Welcome to Sure Starts Early Childhood and Elementary School Tanzania
Sure Starts is an inclusive, thriving, purposeful school, educating boys and girls between the ages of 1 and 12. Sure Starts’ most important rule is ‘EMPATHY’ – ability to understand and share feelings of others.
We offer a rich and broad curriculum, with Art, Drama, ICT, Music and PE all taught by specialist teachers from a child’s first day in school. The school is structured in three stages; (Day Care, Pre School and Elementary school) within a framework of ‘Enjoyment, Creative Learning and Achievement’, which informs a child’s journey through the school and later in life. Children join at the age of 3months and leave at 11 or 12. We place a greater emphasis on a set of core values, which include Empathy, Resilience, Kindness, Courtesy, Confidence, Humility and learning to be Givers, not Takers. We hope that our pupils will leave this school with a strong sense of belonging, creativity and social responsibility.
Vision
Sure Starts’ vision is to see that each child in our care has fulfilled his or her full potential in life.
Goal
Our goal is to establish a centre of Excellence that would deliver a comprehensive inclusive and diverse education by 2025.
Mission
Our mission is to deliver inclusive education focusing on social and emotional learning through facilitating learning of each child based on their individual needs; nurturing their natural abilities, talents and interests.
Our Value
- Kindness
- Empathy
- Respect
- Independence
- Quality Education
- Human Rights / Child Rights
Daycare and Preschool (3 months – 5 years)
In our Daycare and Preschool (3 months – 5 years) aims to nurture our children’s desire to learn, experiment, play and to gain independence. Our curriculum is based on the UK’s Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and is designed to foster the emotional, physical, social, intellectual and creative development of each child.
EYFS recognizes the holistic nature of development and learning, with a strong emphasis on children learning through interaction with others and exploring the world around them. Classrooms are arranged into interest areas of varying educational toys, materials, and games. These learning sections provide places for books, blocks, art, puzzles, science, manipulative materials, and dramatic play. They provide practice in making decisions, following directions, working independently, and learning the care and use of materials. Group lessons include stories, music, gross motor activities, language experiences, and discussion of the current unit of study.
Our educational programmes involve activities and experiences for children as follows:
- Communication and language
- Physical Development
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
- The three characteristics of effective teaching and learning are
- Playing and Exploring
- Active Learning
- Creating and Thinking Criticially
Primary Education
We offer British National Curriculum combined with a unique and broad curriculum called GROUNDED.
Beyond the taught curriculum we offer a wealth of opportunities for learning and performing in the Arts. We offer a curriculum which is balanced and broadly based that will promote the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of the children both at the school and in the society.
Our curriculum will better prepare children at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.
Inclusive and Special Needs Education
Meeting the individual needs of all children lies at the heart of the Early Years Foundation Stage Programme (EYFS) and here at the centre we take it very serious.
child deserves the best possible start in life, and support to fulfil their potential. A child’s experience in the early years has a major impact on
All our children attend age-appropriate, regular classes and are supported to learn, contribute and participate in all aspects of school life regardless of any additional needs they may have.
We provide learning environments that are suitable to all children, allowing them to interact with their peers without any separation or discrimination.
Our Teachers
Each child is assigned a ‘key person’ who will work closely with them and the parents / caregivers to build relationships and to work through both the good and challenging times.
We employ qualified and experienced staff who are carefully selected for their educational background, early childhood training and experience, and for their sensitivity to the individual needs of young children. All of our staff are adequately vetted and screened and also undergo a thorough induction program with on-going training throughout. All our staff possesses Paediatric First Aid certificates as we have an in-house system in place to provide this and all staff have undergone Safeguarding Children training.
Shadow Teachers
In order to ensure that children with special needs are fully included in classroom activities, we work with shadow teachers. A shadow teacher is an educational assistant who works directly with a single special needs child during his preschool and elementary school years.
It is important that this assistant understand a variety of learning needs of a child s/he supports. A shadow teacher allows the child to attend a mainstream class while receiving the extra attention that s/he needs.
Volunteers and Interns
Sure Starts provides opportunity for individuals, mainly young people and gap year students to volunteer or work as interns.
Volunteering helps candidates gain experience and exposure in a working environment. We invest in our volunteers through training, giving sense of work ethics, mentorship and on the job coaching.
Extra-Curricular Activities
The Arts
Art, Music, Drama and Dance enrich a child’s social and emotional development. We work towards developing a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary practice of art by striving to introduce a new culture of art to cultivate a broad-spectrum approach to artistic possibilities that respects tradition and encourages innovation.
Sport and Outdoor Education
Social Education
- To develop sensitivity, tolerance and respect within and beyond our community, in the spirit of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
- To nurture a sense of moral and social responsibility, and responsibility for the environment.
- To affirm and celebrate our school’s diversity of cultures and nationalities.
Board Members and Curriculum Advisors
Elizabeth Mleli
Elizabeth is a Social Entrepreneur who believes in innovative solutions to social problems. She is the founder of Sure Starts Children’s Centre, an inclusive school. Through Sure Starts, she is working on improving the education system by ensuring that every child access education. Using her own school as a pilot to provide an inclusive setting that promotes equality of opportunity which does not mean that all children should be treated the same, but that the unique skills and abilities of each child should be recognized and developed, and that inclusion is not optional.
Elizabeth is an experienced trainer, facilitator, a motivational speaker and she is committed to social change. She is passionate about building capacity in the workforce here in Tanzania and beyond through training, coaching and mentoring individuals within work settings. Elizabeth is zealous about empowering other women in business and leadership and currently focusing on Women SMEs especially rural women in food and agribusiness industry. She is also a mentor with African Entrepreneurship Awards. She holds Masters of Social Science in Economic of Social Studies from University of Wales, Swansea – U.K and PGD in Leadership from Aalto University, Finland in partnership with Uongozi Institute, Tanzania.
Elizabeth has over 20 years of working experience in both public and private sectors. Prior to starting Sure Starts, she was a Senior Consultant/Institutional Capacity Building Manager in the Strategy and Operations Department of Deloitte Consulting in Tanzania for three and a half years. Before joining Deloitte she worked for four years with Action in rural Sussex, U.K. a leading charity organization in Building Capacity of community organizations and she has also worked for nearly four years with the Scarman Trust and Lloyds TSB Bank in the U.K.
Terry Hayward
Terry has been involved in education and the development of young people for over 30 years, through business, with charities and as a School Governor in the UK.
Terry strongly believes that every child has the ability to succeed, provided they are given the opportunity and the encouragement to do so and they are allowed to explore, experiment and challenge themselves, albeit in a safe environment.
He has worked with all ages from primary upwards and was, for a number of years, closely involved in the training of English gap year students to work in schools in Tanzania.
Helen Lumgair
Helen Lumgair is a Montessori teacher, Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment Mediator, Education Consultant and author. Helen created the framework and initial lesson plans of the empathy-focused Think Equal curriculum which was recognised with a 2020 WISE award for innovation and the addressing of global educational challenges.
Helen recently released a book on Using Stories to Support Learning and Development in Early Childhood and previously contributed a chapter on using the process of narrative to develop empathy in early childhood in the book, Developing Empathy in the Early Years: A Guide for Practitioners.
Helen holds a BA (Hons) in Early Years Teaching, a Montessori International Diploma and is a Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment Mediator. She is passionate about developing holistic educational strategies to meet the needs of every learner, and about stories.
Valerie A. Lovegreen
Valerie has a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from Rhode Island College and a master’s degree in Communicative Disorders from the University of Central Florida and is a Ph.D. candidate in Psychology.
Valerie has been a Speech Language Pathologist for the past 30 years and has specialized in the areas of cognition, language development, stuttering therapy, voice and articulation therapy.
She is a Certified Trainer in Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment Standard and Basic levels, and has training in Lindamood processes, Wilson Reading, Conscious Discipline, Balametrics, Fast Forword, Interactive Metronome, and It Takes Two to Talk. She has combined her cognitive training, teaching experience and speech and language expertise and has homeschooled students, started the Magic Forest Institute, a small private school for students with varied learning abilities, then worked at Providence Foundation, a K through 12 school and full clinic, providing intensive academic interventions and therapies to children with learning differences. She served as clinical director, principal and guidance counselor for Providence Foundation. She runs a private clinic, working with clients from age 2 to adult. She has written chapters on Social Cognition and Language and Cognition in Narrative.
Valerie’s passion is interacting with children, teachers, therapists and parents to provide training, mentoring and therapy to improve critical thinking, communication, collaboration and enhance the quality of life of all with whom she works!
Helen Garnett
Helen is a wife, mother of four, and currently works as an Early Years author, consultant and speaker. Helen started her career as a teacher, working in the primary level as a class and music teacher. In 2005 she co-founded a preschool where she developed a keen interest in neuroscience and the positive effect that prompt and specific support has on a child’s development and progress.
In 2017 Helen wrote ‘Developing Empathy in the Early Years: a guide for Practitioners’, which is one of the finalists for professional books in the Nursery World Awards 2018. Helen also writes articles for leading parent magazines such as Parenta, Education for Everybody, and the Early Years Teacher Organisation.