About "Teaching & Learning about East Africa" Project

"Teaching & Learning about East Africa" Project (TLEAP) is a "living library"--a work in progress--of resources for teaching and learning about East Africa and about Swahili, the most widely spoken language of that region. The educational resources are provided or recommended by East Africa experts on the faculties of the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, and Delaware State University, and by Master Teachers of the School District of Philadelphia. The resources are intended for the general public.

East Africa can be defined in several ways.For most scholars it refers primarily to the three modern-day countries of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, and secondarily to the two close neighbors Rwanda and Burundi.For many other scholars East Africa includes adjacent areas where Swahili-speaking peoples reside and where they have had strong influence.In this sense, East Africa also includes parts of Somalia, Zaire, Mozambique, and the Comoros Islands.

The project began in 1996-1997 when educators from the Philadelphia area met together in curriculum enrichment seminars designed to focus on the history, culture, language, literature, archaeology, and arts of East African peoples. Faculty participants and master teachers from the Philadelphia public schools--all trained in African studies--drew on the seminars to produce a series of model lessons, televised nationally via satellite; lesson plans, reproduced on this website; and specialized bibliographies, also reproduced here.

(TLEAP) contains Swahili language teaching materials that can be used in conjunction with a televised language course that was broadcast throughout 1997-98. These materials are intended for use by K-12 students and teachers.

(TLEAP) represents a long-standing collaboration between the African Studies Center of the University of Pennsylvania and the School District of Philadelphia's Department of African and African-American Studies and its Department of Instructional Media Technology. It is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Resources researched by
Abdelaziz Marhoum, & David A. Samper

 


Further information on the African Studies Center can be obtained from
African Studies Center
645 Williams Hall
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Tel: 215 898 6971
Fax: 215 573 8130
Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D.
ASC Web Editor
aadinar@sas.upenn.edu
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