Day 13 | Teacher Trials

The morning started very eventfully! We had our first opportunity to teach about nutrition deficiency diseases to standard 7 students. Today, two of the classes were combined so the class was even larger than normal! We had about 60 students in class, and Rena started the lesson by sharing a bit of Japanese with the class! We taught them how to say “Good Morning” in Japanese (おはよう), then April led a lesson on five common nutrition deficiency diseases, including vitamin A deficiency, vitamin C deficiency, vitamin D deficiency, iodine deficiency, and iron deficiency. We also reviewed other nutrition deficiency diseases that the students had learned in standard 6, like kwashiorkor and marasmus. Everyone was really engaged and participated a lot in the class! What a great experience to interact with the kids and prepare for the nutrition classes that we wil be designing.

After our class on nutrition deficiency diseases ended, we observed the standard 7 agriculture class. The students and teacher discussed exotic and indigenous vegetables. We learned a lot about the common vegetables that are eaten in Malawi, and learned the names of some vegetables in Chichewa! We learned about bonongwe (amarath), chisoso, and mwamuna aligone (gallant soldier). It was so interesting to listen to the children talk about these different vegetables.

After class observation, we visited a new restaurant called Green Vee, another local restaurant that offered a large selection of meat or fish options for lunch, all served with nsima or rice, plus several vegetables! Then, we stopped for some local Malawi coffee before returning to the school to observe more classes and meet the afternoon shift of students. Since some students attend in the morning, and others attend in the afternoon, we hadn’t gotten the chance to meet the afternoon shift students. We all attended a standard 7 mathematics class before meeting with the head teacher about our nutrition questionnaires. Next week, we hope to give out our questionnaires so we know what topics to address in our nutrition education curriculum!

Highlights:

• Teaching our first nutrition class!!!
• Learned about indigenous and exotic vegetables in Malawi
• Presented our nutrition questionnaires to the head teacher

All the photos were taken by SHANTU (Verbal consent was obtained before taking the pictures)