Yesterday, I made a differnce

Yesterday, I was finally back in a classroom after two years of purely coordinating. I, along with Reinier, held a teacher meeting with the two standard 7 teachers at Chimutu Full Primary School. Martha and Ms. Madala are wonderful ladies. They were interested in what we had to say and very impressed with the interactive activities we used to demonstrate topics they’re required to teach by the Malawian government.

For the first time ever, a teacher I was working with agreed to practice our sections for the rest of our group. After I reviewed a lesson she’d just observed in the classroom, Martha stood in front of Reinier, Ms. Madala, and myself and drew the outline of an imaginary character on the board named Johnny. After describing him briefly, she drew Ts throughout his body to represent t-cells, or “soldiers of the body” that are part of the immune system and work to fight off illnesses.

She talked about the fact that as a healthly boy, Johnny had more than 1,000 t-cells in every drop of blood in his body. Once he contracted HIV, however, the virus would begin to kill Johnny’s t-cells. She drew a circle over one of the Ts and continued to do so, describing how the added circles represented HIV’s destruction of Johnny’s immune system. HIV would be detectable once Johnny had less than 1,000 t-cells in every drop of blood, Martha explained.

She continued to color over the Ts until there were only one or two remaining, when she explained that Johnny now had AIDS. That meant that he had less than 350 t-cells in every drop of blood. His immune system was so weak Johnny’s body would be unable to fight off even simple illnesses such as the cough or diarrhea. Eventually, Johnny would die from AIDS.

Martha explained that although she taught her class about HIV in the government’s prescribed Life Skills curriculum, she’d never heard of t-cells. She assured Reinier, Ms. Madala, and myself that she would continue to use diagrams and detailed explains as she continued to teach her future students about AIDS.

Yesterday, I met two teachers at Chimutu FPS.
Yesterday, I empowered a teacher.
Yesterday, I impacted every single one of Martha Mkonkholo’s future students.