UConn Student Shares Teaching Experience in Tanzania

As a teacher, what would you do if one your female students asks if you have any brothers she can marry? What if they inquire about Osama bin Laden, female circumcision or what the average bride price is in America? How would you respond?

For Briana Hennessy, a senior, these questions were trivial in comparison to the challenges she had to face everyday as a math teacher in Arusha, Tanzania at the Tetra Lutheran Secondary School.

Hennessy who is enrolled in the Neag School of Education at UConn went to Tanzania for a month with Purdue University this past summer to teach math and immerse herself in a non-western culture.

“I wanted to study abroad in a way that was not just for me,” said Hennessy to a small gathering of students and professors in the Charles B. Gentry building, Friday. Discussing her experience abroad and the facts she learned about the Tanzanian school system, Hennessy graciously answered questions and provided an insider’s view on an unfamiliar country.

“Only two of my 50 students had books,” said Hennessy who went on to explain that the cost of books was equivalent to just $7 U.S. dollars - an unaffordable sum for many Tanzanian families. In addition, school fees were sometimes too expensive.

“We rolled in [to school] in our bus one day, there were students standing outside the school,” said Hennessy. “We were wondering why they weren’t going into the building. It was because they hadn’t paid their school fees.”

Hennessy went on to explain that the Tanzanian schools rely heavily on student’s school fees to pay the teachers and keep the school running. Unfortunately that means that students who can’t come up with the money were not allowed to return to school until they did.  

Since many of the students spoke different languages, one of Hennessy’s greatest challenges was communicating with her students. When the majority of her students couldn’t understand what she was saying, there were usually at least a couple of them who did. The ones who did understand would break off into groups with the ones who didn’t, explain what was going on and then translate their responses back to her.

“The government mandates that all secondary schooling must be conducted in English, while primary schools use English or Kiswahili,” Hennessy wrote in her PowerPoint presentation. “The belief is that all students need to be fluent in the language of business and trade.”

Hennessy’s presentation on her experience in Tanzania was a part of her independent study with Megan Staples, a UConn advisor for secondary math-education students.

“For me, I think it’s wonderful to bring in international perspectives to the UConn community,” said Staples.

For Hennessy, teaching in Tanzania was an experience unlike any other. “My purpose was to go to Tanzania and bring back what I learned,” said Hennessy.

To read more about Hennessy's experience, check out the blog she kept while she was in Tanzania.