The schools here do not have paid cleaners, so the teachers and pupils are asked to do work to keep the outside of the school looking nice and to keep places like the toilets and classrooms clean.
When I first arrived at Matandani School, there used to be a specific day for manual labour – every Wednesday. Each class had a set time when they would carry out 35 to 45 minutes of manual labour around the school. I found this very interesting but as each Wednesday approached, I became very frustrated as the whole school (1200 children) would do their manual labour work almost at the same time.
It looked very unorganised and I wondered what good it really did. However, after thinking about it, it became obvious that this work was very much needed and there was no one else to do it. It was also good for the students and teachers to have a good sense of pride in their school’s appearance and its facilities.
I had an idea however, which I thought would make the manual labour time more productive. I came up with a timetable where each standard or two, had their very own day.
This made the sessions more focused and planned, while also keeping the number of students doing the work down to a more manageable group. You could also see what jobs were getting done and if everyone was doing their bit.
On a Monday we had Standard 1 and 2 doing litter picking and general tidying and Tuesday was the turn of Standard 7 and Thursday was Standard 8. These two Standards were by themselves as we thought they could have a proper project each week where they could learn a new skill like building, gardening, painting and building fences. They also clean and mop their own classrooms.
Standard 5 and 6 took their turn on Wednesday and gave the toilets block a good cleaning and cleaned out and mopped Standard 1 and 2 classrooms along with their own.
Standard 3 and 4 were on Fridays. They watered their gardens and mopped their own classrooms as well as sweeping the whole school area.
The children do not complain at all about doing this work as it’s for their own benefit and also they are expected to do the same kind of chores at home. In fact, I think the children here learn plenty of new skills as well as developing good teamwork and taking great pride in their school.
I have even noticed the older children teaching the younger children how to take care of the new water taps, and they even make sure the young children don’t mess with them or break them!
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What do you think?? Should we do this at Scoil Bhride??? I am in favour! 🙂
