It is close to 7pm, that time when the campus glows a warm and golden, after the sun has dropped over the western horizon and I am totally unaccustomed to the quiet.

Generally, the students would be scattered across campus, trailing into the classroom block or the library, from their dormitory, the dining hall or points beyond. Study hall runs from 7pm to 9pm every night except Saturday, and just before it begins girls can be heard laughing and singing and chattering, packing the noise they will be unable to make during study hall, into these last minutes of daylight. But this evening only a quiet breeze in the acacias disturbs the silence… the girls have gone home for their end of term break.

The last six school days at Daraja Academy were totally dedicated to finals, and the tests were attacked with campus-wide team effort. Similar to many African nations, a Kenyan secondary school student’s entire four years of high school are judged by how well they do on a cumulative national examination (in Kenya, the K.C.S.E. exams). In the United States that would mean taking a series of HUGE subject specific tests on information the student learned AND retained over all four years of high school.

Knowing this, one of my objectives as a principal is to make these young ladies as comfortable as possible in a test setting. Daraja’s students are smart and driven, they will have learned the information, but stories abound of teenagers freezing when the go to take the K.C.S.E. It’s not melodramatic to say that for many students their future life hangs in the balance of their tests results.

Over the course of almost two weeks Daraja Academy was hitting top speed in the evenings as opposed to revving down by that point. Teachers, administrators and volunteers all fell into roles assisting the process. Long term volunteers Andy and Kayla were great, overseeing study hall as a whole, making sure that the girls were in the right spots and had all the materials they needed (paper, books, flashcards etc.) Peter and Carolyn Gilbert, a father daughter team from Vermont, passed through campus for a few days and helped with the studying as well.

One of my closest and oldest friends from the U.S., Anthony Van Moppes and his girlfriend Kelly Chang – both teachers by the way, English and Math – dove in head first prepping the students. At one point I walking into a math study session that Kelly was leading and was shocked to hear the students belting out a song about integers to the tune of “Row, row, row your boat…” Anthony, a natural English teacher truly showed his mettle by preparing our girls for, of all things, PHYSICS! Though on his summer vacation he spent hours learning, creating questions and preparing the girls for an examination they were fearing, and it worked!

When the last of the finals were scored and term grades were tabulated, I was genuinely blown away by the results. I’d been preparing for the Term II grades, expecting to see a significant slide compared to the grades from Term I for two reasons. First, the students were so amazed and grateful to be attending secondary school at all during Term I that they produced like 26 mad scientists, working and studying at all hours of the day. I expected them to slide into a more relaxed pace as they became more comfortable within the Daraja Academy environs. Secondly, Term II was nearly 3 times as long as Term I. The Kenyan curriculum is much more demanding than the public schools I have taught at in California, with 3 times the material, I was truly nervous about how our students would balance the information and perform. I expected grades to fall, by an entire grade point for some of the girls without an already strong academic foundation. I would have been overjoyed to witness students whose averaged grades slipped by only 1/3rd (A- to B+). Considering the rigor and amount of information they were required to have mastered any student who maintained their letter grade (B to B) would have made incredible strides in my mind.

I should not have been nervous. Only one Daraja Academy student slipped more than 1/3rd of a letter grade between Term I and Term II and that was only a slide from A- to B. Eight students matched the A they’d received during the shortened 1st term with another in Term II – mind you that would be like getting a 4.0 in the USA, but doing so while taking 12 subjects. In case you are curious: English, Swahili, Geography, Math, Business Studies, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Music, Religious Studies, History and Government, and P.E – as a Freshman.

Eleven of our students maintained the same letter grade or only slipped by a few percentage points, which earlier I would not have thought possible considering the reasons listed above. AMAZINGLY, five of our girls: Relina, Christine, Lillian, Esthere and Florence, improved by at least 1/3rd of a letter grade – with Florence making the biggest leap, B to A-! It has always been very important to creators of Daraja Academy, that the student body be a cross-cut of the country and resemble the population and its tribal and religious make up as best as is possible, it is interesting to note that those girls who improved… are a cross-cut of Daraja’s cross-cut. One is from the urban slum of Kibera; another is from a pastoralist, Maasai family from the rural countryside. They are five girls, from five tribes and five distant locations of the country, but Daraja Academy is working for ALL of them.

We knew these young ladies had strength inside of them, it is part of the reason why they were admitted to Daraja Academy, it is their resolve that amazes me. Everyday they wake and decide that they will improve themselves and be better when the climb in bed that night, and then they do it. It is incredible and it is inspiring, personally I cannot believe that I get to be a part of it.

World, thank you for believing in these girls, this school and our dream.

Jason Doherty