Reflections
on my first year of teaching
Well, it's June and that means that
rainy season is now well underway! Very soon the rain will once again
wash away the road and push my village into an isolation rarely seen
in today's modern world. June also brings the long anticipated end of
the school year, meaning I survived an entire year of teaching en
brousse and in French. While I
have done many an hour of tutoring both in-and-outside of classrooms
in the United States, this was something completely different and
much more difficult than anything I'd ever experienced. Every day
offered a new challenge, and I tried my best to encourage my students
to learn in new ways and to teach them how to think critically.
Notably, I used Battleship to help them learn coordinate planes, used
word problems to integrate malaria awareness and prevention into
lessons, helped organize a school spelling bee, and had an open
invitation to my house for impromptu math or english lessons. I like
to think that I made a difference, but I guess you have to ask my
students. Even though I didn't change the world like I had imagined I
would, I guess it's all the small things people do that end up
changing the world.
I
vividly remember those first few days of school. Even with several
months of training under my belt, I had no clue what to expect. I was
nervous about teaching the gaggle of Guineans who would be seated at
those desks. I was worried about teaching geometrical properties I'd
never learned myself. I was worried about my French. In short, I was
worried about a lot of things. Only much later did I find out that my
students were just as worried as me. Foreign teachers have a
reputation of being very strict, very mean, and very difficult and
that is what they had all been expecting of me. The first couple
weeks were actually the smoothest while the students were just as
nervous as I was. They were trying to figure out how I operated and
if I could control the classroom. Once they realized I wasn't as mean
as I appeared and once they got used to being taught by a white
person, classroom discipline quickly went out the window. Every
single day I found students talking, sleeping, passing notes,
texting, you name it. To control these hooligans, I had to be mean,
strict, and I did a lot of yelling. I threw notebooks out the window
and from time to time just had to walk out on them. While I accepted
that this behavior, which we call “bavarding”, was deeply
ingrained into them and that it would take years to change it, it
could make teaching really discouraging.
Some
of the biggest challenges I faced as a teacher this year were
imparting my knowledge to my students, working within the established
French-Guinean system and dealing with cheating. Upon arriving in
this country, I spoke a passable amount of French, but I was nervous
about using what I knew to teach kids at school. I soon found out
that even by 10th
grade, the students at my school do not have a good grasp on French.
To put this in perspective, kids start learning French once they
enter elementary school. All teaching is done in French, and local
languages are not supposed to be spoken on school grounds. However,
at home and with their friends, students use local languages almost
exclusively and therefore don't get the French practice they need. By
the end of the year, I noticed that even a flawless explanation on my
part still left students lost and confused. As to working in the
French-Guinean system, students have become used to a single manner
of teaching, one that focuses on rote memorization and one which
leaves the “slower” kids behind. In my attempt to make sure
students were understanding, I would ask several times during every
class if they had any questions and more often than not I was greeted
by a blank stare or a “no Madame.” One of the most frustrating
things was the constant demand for examples. While examples can be
great, and I give them frequently, I often gave them problems without
any examples because I wanted them to think through it. Every time I
did this the students would loudly complain and most wouldn't even
try to solve the problem. Finally, when it came to cheating, I was
constantly amazed at what students came up with and how they
continued to justify their cheating. On the first day of class I
discussed what I considered cheating, as well as the consequences
for cheating. In addition, before every test, I would go over those
rules until everyone told me they understood. However, I never had a
single test in which I didn't give out at least one zero for
cheating, and once I had to give out at least twenty zeros. One time
I even gave a series of NON-GRADED questions to assess what they had
learned, and they cheated on that. It's all part of this idea from
their culture that you can't succeed if your brother is failing.
Again, I knew this was behavior they had learned as a child and
throughout the year, I was only able to prevent a small amount of it.
After only a year of teaching, I have gained so much respect for
those who make a career out of teaching. It might be one of the least
appreciated, yet hardest and most important jobs out there.
Originally
I was invited to come and teach Math in Guinea. But by the second
week of school, I had volunteered to teach English as well. So, I
ended up with 16 hours a week, 12 for Math and 4 for English, again
teaching only 9th
and 10th
grade. While the math curriculum is well established, I had to wing
all of my English classes. During training I was given a short
outline of things they should learn by the end of the year, and a
simple grammar guide, and with these two, I set out trying to teach
my students yet another language to add to their repertoire. For me,
English classes were a time to have fun and we often played games to
keep things interesting and to test their skills. These included
their favorite, Simon Says, along with Jeopardy, Bingo and Charades.
We occasionally talked about famous singers like Rihanna, Chris
Brown, 50 Cent and Justin Bieber. On a more serious note, we had many
a discussion about America, including George Washington, the number
of States in America (50 not 52), and how the current Guinean
government is actually modeled on the American system. Once I tried
explaining to them that America was also colonized by the Europeans,
but they didn't want to believe me. One time after a math session
involving malaria information, I taught them words like “mosquito”,
“malaria”, “sleep under your net”, etc. Basically my English
classes became a math, history, biology, civics, and language class
all rolled into one. So even if my kids only came out of English
classes with greetings and numbers down pat, they still learned a lot
about about Guinea and the world around them.
I
couldn't end a post about teaching without talking about the Brevet,
or what I've referred to many times as the high school entrance exam.
This takes place after 10th
grade and determines whether or not the student can enter high
school. It lasts 4 days and consists of History, Geography, Biology,
Chemistry, Physics, Math, Civics and Ethics, and French which is
split into dictation and writing. The topics for each subject can be
anything they have covered in middle school and often involve obscure
questions that students don't know the answer to. For the practice
exam that took place at the end of April, the questions were
surprisingly open-ended and simple, yet not a single student managed
to average a passing grade. Overall, approximately 50% of those who
take the Brevet end up passing it. If they don't pass, the students
have the option to drop out of school or to repeat 10th
grade and try the exam again the next year. In reality, the chance at
a successful future is seriously diminished for those who don't make
it to high school. Women often become stay-at-home moms, and men
become mechanics, chauffeurs, street merchants, or work on
plantations. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, but for
the most part, passing the Brevet is one of the first steps to
securing a better future.
This
past year was marked with tears and with smiles, sometimes even in
the same class. Dealing with the large classes, the noise, the
cheating, the lack of French, the lack of materials, and the lack of
basic math skills only served to make a hard job even harder. It made
me really appreciate the veteran teachers at my school, including my
principal, who have stuck with it year after year. It has become
really obvious to me that they have a passion for students and want
to help them succeed, something which isn't seen very often. Sadly a
lot of men end up in teaching because they can't find the job they
want and so they are bitter and don't care about the students. The
Director of Studies thanks me everyday for the work I've done and
then proceeds to ask me to stay in Guinea for the rest of my life.
The dedication of my fellow teachers and the fact that I have a few
students eager to learn, who come to my house every day and work
through problems, or are learning English have made my first year of
teaching an incredible experience, and one I'll never forget.
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