenting workshops for some of our parents in the community. Work by the Girls Club -‐ Anonymous
Art Club & Card making Assistant teachers Mary, Jacqueline, Tinah and Janet have been working throughout the year with groups of children in the art and card making clubs. The children love the afternoons where they can participate in drawing, cutting and gluing! Their cards are left as welcome gifts in the rooms at Tongabezi and the children write messages to invite guests to come and visit them while they are here! The children love the positive feedback that the guests bring with them as they visit and this is a great way for the children to help us market ourselves and show off their creative talents. They have also had lots of fun welcoming our volunteers who often bring extra supplies with them for us to use in the clubs. Ann’s beadwork and jewelry classes were very popular! In 2015 we will have both of these clubs operating from the new Art Room. More about that later!
Staff Training Iness Chulu, our Pre School and Reception Teacher, travelled to Cape Town earlier in the year to continue her professional development as one of Tujatane’s most experienced early years teachers. Here is some feedback from Iness. I left for my South African adventure on March 6th. It was a most helpful experience and one that will benefit our school greatly. Like last year, I stayed with Jo Laboucher and her wonderful family. I learn so much from Jo such as creative ideas, how to teach remedial classes and integrative activities and games. One of the courses I attended this year was a language course called “kikus” from the center for multilinguisim in early childhood for teaching English as a second language. The training was very interesting and hopefully next year I will take part in the advanced training seminar. The second course I did was called ‘Word Works’. Word Works is an early childhood literacy program and is very helpful for me as I plan future Tujatane literacy programmes for staff and parents. (Iness is in the blue dress in the front row!)
Having completed the training, I came back to Zambia full of energy and facilitated an initial training workshop with all the members of teaching staff on the courses I attended. We have since started a regular weekly programme with the early year’s children and we have recruited a few older pupils who are struggling with reading. My hope is that in the future we can also get more parents volunteering for the Word Works literacy programme. This would help them to learn how to help their children at home and give them skills to support what they learn at school. It would also help them improve their own reading in the long term. I would like to thank all the sponsors who made this trip possible and Jo for opening her home to me once again.
Ron and Shirley visit! Another of our UK Charity Trustees, Ron, and his wife Shirley, came to visit us this year. Ron and Shirley have been involved with the school since almost the very beginning. In 1997 Ron received a leaflet at the school where he was Head Teacher at the time, Audley Primary in Surrey. The leaflet was requesting books for Tujatane’s library. Vanessa’s Mum was distributing these leaflets on her behalf in her local community and how lucky we were that Ron came to our aid! Since then, Ron and his wife Shirley (also a Head teacher in the UK) have helped us with numerous projects such as collecting and donating books, helping organize UK teaching exchanges and coming out to Zambia to help facilitate staff training and development. This year Ron and Shirley returned to Tujatane, specifically to help our growing
computer department and new teacher Obby as we consolidate our recent growth in this area. The ICT lab uses a range of resources that help Obby and the teachers bring modern day technology to the children. The pupils of course, learn much faster than the adults! They absolutely LOVE working with computers and technology, so getting the children enthusiastic about ICT lessons is pretty easy.
We have recently purchased ZEduPads for some of the younger grades lessons. These are hand held tablets that have been introduced by the Zambian government and are loaded with activities and games relevant to the Zambian syllabus up to grade 7. These can be accessed in 6 local languages as well as English.
We also have 13 desktop computers for use in lessons with the children and they can learn to word process, use programs like excel, PowerPoint as well as surf the net for research on class projects. Ron also arranged for a new resource called BeeBots, which have now arrived with the help of some lovely guests who hand delivered them to us. These will help the small children learn the basics in programming! We
should have them running the school themselves in no time! Huge thanks to all our supporters who have been helping fund and send resources for our computer room. This is an amazing facility for us to have for the children and as far as we have seen, it is the best of it’s kind in Zambia! As part of the staff’s professional development, many of the teachers and assistants are currently studying to upgrade their qualifications.
Teachers Richard, Sophie and Rollela (above) are all studying hard in the school holidays to upgrade their teaching diplomas to degrees and teaching assistants Hendricks, Laila and Dorothy, who have previously completed Grade 12, are working towards teaching qualifications.
None of these opportunities would be possible without special sponsorship. Our deepest thanks to those of you who are giving so generously in this area.
Building and Maintenance In recent years Tujatane has seen a lot of physical growth and 2014 was no exception. As the school has grown in size and new classes and buildings have been built, the need for a full time maintenance person has become a priority. So 2014 welcomed a new member of staff, Bydon, our maintenance man, who has been a fantastic addition to the team. Bydon makes sure that we implement as much preventative maintenance as possible and that broken and damaged items are fixed and replaced as soon as possible. The traffic of nearly 300 pairs of hands and feet keep Bydon very busy!
Our largest building project this year as been the construction of two new classrooms and an adjoining office. We needed one extra classroom this year (2015) as we have had a missing grade floating its way through the school for a while. Back in 2007 we did not enroll a new Pre School class, as we didn’t have enough classrooms or teachers. We remained with the children we had and everyone moved up into a new grade but we took no new pupils in. That meant that by 2014 we were missing a grade 5 group of pupils but this year we have finally enrolled our missing class and have a grade 6 class. Our new classroom is home to our grade 1 pupils (right side classroom) and this has made space further up the school for the new grade 6’s.
The second classroom we have built is our new art room and sewing room (Left side classroom). All the children and their teachers will be able to book the art room regularly for lessons in art or any other times where they would like to take part in creative activities. The art room will allow us to expand the types of projects that the children can take part in such as lino printing, paper mache, sculpture and much more. It will also be a great way for us to help the teachers develop their creative learning skills with the children. It will also double up as a sewing workshop for older children that wish to learn practical sewing and tailoring skills and for local adults in the community.
Early this year we upgraded our playground with a wonderful new jungle gym and a re vamp of the existing equipment. The area was rather tired and slightly dangerous by the end of 2013! The smaller children absolutely LOVE the playground and the heavy traffic does mean that regular maintenance is essential for it’s upkeep. The children are now back on the playground and having more fun than ever before!
In 2014 we also expanded our canteen and kitchen facilities. We now have a separate staff eating area, larger preparation and cooking area and more space for the children to sit and eat under shelter. We still need more regular funds for our feeding programme and it costs us £6/$10 a month to feed each child breakfast and lunch every school day. However many of the children’s sponsors are now adding this cost to their sponsorship donation and we are so very grateful to all of you who are able to do this! We have also just completed building a Head Teacher’s office, which now provides the Head and the Deputy separate offices. This is really important as their roles, responsibilities and activities are quite different.
In December 2013 we had a large tree fall in a storm over the school amphitheater! Unfortunately the tree pulled down with it the metal structure frame and shade cloth and had to be dismantled fully. However, at our 18th Birthday celebration in August in London, we managed to raise the funds necessary to re build the structure, stronger and even more beautiful than before! Thank you to all of you that attended our Party. It was wonderful to see so many of you there!
Community & Health This year Tujatane has helped support one of our dynamic young assistant teachers, Hendricks, with his ‘Adult Education Programme’. Hendricks started the programme in 2013 to help local adults in the village attend evening classes,
in the hope of completing their primary education. Hendricks requested permission from the school management to use of one of our classrooms in the evenings, for the adult class to meet in. We were so happy to help and to see such an incredible initiative coming from an incredibly caring member of our team. Hendricks has now extended his adult classes in order to reach extra members of the community who are at a lower
level than the Grade 8 class he started with. So there is now a Grade 6 level programme available as well! Hendricks has had to take on 3 other tutors, in order to manage all the subjects and the two levels. Two of the tutors are also assistant teachers at the school and the other is a former pupil! Many of the students are parents of Tujatane pupils and the positive effects are already being seen. Parents who were shy to attend or participate in parents meetings and report form collection days are now growing in confidence and speaking more English with the teachers and their children. They are better able to help their children with homework and are working towards their own dreams of completing school and creating a brighter future for their families. Left: one of the adult study groups.
In November we were very lucky to welcome a travelling optician called Finn to the school. Finn is from Denmark and has visited different parts of Africa on a number of occasions, testing eyes and handing out reading glasses and advice to those in need. On this trip Finn spent two days at Tujatane testing all our pupils, staff and community. One day further up river at a local Lodge, another day in Simonga Village and then his last day in the local General Hospital in Livingstone. Finn tested over 900 people in 5 days and gave out over 600 pairs of glasses! Hopefully Finn will be returning later this year to continue to reach more people in need in more communities.
Sponsorship Update As always, sponsorship of the children at Tujatane remains our lifeline to funding. For those of you already so generously sponsoring a child through their
education, or donating to any of the fundraising areas at the school, thank you so much for your continued support and kindness. We welcomed many new sponsors to the school in 2014 and continue to look for more so that we can hopefully find sponsors for all of the children at the school. If you think you may be able to help us in this search, we would be most grateful and please don’t hesitate to contact us. We have 25 new little ones in Pre School who we are looking for new sponsors for. Here is lovely Zelipa!
We have been blessed by many generous donations including resources and supplies for the children and staff as well as funds for special projects around the school. If anyone would like to receive details of our proposed projects needing funding in 2015, large and small, please let us know. For those of you in the UK we are now registered with Give As You Live, which allows you to shop online, and donate to the school at the same time at no extra cost! To learn more and sign up please click this link Thank you so much for making our journey possible and wishing you all a happy and healthy 2015 TUJATANE