(Originally Published on: Sep 23, 2013)
The classrooms in the house of Art in Tanzania get a little break during lunchtime after last of the children has rushed home. A fast clean and the boards fill up with preparations for new lessons, this time for the adults. Every day tens of Tanzanians around the area of Bahari Beach come to the English lessons held by the volunteers of Art in Tanzania. Some of them travel more than two hours and the age of the students range from sixteen to thirty.
The classes have been divided to three groups: beginner’s class, intermediate class and the advanced class. Some of them want to learn English to enable to study a profession, some to improve their communication with the growing population of foreigners in Tanzania and some to expand their ongoing businesses. Common to all of them is their enthusiasm to learn.
Although the equipment and the materials used in the lessons are mostly collection of books and papers provided by the all the volunteers during the years the most important thing is to get the students to interact with each other in English. One of the most anticipated parts of the lessons is the everyday debate in the end. The topics of the debates vary from effectiveness of prisons, women’s rights to western impact in Tanzania.
Another main challenge for the lessons has been the continuity. Every time a volunteer’s program ends weather it is two weeks or three months the teachers for our eager students change. To enable our students to progress the volunteers are trying to develop a system where they take enough time to let the next volunteer to get familiar with the class and to explain their activities. Although when students were asked about the vast variety of teacher they just found it positive since every new volunteers has their different ideas and a new point of view to share.