Two Zambian teachers share their experiences of teaching in the UK via the DFID Global School Partnerships scheme – and encountering the mysterious ‘chicken tree’

Living in an era when the world has become a global village creates a great opportunity for an individual to find out facts about the rest of the world. Have you ever heard of a chicken tree, or seen chicken grow on a tree? Would you call that the miracle of the century? Oh, it was not a miracle or a myth on the day when I learned that chicken grew from a tree.

When a class of pupils in our UK partner school was asked where chicken came from, one pupil with enormous confidence responded: “From a tree!” Well, that did not raise my blood pressure. It was actually a valuable global learning experience for me and a reason why global development issues need to find a bit more space within our formal curriculum.

Our global dimension project on food, which is linked to the curriculum, has given us a great insight into how food in its diversity has an impact on pupils’ education in both Zambian and UK schools. The enriched global dimension experiences in the curriculum have increasingly widened pupils’ and teachers’ perspectives of our lives today and tomorrow.

Brian Nkabika is a teacher at Muteteshi Basic School, Kabwe, Zambia and has a partnership with Melland High School, Manchester

It suddenly dawned on me as I taught the class of Year 2s at Fairmead Community Special School in Yeovil. The school might be surrounded by the green fields of England instead of the copper-rich hills of my home province in Zambia. The pupils might be from a different culture to my own. But despite all this, I realised, a teacher is a teacher regardless of country or culture. And although I was far away from home, it felt very familiar, almost as if I were back in my own class for visually impaired children in Zambia.

My home school in Zambia is a mainstream school called Mano Basic with 1,300 pupils. My five pupils are visually impaired; some are totally blind and some are partially sighted. They attend mainstream classes, but have extra support from our specialist unit for children with visual and hearing impairments. Classes at Mano start at 6:45 am and the first lesson I teach is Activity Daily Living, which is followed by Mobility. After that, I support the pupils with their mainstream lessons and transcribe work from Braille to ink to help the mainstream teacher.

Through our DFID Global School Partnership with Fairmead School, I have realised that we indeed live in a global set-up where colour, race and religion should not separate us from each other. We should share ideas from both sides of our link, because every person is capable of contributing to quality education. My advice to other teachers is that it is high time we educators eliminate geographical barriers in our curriculum. Join the DFID Global School Partnerships scheme to improve education as we learn from each other.

Mirriam Ndyendwa is a Resource Teacher and Boarding Mistress at the Unit for the Visually Impaired at Mano Basic School, Mufulira, Zambia. She has a partnership with Fairmead School in Yeovil, Somerset.

	Excerpt from Mano Basic School pupils’ poems “Look at us, look at us, look at us, we visually impaired pupils. Do not promise us, give us large print and Braille. Do not promise us, give us quality teachers. Do not promise us, give us quality education. Look at us, look at us.” Daniel Mulungushi Mwewa

More info DFID Global School Partnerships promote a global dimension in the curriculum through developing innovative, equitable and sustainable learning partnerships between schools in the UK and Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. The programme is funded by the Department for International Development (DFID). For more information see www.britishcouncil.org/globalschools or e-mail globalschools@britishcouncil.org