The Students are Coming!

With all the posts and pictures of the school under construction, it might be easy for readers to forget that there's all the operational development also going on--it's just not as easy to take pictures of it!

These past 3 days saw the beginning of the intake process of the first class of PHSS. It's probably the most important job we'll do this year. After spending the past year talking to many organizations and schools who select students, we realized that what we are aiming to do is very different from everyone else. The best we could hope to do is listen carefully, ask lots of questions, and head out into the unknown! One of the biggest concerns we have is students coming into PHSS that don't fit our criteria of orphans or extreme poverty. This happens because of outright cheating on the part of church or government officials (who often select family or friends that can afford other schools) as well as the result of desperation of parents who will do anything to secure an education, especially one that doesn't cost, for their children.

The first step was to decide how to identify a potential pool of students. Some schools put ads in the papers and then do open calls, where they weed students out on the basis of entrance tests. Since our criteria is very specific we opted not to do that as we'd have to wade through too many kids to find those that met our target population. We finally decided to gather about 650 students as a pool to select the 120 for the opening class. We approached the bishops of the Lutheran, Catholic, Assemblies of God, and Anglican churches in this region and asked for their assistance. Each bishop was given about 150 applications and specific instructions for the type of student we were looking for. We asked them to talk to their pastors and distribute the applications to families that were caring for orphans or were very needy. We also did the same for several non-religious organizations that worked with children. Our target population were students who were orphans (75% of the class), were extremely poor (25% of the class) and had completed primary school but were not attending secondary school.

The second step was to determine how to narrow that pool down before we even looked at or confirmed their socio-economic status. All schools use an entrance exam for that. We wanted to collect data on the students academically, but know that this very vulnerable population has likely not received good primary education and traditional measures wouldn't tell us whether a student would be successful on our terms. We finally settled on a reading and writing exam in both Swahili and English and a short problem-solving (spatial) exam. We are interested in seeing how literate the students are in Swahili, as that will give us an indication of how quickly they can learn English (studies show that the less literate a person is in their first language, the less likely they are to be literate in a 2nd language). We also wanted to gauge their English ability going into PHSS. Finally, a short problem-solving puzzle exam would give us an idea as to whether students were able to apply effort and thinking to a very novel situation. We will use a combination of scores from these exams as well as scores from their final primary exams. We are not necessarily looking for those that scored the highest--in fact, we will probably select from a range. What we hope to do in the next few years is streamline the selection process by identifying markers for success at the secondary level by what we see when we are beginning the selection process.

Thursday we showed up at the first testing site. As you can see from the first picture, part of the process also involved putting together 200 tables and setting out chairs...they'll deliver but not set up! We had no idea how many students would show up--once we left the applications with the bishops, the process was out of our hands until we began the testing. Approximately 120 students showed the first day in Usa River, about 300 the second day in Arusha (which required having 50 students wait until the first group had finished and then did a second shift of testing as we had neither tables/chairs or test copies for all of them at once!), and another 90 in Ngaremtoni, for a total of approximately 510 students out of 650 applications. We had very few late arrivals, unusual for Tanzania, which shows how seriously the families took this opportunity. We consider the turnout to be very good!

Once we had them checked in, we began the exams, which took about 2 hours. Sounds like a lot of work, huh? Sadly, this was probably the easier part! This week we'll grade the exams and narrow the field to about 200 students. Then, each student will need at least 2 home visits to verify their orphan or poverty status. We are asking a couple organizations here to provide assistance so we can know what to look for in a home or how to suspect we are being conned. Because we are new at this, we kept the area from which students could come small, but it will necessitate trips to villages (in the rainy season when the roads are less than stellar), and no way to contact anyone, as few people would have phones and no one has addresses. Most of the visits, by necessity, need to be surprise visits. Mark and I don't speak enough Swahili to operate alone and probably wouldn't get the necessary "read" on people. Our teachers don't drive. So we'll head out in pairs and hopefully be able to certify the status of 120 students by the time school opens!

There were some difficult moments. Many students asked when they would find out if they were accepted to the next level. The only way they will know is if we show up at their home to check on them. There's simply no way to contact all these families. Eventually, we will send the referring organizations feedback and a list of accepted students, but it was hard to look at 500 children knowing that we will only take 120...it's a tremendous incentive for us to refine our selection process. Practical reasons aside, it would be much better if we could begin with a smaller pool and know with more certainty what we are looking for.

I have thought often during this process of my own children and when in their lives they will have to go through something like this and the answer is "never". Their good schooling has been a given in our lives. Their college applications and selection are nothing compared to this. I can't imagine how my hopes would be raised if I had been given an application for my child or for a relative, that I would dress them in their best and send them on a bus (costing money that was hard to come by) and then wait...I have often commented that life here requires you to be simultaneously extremely compassionate and hard-hearted. Most of the time I focus on the good that we are doing, on those that will benefit. I firmly believe that PHSS will be a life-saving gift for the children who attend. I believe that our graduates and our staff will have a ripple effect in their communities and will be able to share their blessings with others. It is important to keep that as the focus, or it is easy to become overwhelmed by the need around us. Which is true for most aspects of life here, not just our work.

One of the best feelings, though, (and it's definitely paradoxical--is that a word?) was knowing that I had met the first students of PHSS in these past 3 days. Somewhere, "our" children are waiting! Theo, our headmistress, is a strong Christian, and she has prayed for weeks that God will deliver the right children to us in this process. We have all prayed, but we have drawn a lot of strength from her conviction in what we are doing. It is an exciting time to be working as a team with our new teachers (who you will be meeting soon here in the blog) and headmistress, as well as our other staff, on the actual purpose of the school--STUDENTS!