I'm somebody's kindergarten teacher

My cousin K was a 2nd grade teacher for several years before taking time off to have her own kids. She actually returned to work a few weeks ago as a kindergarten teacher. At our going away party, she remarked what a huge responsibility it is to be the first teacher that a child experiences. Now that I’m somebody’s kindergarten teacher, I know what she means.

I’m not even going to pretend that I didn’t save up my cutest outfit to wear on my “first day of school”. I was a uniform kid for much of my life so I still get thrills picking out school clothes. I wore a brown knit skirt and a purple shirt made out of the traditional fabric that I wrote about a few weeks ago.

I showed up to the kindergarten section of the school grounds and was told that there are about 55 kids in kindergarten split among 3 teachers. I opted to work with Mary who has been patiently teaching me Swahili for the past few weeks. She’s been my angel here in Diani; she adopted me when I arrived, invited us to the church we now attend, and invited me to come to her house last week (that’s a blog in and of itself). Working with Mary is great because she knows M and also knows that I will need a flexible schedule in case of traveling, etc. It was funny though because the other teachers asked if I was a teacher in America. Um, not exactly. I opted not to dive into an overview of biotech strategy consulting at that moment and instead responded with “oh, I was in business”.

We have 20 kids in our class of 4 year olds (they start school young in Kenya) but we’ll often have up to 30 because one of the teachers is scheduled to leave soon.


Above are Gladys, Hope, Faith, Joann, Martin, and Abby taking chai and breakfast at school.

The class is split between children most comfortable speaking in English and those most comfortable speaking Swahili. This means that many directives need to be issued in both languages but the kids seem to have mastered communication between them.


Martin, the world's cutest trouble-maker.

Kindergarten is a relatively intense experience in Kenya compared to what I remember from American kindergarten. They can almost all write the alphabet, can count and write to 40, and some of them are reading short words. This is more amazing when you understand some of the challenges. The Swahili alphabet doesn’t have the letters “X” or “Q” and the fundamental sounds of the vowels are different. So when a child hesitates for what letter comes after “H”, you have to figure out if it’s because he can’t remember which letter sounds like “aye” or “eee” in his head (English vs. Swahili) and THEN help him write it.

A few visual aids that Mary created:


After kindergarten, instruction is in English and Swahili becomes a subject taught during one period of each day. This explains why many people don’t speak Swahili very well outside of the Kenyan coast since it’s only the “mother tongue” of about 8% of Kenyans.

I’m sure I’ll have many amusing anecdotes but today my main victory was getting the kids to stop calling me mzungu and start calling me Teacher which is how they address the other adults. The connotation is the all mzungu (white people) give the kids sweets because many, many people think it’s a fun field-trip to visit schools and orphanages while in Kenya to pass out candy before going back to their mixed drinks and sunbathing. It’s pretty awful (oh kid, it’s too bad that you don’t have school fees or money for a uniform but have a Jolly Rancher!) and I’m looking forward to dispelling that stereotype at least with my class. They’re adorable, I already have some favorites and I think I’m starting to understand what K meant when she said it’s a big responsibility to be someone’s kindergarten teacher!

Posing for the camera before class. Kids are the same in any country!