Mrs Hirsch is from Bungendore, a small country town near Canberra, Australia. She is a teacher at ICS and has been since 2007. She is a Personal Development Coordinator as well as being a Humanities and English teacher for various grades. Mrs Hirsch also is head of a Global Issues Club and Coach of the girls’ Junior Varsity volleyball team and Middle School girls’ softball team. Mrs Hirsch has still never been to SCEC but she is planning to pay them a vistit in June 2010.

Interview with Mrs Hirsch transcript

interviewer: Pauline G.

interviewie: Mrs Hirsch

Hello Mrs Hirsch
Hello Pauline
I just want to asks you a few questions about the school in Tanzania

I am very interested to see how education works around the world and 2 year ago I went to India to see how education was working in a primary school there, um for me it is a very philosophical thing every one should have access to education it is a human right and this mean different things in different countries and Id like to do my part and make sure that every one has the ability to go to school and gain education

Well I have never been to Tanzania and so id like to see the country and id like to meet other teachers and students from around the world and really that is the most important part is making connections

I think ICS should help out, I think it is our moral obligation as a wealthy school to provide help and support for school that don’t have such great facilities and we can do that and I thing we should do it we have a moral right to do that. How well how that could be in lots of different ways for example the students that are coming with us are making primary materials, so they are putting together things like, you can see there that we will go up to decorate the class rooms as well and how we can help when we get there we can help with teacher training and teacher development also we can help with very simple things like being the labour that we help build some of their constructions so renovate some of their class rooms.

I expect it to be very basic, I suspect that there will be some classrooms that don’t have furniture or that have very little furniture. I doubt there will be things such as white boards I expect chalkboards, not many materials and I expect that there will be a lot of eagerness to learn.

We go for two weeks and we leave the day after school finishes, at the end of June.

Yeah, I think we can use some think on the line of technology we can use it to raise awareness, at our school here or in Switzerland or at other schools in wealthy countries, I don’t necessarily think that we should put a lot of money towards making sure that ever student at the second chace school had access to a computer I think there are more things to do before that, that in the long tense can be more affective.

I am in contact with the woman mama Lucy that over sees the school. So I am in contact with her at the moment and we are working out which projects we will be working on. There will be another school form Luxemburg there at the same time so we will be doing at lot of work with them. It is another international school.

When I first go in contact with them they created a huge which list of what the though ICS could go about with and then we negotiate with them what is suitable for our students and staff and seeing what we can help out with. They see the school becoming a pace for, to help every Tanzania child gain an education without having to pay school fee and with out being cut out of education because of the result of one exam or one test which is why it is called the second chance school, because for students that have failed their exams in the normal Tanzanian system that’s it they don’t get a second chance and for the school well that’s the name student go there they get an opportunity to work with different teachers and to work in smaller classes and to retake those exams

I think very practically we will provide a facilities formant and we will provide them with class room materials we are also looking at how, when you set up a school you also set up a facility in a community and a lot of the things we are looking at now are not only what is going to be happening in the school but also what is going to be happening in the community so the kinder garden that we will be helping to establish is for the surrounding villages for them to sent their children to get a head start with English and we are also setting up a project a tied up project which will help global families and particularly women to earn money as well

Um just through working at ICS

No not before no

Well I think that is all of my questions thank you very much .