Teacher Tales

“If a child can't learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.” –- Ignacio Estrada

Me with Class 1A at St. Joseph's College of Education

To teach is to touch lives forever, or so I’ve heard. I’m hoping to touch just one life here, and then I think I will be able to leave satisfied. Every other week, I teach seven sections of first year students for one hour. My class is not examinable, so basically, it doesn’t count for anything and many of the students treat it as meaningless. However, many also actively participate and seem genuinely curious about learning something new. My lessons are all about reading instruction, and I am primarily focusing on introducing the students to child-centered instruction and hands-on learning activities. Lecturing seems to be a favorite activity of most teachers here. At the college level and elementary level. How anyone thinks that a 4^th grader can absorb an hour-long lecture is just beyond my comprehension. So, since I don’t lecture for an hour, my students love my class. Time and time again, I have been told, “this is interesting”, which I’m pretty sure is code for, “I’ve never seen anything like this and I think it’s really awesome.” J This week, we played vocabulary jeopardy and vocabulary memory. Imagine 20-year-old men competing against each other in games of memory with synonyms. The competition was fierce, the laughs were loud, and the smiles were wide. The teachers here can scoff all they want at me, but at any age, students love games and enjoy being an active participant in their own learning. Each class I emphasize the importance of engagement in learning and I always throw in a joke about how lectures put people to sleep. Everyone nods and agrees yet sadly, the majority of these future teachers will probably go ahead and lecture in their classrooms anyways. Breaking free from the norm is difficult, so I can only hope that at least one of these bright young people will do just that and give something new a shot.

As for the second year students, they are far less interested in me and my crazy American teaching methodologies. Every other week, the second year students see me in the Teacher Resource Center to learn about developing teaching and learning materials. Some classes don’t show up at all, most come late, and each class always has several absences. Again, this is not an examinable class, and generally speaking, the second year students’ attitudes are much poorer. So I just work with the students that bother showing up, and I get the same, “this is interesting”, from many. It feels good to be exposing these people to new ideas. I can’t guarantee that anything I teach will ever be carried into a real classroom, but at least I’m exposing. I’m opening minds to new possibilities, and that is really something. I know this all seems like a lot of teaching, but it’s 1, sometimes 2, hours each day. Not nearly enough and not at all what I was expecting, but ‘tis life. I’m just trying to make the most of the situation.

Since I have time available, I go to the demonstration school a few hours a week to teach computers (called ICT here), with no computers. I’m having to get creative. This is a K-8 school here on the campus where some of the college students go to complete their student teaching exercises. When I walk over, it’s usually their break time, and students can be found scattered all over buying food, playing soccer, or running up to me and yelling, “Obruni!” I’m very popular amongst the young natives. Sweet little girls will come up to me and say, “Good afternoon madam”, and then run away giggling. They find so much joy in saying one simple sentence to the white lady. I am set to begin at 12:30pm, but the students are always late, of course! Everyone is late to everything around here. It’s terrible. Teaching at this demonstration school is comparable to, what I imagine, a mosh pit at a rock concert would be like. I’ve never been in a mosh pit, but I’m guessing there is a lot of jumping, shouting, and hitting. Yea, it’s kinda like that. Crazy.

The K-8 demonstration school

There are approximately 50 students stuffed like sardines into a room, so management is tough. Really tough. However, I’m genuinely inspired by the enthusiasm. These kids are excited about learning and they are really enjoying the hands-on activities that I am engaging them in, because they sit through 5 hours of lectures each day. I’m freaking awesome to these little rug rats. However, throughout the lesson, students repeatedly shout “Ms. Amy, Ms. Amy, Ms. Amy”, or they just get up and chase me down. If I happen to be talking to another student, they just smack my arm to get my attention. I find students sitting on top of desks, jumping across desks, and even simply leaving the room without any permission. The problem is that there is no fear of me. I’m doing the typical management technique of raising my hand and having everyone follow suit, but turns out, this doesn’t really work. Sometimes yes, sometimes no, and I refuse to shout over these people. The real teacher has a cane and his knuckles to wrap on the little heads, but with me, they are so excited to have a white-lady teacher, that I really believe part of it is simply an inability to control their excitement. The students seem to be calming down with each subsequent visit, but I’ve established two main rules #1 - No shouting “Ms. Amy” #2 - No hitting. Everyone seems to be catching on and hopefully they will absorb some small ounce of knowledge that I am imparting on them. I did manage to absolutely capture everyone’s attention with a read aloud at the end of class this week. All students’ eyes were glued on me, ears were perked up, and I felt amazing! Reading aloud to children is one of the simplest, yet most powerful things that adults can do to develop reading skills and an enthusiasm for books, and I’m getting to do it in Africa.

Class P6 at the demonstration school