Dr Kap's Tanzanian Summer: a work day plus photos

I met today with the executive committee of the school consortium to present the 3 interviews we put together. They are very interested in getting the data but the challenge will be if I can get 12 schools to respond to pretty long surveys-but it is information that no one in the project has so it's all baseline, from what the curriculum and course sequence is to what is done in field, how is it graded, who grades, how they choose agencies, etc etc then there is the interview about who is doing what, what degrees faculty have and in what along with what they have taught in the past and work experience outside of academia. There is only one social work school and it has existed since the early 1970s so they have some idea of social work. A few programs are starting MSW programs by the end of August, one school does distance learning, there really is no money even for textbooks, and no lecture notes, no classroom activities or assignments. They are concerned. I don't blame them. There is so much to do. We talked about this in the meeting along with the concern that there is one PhD person (Naftali, who attended Champaign/Urbana with Ga Young). So unless he teaches every MSW course in the two programs starting, who teaches? Apparently a teacher who teaches at a "lower level" like BSW can only teach graduate level if there is a higher level teacher in the room. The conversation turned to how to do this, this group is finding its own way as are the schools all simultaneously, more challenge. One possibility is volunteers from the US come to mentor as senior faculty even for weeks not months. Faculty do generally have social science PhDs but likely more in sociology and social work is very new to them. Much to do, and yes I did mention we could likely get folks willing to travel and assist but there needs to be funding for the travel. The challenge of doing a lot of big stuff at once. They have come a long way however, and there is commitment. And people are delightful. Ok, nuff for this one. I am going to post somewhat random photos--roads, markets, etc.

big market street

pretty bird

posing

tail feathers were beautiful, this was the only way I could show them

the steamroller again. look closely, we are on the "shoulder" next to the ditch and traffic on the driver's side. People are walking in the piled up dirt, steam roller at our bumper. Behind him traffic is facing the other way, just like the 2 motorcycles and the bus. How many lanes? NONE!