The classrooms in the House of Art in Tanzania get a little break during lunchtime after the last children have rushed home. A fast clean and the boards fill up with preparations for new lessons, this time for the adults. Tens of Tanzanians around Bahari Beach attend the English lessons held by art volunteers in Tanzania daily. Some of them travel more than two hours, and the ages of the students range from sixteen to thirty.
The classes have been divided into three groups: beginner’s class, intermediate class, and advanced class. Some want to learn English to enable them 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 materials used in the lessons are mostly a collection of books and papers provided by all the volunteers over 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 the effectiveness of prisons to women’s rights to Western impact in Tanzania.
Another main challenge for the lessons has been continuity. Every time a volunteer program ends, whether 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 that takes enough time to let the next volunteer get familiar with the class and explain their activities. However, when students were asked about the wide variety of teachers, they found it positive since every new volunteer has different ideas and a new point of view to share.
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