August 2019 Dear Sponsors and Friends,
I hope that you are having a great summer. This was a very successful term for our girls at Tembea Academy. We strive to provide quality education and teach our girls “to think”. We enrich the Kenyan curriculum and teaching methodology. One of our key components is an extensive reading and book club program. In the Kenyan curriculum, students read only 2 books in 11th grade and 2 books in 12th grade. Our girls read about 14 books a year. Our book club program includes many classics including: The Good Earth, Harry Potter, Little House on the Prairie, Charlotte’s Web, Wrinkle in Time, Out of Africa, BECOMING (Michelle Obama), Things Fall Apart, Echo of the the Elephants, A Day in the Life of Ivan Desonivich, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Maasai and I, For You Are a Kenyan Child, The Book of Joy (Desmond Tutu and the Dali Lama) to mention a few. For this term break, each girl selected a woman’s biography.
KCSE Candidates 2019
Our teachers have all been trained in student centered, interactive, and interdisciplinary teaching methodology. We have a major focus on teaching critical thinking, analysis and interpretation. Book clubs are used extensively in this program.. Government schools still rely on rote memorization and parroting back the exact answer which undermines critical thinking. Environmentally we aim to teach the best practices for the girls to emulate and share with their families and communities. Tembea Academy is totally solar powered. We have eliminated all plastic bags and bottles. We practice reduce, reuse but there is no recycling available. We have an extensive tree planting program. Each girl brings a tree to school – especially the traditional medicinal plants. The girls interview their elders about the uses for the plants -and the girls have written a pamphlet about our medicinal garden. Our garden of medicinal plants is the only one we know of in Kenya.
Florence Ekuri is in college training to be a tour guide with Kenya Wildlife Service.
Florence Ekuri is in college training to be a tour guide with Kenya Wildlife Service. She has completed her first year and was honored by Najib Balala, the Cabinet Minister of Kenyan Tourism, as the top student in her class. She just completed 4 months volunteering with WWF studying rhinos. She also volunteers at Tembea teaching about Kenyan wildlife. Wildlife is minimally addressed in the Kenyan curriculum.
Some of the 11th grade candidates in their cabbage growing project.
Kenya has faced many droughts and famines and food security is critical. We use our greenhouses and each girl has a farm plot to produce food for the school. We hope to train a generation that would hopefully mitigate against this sad scenario of food insecurity. As firm believers in diversification in learning, we continue to expose our girls to as many fields of talent as possible including sports, music, debate, computers and volunteer projects. Many of the girls wrote about their volunteer projects working in hospitals, orphanages, teaching elders and other students reading and writing etc. Soon, I will be sending a request for school fees for the 2020 school year. School fee donations are due in September. I leave for Kenya September 3rd and will reside at the school most of the year. The best way to contact me is via email. Thank you from all the sponsored girls, their families and communities. We hope you will join us in January for the 4th graduating class of Tembea Academy.