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| BBC film crew |
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| Damian in the Micro Light (aka flying motorcycle) |
We
unzipped our tents the next morning at dawn and were surprised to find two BBC
documentary filmmakers enjoying breakfast at our campsite. Damian in his micro light plane
(imagine a motorcycle with kite wings, see photo) had been outfitted earlier
that morning with cameras to capture the heights of Mt. Kilimanjaro from the
air. A BBC “follower plane” was
trailing him, filming his flight for the documentary and these two filmmakers
were awaiting his landing to get shots from the ground. We enjoyed breakfast with our guests
and learned about their project.
They are featuring some of the Honeyguide Foundation’s work in the
documentary. The film – Earth’s
Natural Wonders - debuts in March on PBS.
We will definitely be sharing it with our students, along with our
personal experience, and hope you check it out as well.
From
there, we packed ourselves up and visited a Maasai boarding school – Sinya
Primary.
Maasai boarding schools
are essential, because of migration of students’ families in order to look for water
and food for their animals.
The
boarding option has increased attendance at Sinya Primary to 96%.
This great attendance and consistency,
has resulted in the school being ranked first place in academics in the
district over the past 5 years.
The “Better Together” philosophy is universal, as Sinya values the co-operation
of teachers, pupils, and families in unity.
The folks at
Sinya welcomed us warmly with open arms, as we similarly experienced so
strongly at Kilimani.
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| Sinya Primary |
As
Honeyguide is partnering with educational institutions like Tanzania People and
Wildlife to boost conservation education in local schools, it was wonderful to
visit one such school.
Seeing how
conservation education is truly about long-term community partnerships and
investment in conservation and wildlife, our thinking began to evolve.
With firsthand information that we are
bringing back to our classroom via the FFT grant, we are energized to educate
our students.
Before our FFT
fellowship, we were limited in our perspective of conservation as a singular
unit of study within our COSEE Oceans curriculum.
However, our thinking as been revolutionized to realize that
conservation permeates all areas of our lives and our community and we will in
turn teach it much more holistically.
We will now incorporate this information throughout our Science units of
study.
We can see how the message
of conservation is vital to our simple machines and engineering design unit,
our measuring time and solar system unit, etc.
We cannot wait to continue fostering our Honeyguide
relationship and furthering our learning as we are back in the classroom
teaching. This was a keen role reversal for us as we were students in their
hands, subject to cutting-edge information. We hope to remain strongly
connected to Honeyguide’s educational outreach programs as we move forward in
the future and hope to collaborate with them as well.
