Dear Friends of Father Ntaiyia Jubilee School
Beginning of the new school year in Kenya and especially the month of January had exciting moments. As students return to school from their long December break they look forward to hearing the news of the previous year’s examination results. They also get eager to join higher or next grade, how the classes will be during the new year and what teacher or teachers will be involved in teaching them what subjects.
Some years it happens that there may be a change of teaching staff members who may wish to go to other places or take a job with the government and in their place we employ new teachers. Early in January this year the superior to the religious sisters who work in my school decided to move our head teacher and replaced her with another sister and also move a teaching sister but did not replace her. At the moment we have two religious sisters in the school on heading it and the other in the domestic section. Our new head teacher is Sister Angela who has been a teacher for twelve years and a head teacher for eight years and with so many years in the teaching profession it does not take long for her to get used to her administrative job in the school, new environment, new staff and students. She brings very welcome computer skills and experience that will benefit Father Ntaiyia Jubilee school community. Sister Angela and the other new staff members Karibuni = welcome to Father Ntaiyia Jubilee School.
NEW STUDENTS 2016
The arrival of our new students, the third graders this year went well even though the head teacher who had recruited them was leaving by the time they were reporting, but she had plenty of time to get the school going for the start of the year before she handed over to her successor.
On coming to join Father Ntaiyia School for the first time the children find themselves in a new physical environment. The classroom is new, most of the classmates are strangers, and the center of authority (the head teacher and the class teacher) is a stranger too. The structured way of learning is also new. If, in addition to these things, there is an abrupt change in the language of interaction, then the situation can get quite complicated but each year the new students familiarize quickly with the help of the older students and our school staff. Generally we recruit most of our students to join class 3 or third graders; this year however, we had 70 new students distributed in all the grades but 7 and 8. This year in the second week of February we had 262 enrolled children in the school and this is about 20 children more than we had last year.
EXTRA CURRICULUM: January through March is the first trimester of the school year in Kenya. Apart from the obvious academic undertaking students have ball games and drama for extra curriculum. The ball games football or soccer, hand ball and volley ball are played by both boys and girls. Competitions start at inter local schools level and will end at County level. And by the time they will be competing at the last levels the trimester will he coming to the end. Another co-curricular activity that goes on during this trimester in Kenya school is Drama festivals. The goal of the festivals is to tap and nurture creative talent of the Kenyan child. Its objective is to promote a sense of nationalism and to provide a forum for the Kenyan learners to interact and co-exist peacefully as members of one cohesive Kenyan family. The National Drama festivals draw participation among others from institutions like Father Ntaiyia Jubilee School and that is why our students train to compete in Play and Cultural Creative Dance.
PARENTS’ VISITING DAY: Many schools in Kenya break each trimester for what they call half-term break. During the few days of this break, normally less than a week, students go home for a short visit and return to school with some of the needed items. For students to go home from a school like Fr. Ntaiyia Jubilee School it involves parents coming to take the children and return them at the end of the break that may come six weeks after the beginning of the trimester. For some families such trips are expensive and time consuming. Sometimes it is not easy to travel especially in bad rainy weather. I very much recall such happenings to us when I was in a boarding school. Sometimes we had to walk for many hours. Because of this I encouraged parents visiting day during the half-term break. During this day parents come to visit their children and bring them the supplies needed such as soaps. Depending on what time they arrive parents get an opportunity to meet their child’s class teacher and discuss the performance of their child.
Parents of children who are in Fr. Ntaiyia School for the first time become eager to know how their children are doing in their new School in comparison with where they transferred from. In many cases children from other schools indicate being behind the syllabus or are not ready for the new grade and teachers have to work hard to bring them to the expected standard.
Saturday February 20, was parents’ visiting day and it was reported it was very well done; parents came in time and they had plenty of time to visit and share the food they bring to share with their children. Some take chairs and gather at some place in the compound, others in the schools large dining room where many families can take a table for themselves. At about 3pm some parents start leaving for their homes and gradually things start going back to normal but this being Saturday the following day is also aftermath of parents visit and excitement remains high.
DIRECTORS OF SCHOOL CHARITY
You will recall that in the last newsletter, I mentioned we formed a cooperation known as Friends of Father Ntaiyia Jubilee School, Inc. that has been given Public Charity Status – 501 (c) (3) that allows donors to deduct contributions they make to the school. We realized some donations around Christmas from well-wishers as it has been in the past few years. I am thankful to friends who have continued this support. The Directors of this charity have had meetings to look into things that the school may need to be done in the line of development. It is my hope we shall continue with perimeter stone fence which I started and which many parents of our school children have very much praise.
Fr. Symon