A Field Trip to Sine Saloum

A couple of weeks ago (I’m way behind on my blogging, I know) I went on a three day, two night field trip to Sine Saloum, a delta region four hours south of Dakar, with the seventh graders from ISD. The Sine Saloum region is located on the Atlantic coast where a river branches out before reaching the sea, creating a series of estuaries comprised of miles of mangrove forests and dozens of small islands. It is the most ecologically diverse area in the whole of Senegal, which is why the science teacher, who was teaching a unit about ecosystems, decided to organize the trip via a couple of Peace Corps volunteers working in the region. In total, there were thirty-one of us; twenty five students, the fore core subject teachers, my cooperating teacher and me (representing the French department). We stayed on an island in a campground/hotel made up of a bunch of small huts with a restaurant in the middle. It was really beautiful and extremely peaceful.
The planned itinerary included activities that related to every subject area and all of the teachers collaborated to create a packet that the students needed to complete and hand in a week after returning from the trip. We took pirogues through the mangrove forests, bird watching and learning about mangroves, the oysters and mussels that clung to their trunks, and why estuaries are so biologically diverse. We visited a town where Senegal’s first president was born, where Christians and Muslims live side by side, and even share the same cemetery. There was a guided star gazing session where the students learned about constellations. We were supposed to visit a fish market and learn about how fish were dried and preserved and how oysters were shipped out of the region. However, one of the pirogues capsized when pulling up to the beach, which caused us to arrive a little too late to catch the presentation. However, there were massive mounds of oyster shells at the empty market, so I seized the opportunity to explain how the oyster shells were burned and mixed with sand to make bricks for building (that was the third time I’d been to the region). Then we explored the nearby village to look at some of the buildings constructed from oyster shell bricks.
For me, the best part of the trip was when we visited a local school and conducted interviews of Senegalese students. For this, my cooperating teacher and I created a list of interview questions that the kids were required to ask. Creating the questions was difficult because there are so many levels of French speakers- from francophone to beginner- within the seventh grade. This meant we needed to come up with practical questions that would guide the students to understand a little bit about the life of the average Senegalese child, but the questions had to be written at a level that all of the kids were capable of understanding. In the end we came up with eleven questions in total. Before leaving the campground to go to the village school, we started by dividing the students by ability levels. I worked with the beginners to make sure they understood the questions. Then we placed the students in groups of three or four, with at least one student from each ability level, and instructed the students that everyone had to ask some of the questions. After all, we didn’t want to see the Francophone or the advanced kids doing all of the work. When we got to the school, we visited the classrooms and then the students came outside for the interviews. It went really well. As I circulated though the groups, I noticed that everybody participated in the discussion and that the more advanced French speakers helped the beginners understand some of what was being said and ask additional questions when they wanted more information. I think some of the answers really opened our students’ eyes to the reality of being a child in Senegal. Later, the kids worked together to make complete sentences to summarize their interview. This week, I used one of interviews to supplement a unit I’m teaching about the family to my High School beginner’s class.