Final Entry to an incredible journey

I wrote this blog at the end of each day in Tanzania before I went to sleep. It was a way for me to reflect and close out my thoughts for the day. Tonight we had our final debrief with team4tech in their Redwood City office (in a shared incubator space - very cool vibe) and this is my last blog to close out my final thoughts.

I was so looking forward to the night and mostly because I was going to see my special amazing Tanz friends and be able to connect on our experiences again. We are the only ones who can truly appreciate the range of emotions we have been through  - from the prep of the project, through the 2 week adventure, and then the reintegrating into life. Yeah, it was like looking forward to a therapy session with your friends....the only thing missing was the red wine. :)

The night was great and therapeutic. Julie (team4tech CEO) and her team were as usual, gracious hosts. They had lovely appetizers, drinks and a ton of yummy Thai food for us to enjoy while we went through our memories and suggestions. Gita, Theresa, Noel and I were in-person from our team and Marta joined via Skype in Australia. We laughed like school girls at some of our memories, paused deeply at some of the more touching points, and vowed to get together again soon so we can keep these special feelings of gratitude and peace alive. It is indeed a special bond.

The reintegrating conversations and what has changed in our lives because of this experience was very interesting. For me, the appreciation for how plentiful our lives are here and the amazing opportunities we have available to us - no matter where you fall in the socio-economic first world. I also have learned to take more time to just pause and enjoy the moment. I don't want to get numb to the grind of the daily routines, but instead pause and appreciate what is going on around me. It's so easy to get caught up in the insignificant.  I know these feelings will fade over time, but never leave me completely.

Thank you, thank you again to all of you who supported me. I feel like someone sprinkled pixie dust on me to give me this opportunity. Blessed all around.

I am a big advocate for team3tech and think anyone who is interested in a similar experience should email Julie Clulage at: julie@tem2tech.org. Absolutely make the time if you can! It will be amazing, exhausting, humbling and life changing.

Here are FINALLY some pics to enjoy.

Gratitude

Theresa and I are sitting in the Kilimanjaro airport right now waiting for our flight back to San Francisco. The two weeks have flown by and I think we are both feeling a sense of disbelief that we are headed home (and have 24 hours of travel ahead of us). We said our goodbyes to the rest of our project team this afternoon and while I expected us all to be crying, it was more of a "see you soon" and gratitude that we all have made some new life long friendships. With the intensity of our experience it would almost be impossible not have bonded they way we did. I am so grateful.

Earlier today we watched again as our second class of teachers presented their lesson plans and was very impressed by a few of the standout students. Incorporating the digital content into their lessons was again what they embraced the most and because the 21st century skills are so foreign from their traditional way of thinking, it is the area of opportunity for the next team who comes in 2016.

This afternoon we gave a debrief to the World Vision country director and his program staff on our experiences with the "spark a child" program we were supporting. He seemed genuinely grateful and optimistic about the work we have been doing and long term impacts it will have to the people we touched and their students. One statement that hit home to me was "in these oral communities, your visit will be shared for years and through generations to come". It certainly made me feel the impact of our work and lasting impression we have made.
As we drove away from that conversation (which was followed by a beautiful prayer for us) and the zen gardens of the World Vision center, I felt so fulfilled and fortunate. Fortunate because of the whole experience.

"For Children
For Change
For Life"
....World Vision

Teaching the 21st Century approach to lesson planning has been very educational for me and I realize how much thought and effort our teachers in America go through to really include all four of the elements and engage our children. It is sooooo much work and requires a ton of creative thinking.

We watched our teachers work so hard today to build lesson plans that incorporated digital content tools and the 4 C's: communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity. The traditional way of teaching here is more teacher presents, students listen and do what they are told. We are trying to guide them to think differently about this approach. Hard new concepts to grasp and I am looking forward to their presentations tomorrow.

Our final dinner was tonight and probably the best "work dinner" ever. Noel had put together a super fun evening and was absolutely the host who pulled out all the gracious stops. I felt very spoiled and special. We had a blast giving each other "the best" awards ever. Laughing was off the charts and no award was off limits.  Imagine: "best rapper", "best DJ", "best singer in the shower", "best scream from a bathroom", "best herbivore", "best sawa sawa", "best handball tennis player", "best 'I've got a guy'", "best protector", "most likely to be a princess".....yeah, we have become a close group. We all missed Gita who is struggling from an awful bug and was top of mind the whole night. Don't worry, we saved you your awards and are here for you all night. :)

Is it really the last night??? Whole experience flew by.

I feel so grateful and sad it is over. Gotta keep this feeling alive somehow. Hmm.....

For pretty much any job, who knows what you do, can make a difference in how your area gets funded and moved forward.

Today we were fortunate to have both the leader for World Vision's Tanzania education programs and a head school inspector from the Ministry of Education observe part of our class. Both were beaming at the instruction, our unconventional style in delivering curriculum, and most importantly hearing the reflections at the end of the day from our teachers on what they learned. We couldn't have planned it better!

Theresa gave another fantastic and engaging lesson on Kiwix, searching, and using PowerPoint. We shared several  educational gaming resources with them and Gita shined with advanced Excel as she taught budgeting using examples from some of our more advanced teachers who we gave an "extra assignment" to at the end of yesterday.
The budget lesson was eye opening to see as our teachers shared examples of a household budget. They included: school fees, oil for cooking, maize, tea, rice, an exercise book, pens/paper, electricity....
Very basic livelihood essentials. There was no clothing or gym
membership line item listed. Again, another reminder that even though we are in a nicer facility this week, our teachers still come from the areas in Tanzania with the most need. I also think-  THANK GOODNESS for organizations like World Vision who exist to reach and improve these communities.

Some stats we learned today to reinforce the need for volunteers to teach and fund digital literacy:

-  in one of our teacher's village schools, she said there is 1 teacher for 120 students PER class!
- In her whole school there are ONLY 10 teachers for 520 students!
- the whole school only has 20 computers they share through weekly computer time.

No PTA exists here to help fund. It is what the government can fund. What is so reassuring though,  is that the officials we did meet today from the Ministry of Education and World Vision so understand the needs, and clearly have a vision and desire to move forward. With this type of commitment we will see changes over the next decade. Yes, not a couple years...this is a journey and we have to stay focused and committed for the future of the children.

After teachers left class, our intense and exhausting day of teaching ended with our project team playing a fun and impromptu game of handball (and we used a box, plate and shoe as racquets when needed) against the conference room walls with a tennis ball and Pharrell Williams "Happy Song" playing in the background. Have I mentioned how we are always listening to music? Several of the team members (Terry, Joel -aka Toto, Joseph, and pretty much everyone else)....is totally into songs and dancing)?? It is a blast. Thank goodness for the speaker Terry brought! We use it all the time during and outside of class.

Fun evening in our hotel garden together. Tomorrow is our last full day together. I love this team, the project, the exposure to so much, and am so lucky I was able to take this trip.

Thank you again to all of you who supported me. Special thanks to Tae for the introduction, sponsorship, and passion for philanthropy, Bailey for supporting me and covering my work (at a very busy time:)), Mark for embracing my inner gypsy from the beginning and being a rock for our children, and all our family and friends who made this possible and have been so supportive.

Less than a couple of days and I will be back in Mountain View. While I am so excited to hug my family, I am going to soak up these last 48hours.


Btw- Noel mentioned he never said to shorten my blogs...so they are back to long. :)))

You know you've become close to your teammates when they can give you open feedback and aren't worried they will hurt your feelings or damage their relationship with you. Noel told me I need to keep these blogs shorter. I get it. Let me try...:)

Today the moments I want to share are a few of the touching reflections the teachers shared at the end of the day and then some of the team reflections we do every night together.

Here are a few from the teachers that clearly show how much the World Vision "spark a child" program benefits the teachers and their students:

"More practice makes perfect. I am learning"
"It was difficult"..and then laughs
"I will try to see if I can do it"- after we gave a teacher a special challenging project because we could see her strong aptitude..
"It is my first time and I am learning. Thank you"
"I am so grateful" (more than one said this)
"I am happy I learned how to use Saterra (software) to teach geography"
"I am happy I learned how to freeze columns, hiding columns, averages, sum and sorting in excel" (more than one said this)
"I liked learning how to make a watermark in MSFT word" (who knew this would be such a popular feature???:)
"I am going to teach this to my students"

A few of my teammates reflections which shows how much we are all getting out of this experience too:

"One of the teachers explained how she has been teaching for 30 years and using a calculator to so Totals, averages, and class ranking. Now she has learned this in excel and how much time this will save her"

"We gave a few teachers a more challenging side project and they started their own team huddle to communicate on how best to solve the problem. On their own they used the 4 C's!"

"Great to hear the teachers saying they are bringing their lessons learned back to their children. This program is so worth it"

"Love being part of this team. It is so much fun to be with you all"

Lastly, Joseph, our scholar from Kenya shared a Lucky Dube song this morning with the students, "Different Colors". He gave a small prologue about how we are all different colors with different backgrounds and yet we are "all one people". Then he added how others had commented to him how close our project group seemed to be with one another and they were shocked we'd only met a short week ago.
It is so true and to hear how much it meant to him as well and to see all the teachers nodding in agreement was incredibly heart warming.

I can't believe we only have 2 more nights together. Sniff sniff.....:)

Feeling energized in Arusha

After last week's both physically and emotionally draining first day of teaching I would never have thought our first day teaching in Arusha would have ended with us dancing to raggae together in the hotel park. I think we decided on a Lucky Dube song for freeze dance as our warm up activity.:) trying to bring some local music into our classroom and also a song that both ChristiNs and Muslims can appreciate.

We totally came together as a high performing teaching team who understood each others strengths and could improvise with only a few words between us. We also learned from our last session and opened up with introductions that were way more fun and showed our "human side". Terry in particular shined today as he shared his blue and yellow Lakers socks (I'm also a fan growing up in SoCal) and then his sick soccer moves bouncing a tennis ball on his knees and then ending with a head bump. He had the group howling with laughter. The teachers clearly felt comfortable with us by end of Day 1 which will make it so much easier for them to ask questions as the content gets more difficult throughout the week.

While this week we are in modern hotel conference room facilities, I am reminded that the teachers have come from remote villages like Motinko that we were at last week. A couple teachers drove 9 hoods on a bus to come this week. These are not luxury air-conditioned with bathrooms on board buses we are accustomed to either. Imagine crowded, hot and uncomfortable. It speaks to their commitment for continuous learning.

We adjusted our course content to the lowest common denominator of levels and then learned we had some real Microsoft tool experts in our class and quickly came up with some more challenging activities. A few of the students had been to one or both of the previous team4tech sessions in Tanzania over the last 2 years and it was impressive to see how much their skills grew from a basic learner to expert and they are still eager to push their learning and grow further. That is our hope for all the teachers we have worked with and brought me optimism knowing how far they can come in such a short period. Our beginner learners leveraged the experts for some peer to peer coaching. Great example of collaboration, one of our four 21st century skills. :)

Have I mentioned how much we eat here? Geez...I have never been so well fed and so full in a long time! Breakfast, two tea breaks with substantial food, lunch and dinner! Also every meal comes with rice and some sort of vegetables/sauce combo. They have these meat or veggie samosa's that are incredible too! If I knew they weren't fried, I would eat 5 in one sitting! I will be rolling myself off the plane next weekend.

Lesson planning was short tonight and software uploads a breeze compared to last week where all the pc's had a Trojan virus we had to deal with. Thank goodness for Charles and Joel, our World Vision IT support. They make troubleshooting any problem look simple without any stress at all.

Listening to some 80's flashbacks and raggae music, dancing together and playing cards in the hotel garden was the perfect end to Day 1 in Arusha.

Sunday in Arusha

Today was our real day of rest where we could catch up on our sleep and didn't need to be to breakfast until 9:30. We all took advantage of it and I got my first night of 8hrs of sleep. So needed!

We spent a few hours in the morning planning our weekly lesson plan and getting ready for our first day with a new group of teachers tomorrow. With all the lessons learned from last week, it went pretty smoothly and we all clicked into our roles of planning.

Once we felt we were done, we piled into 2 jeeps and did what I know best...some shopping!!  We went to a Maasi market where they sell tons of local souvenirs. Maasi is a tribe of people who make beautiful beaded and patchwork items made from the traditional Maasi fabrics. Maasi are known to be very entrepreneurial. We bargained for 2 hours and then the group was ready for our next outing. Admittedly, I could have shopped for another hour...it was so fun and they had beautiful things!:)

We drove through the bustling city of Arusha - albeit quiet compared to weekdays since most people spend the majority of the day in church. It reminded me a lot of Bangalore with the combination of modern-"ish" and shack like buildings along the busy two lane roads. Roads are well paved and there is decent order to road rules (unlike Bangalore).

We arrived at the Rivertree resort. We found the beautiful huge green garden area equipped with its own wood fire pizza oven and settled ourselves into a Napa style table and ordered drinks. Some of us wandered over and sat under some trees along the river and enjoyed watching the young monkeys playing  above us. So cute! A few European families played with their children on the open grass areas and it just felt so relaxing. We ordered just about every pizza they offered and gorged out as they were so delicious. Really...I don't think I have ever eaten so many pieces..at least they were thin crust!  Even our Italian national, Marta, said they were great.:) Noel, our team4tech PM, certainly hit a home run with all of us on this choice.

While it was an absolute lovely place and somewhere many visitors stay, I was still glad to drive back through the chaos of the Arusha streets to our more local type hotel. Somehow it just feels more real to be in a place that has local charm and where we can hear the active streets outside through the night. I think we are assimilating back to civilization from
our experiences in Singida. That felt like the salt of the earth and I want to hold onto that special pure feeling where my modern lifestyle was fully put into perspective.