Tomorrow I will have been in this country eight months, and yet I still feel so far away from achieving any kind of sustainable “progress”. The longer I’m here, the more I realize that two years is a drop in the bucket in terms of making lasting change, and the only thing certain to benefit from my two years here is me.
I should preface this by saying that my role here is not supposed to be a teacher. I am supposed to be helping teachers, and working with students in an environmental club, but right now I am still observing classes, so I can see how the teachers work and how I can start to help. Therefore, as you will see, this morning I was faced with a harsh reality as I stood in front of a CP (Classe Préparatoire) class of 80 kindergarten-aged kids. That’s right, eighty. In one class. After 45 minutes of not teaching them, as the teacher seemed to be more importantly occupied filling out paperwork reporting for the Department of Education, I asked the teacher if the kids didn’t have anything they were supposed to be doing. “No,” he replied, “And when they get out their slates it just makes so much noise.”
“They don’t have anything to work on?” I asked again. “Nothing to practice?” To which the teacher replied by going up to the big board, drawing two long horizontal lines across one section of it, and filled those in with short vertical lines all the way across, like train tracks. He then told the kids to copy that onto their chalkboards, after which time Ngoné (me), he said, would come check on their work.
After several minutes had gone by, and I could see about two-thirds of them had at least tried to draw something, I started walking around and looking, speaking to them in Wolof mostly because although they’re supposed to be learning French in school, at this age most of them don’t understand it yet. The only thing in French most of them seemed to understand well were “oui,” “non,” “bonjour,” “je me leve,” and “je m’assois.” I channeled my best teacher self and patrolled the room, trying to explain in a mixture of Wolof and French why one child’s drawing was lovely but that it didn’t match what the teacher had drawn on the board, because the teacher’s was straight across and the child’s went diagonally across her chalkboard. How do you say “diagonal” in French even?
Other students had drawn their train tracks across the top of their slates, whereas the teacher had drawn his in the middle of the board. I tried to explain how to leave space on top and underneath the tracks to some, while for others the issue was that they had drawn the slats of the tracks jutting out of either side of the rails. Really not as easy as I had first thought, as I walked around the room realizing that though I was able to translate for some kids into Wolof, there were also Sereres and Pulaars in the class, and they would just have to make do with my hand gestures, as I was having enough trouble not knowing the word in Wolof for “straight”. After I managed to get the kids to erase their boards and put them away, it became apparent to me that that this was not only a lesson in drawing, it was simultaneously a lesson in hand-eye coordination, listening comprehension, and French vocabulary. That’s a lot to handle at once for 5-year-olds.
Only shortly before this semi-forced temporary (I hope) substitute teacher role was given to me, I had been minding my own business, taking notes on the class and sitting quietly watching the students and teacher, recollecting what I remembered learning in kindergarten. I calculated that it was twenty years ago exactly when I myself was learning the colors, how to tie my shoes, counting using small plastic dinosaurs (color blue), and reading aloud “The Tale of Jemima Puddle Duck” to my class. I feel like my own kindergarten class was much better behaved than this one that I found myself in front of today, and certainly achieved more progress on a daily basis, but then again, my class was taught in our native language, we got nap time, and cinnamon toast on special occasions, and although we did have three Ashleys, our classroom didn’t have to contain more than 30 children.
A little bit of perspective there, then, as I walked out of the classroom at break time thinking about how in America there would be four teachers to handle the number of kids I had just left.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
In some American schools like those in the urban areas there are classes that are too large and too many ESL students for the available number of tutors. Ironically, in America the wealthiest areas, suburban usually, have a surfeit of resources and all too often the wisest problem solvers as their administrators. No, you are quite right that change is not occurring quickly. Yet, did education evolve quickly in Europe? Did the peasants in France suddenly become literate? Or the Scots or the Danes? It took a long time for tribal societies to transform themselves into more sentient areas. In time, not in centuries or millennia this time, Africa too will join the other nations with a rising tide of literacy. India is joining the world order as is China. When I was an infant, these two giants had but a small portion of their populations who were well educated. They have made huge strides in four decades. So too will the Senegal and the rest of Africa. Yes, some change looks glacial when you watch it. That does not mean, however, that the change is not happening or that the pace is not accelerating. One must have faith, as Ghandi did, that change will come.
l.z.
Post a Comment