Teaching is...

So. Many. Things.

I’ve put off writing this post for a while because there are so many things that characterize my teaching experience in Lesotho. The education system is different. The culture of school is different. Too many things that make up my job to fully explain my experience. So, inspired by my dear friend Brittany’s blog Listing Lesotho (listinglesotho.wordpress.com), this will be a post in lists.

The Good

1)     The students: They try hard, most of the time, and they make me laugh. And they’re pretty adorable. Thank God, because they also make me want to scream sometimes.

2)     My co-workers: generally speaking, they seem to genuinely enjoy what they do and we have a really good relationship. They’re also really supportive and positive about my teaching and are always available when I have questions.

3)     My schedule: Mondays are MANIC because I teach three double periods of English with only one break period. BUT I don’t teach any other double periods for the rest of the week and I also don’t teach after lunch. Also, schools in general have a half-day on Fridays. So, considering that I teach English to three grades and life skills to three grades, I feel pretty lucky about it. 

4)     Class sizes: My biggest class has 35 students. Praise Jesus.

5)     Teaching life skills: At its best, it’s sort of a holistic sex-ed class that incorporates self-esteem, identity and sexual education. If you know me, you know that I love talking about sex more than just about anything, and there are hardly any adults here who will talk frankly with kids about sex, using condoms or healthy relationships. This despite the fact that Lesotho has the second highest rate of HIV in the world. I’m more into teaching it than English because it develops the whole person and its much more fun than teaching to a terrible test. The kiddos also LOVE it; almost every day towards the end of teaching English to grade 6, someone says “Life skills now??!!” I’m also starting to teach life skills to the high school as of this week (intimidating, but important), so that’s where a lot of my energy is going.

The Bad

1)     The system: a). In general, there is a HUGE emphasis on the way things look and on keeping to the syllabus as opposed to the content of what the students learn and on their degree of comprehension. This creates an environment where, for example, kids fight over rulers so that the charts in their notebooks have perfectly straight lines, but they can’t write a paragraph or say a sentence with the past and present tense verbs that are inside said chart. b) There is also a really bad relationship between the ministry of education and the teachers and school staff-MOET doesn’t listen to or respects the teachers’ complaints and the teachers don’t follow the guidelines that MOET puts out. It’s a really vicious cycle, and in keeping with the passive aggressive nature of Basotho culture in general, no one is having frank discussions about it. c) It’s an almost entirely lecture/notes based system, thanks to the British, even to the very young kids. And the teachers wonder why students can’t focus or don’t understand things. My role as far as English goes is to introduce some teaching ideas that are more student-centered, which hopefully will be used after I leave as well.

2)     Students as workers: In the U.S., the only thing that students are expected to do in school is learn. In Lesotho, that’s only part of a child’s duty. Every student is at the beck and call of any adult. So if, for example, you’re a grade six student who has just started to take your final exam for the quarter but your principal comes in and says that those students who haven’t paid their five rand for so-and-so must run home right now and get it, you have to do it. (yes, this happened, and it was infuriating). The same goes for teachers’ personal items. My counterpart, who lives on the same mission that the school is situated on, is constantly asking students to run to her house and get the bag that she forgot, the papers in her house, whatever. God for bid teachers lift a finger to get anything themselves. To say nothing of how gendered the tasks are-if a room needs dusting or dishes need washing, girls are called. If there is anything remotely heavy that needs lifting, someone will call for a group of boys. Without fail.

3)     Lack of teachers: When I started teaching at the end of January, the principal was teaching grades 3 and 4, there was one teacher for 1 and 2, and one teacher each for 5, 6 and 7. At the beginning of February, the grade six teacher left for another job and a few weeks later the grade 7 teacher went on maternity leave. So teachers shuffled around for a few weeks, sort of partway teaching those classes, which inevitably left the younger grades (1-4) on their own even more than usual. Now we have teachers for grades 6 and 7, but they’re both volunteering and I’m not sure how long they’ll be around. The good news is that the word is out that we need teachers, so we’ve been having small groups of recent graduates come to the school nearly every day and deliver their resumes. I predict two months at least and then some positions will be filled. ‘M’e Theresia (the principal) should really not be responsible for two grades as well as doing her principal stuff.

4)    My principal: I like her as a person, but she’s not a good principal. She doesn’t communicate what’s going on in the rest of the district clearly and she doesn’t prepare for situations like she should. She knew that the grade 6 teacher would be leaving for a different job and she obviously knew the grade 7 teacher would be going on maternity leave, and she didn’t prepare for either of those events at all. I was especially pissed because the grade 7 students take exams at the end of the year that decide their future, and both 6 and 7 already have a number of students that have repeated.

The Ugly

1)     The look on students faces when they are told, day after day at morning assembly, “remember to speak English at school!” The look basically translates as: “You know I can’t speak English ‘M’e, this isn’t helpful at all”. I empathize.

2)     Kids fighting, all the time: But it’s kind of just how they play, and it’s hardly ever truly violent. They’re also really big on running and telling the teacher EVERYTHING, even when it’s not actually that painful or that big of a deal e.g. “Madame Mpho, Retsilisitsoe is beating me!!” “Madame Mpho, Lerato stole my pen!” I’m now learning that it’s not worth my while to try to attend to each and every issue, because they get over so called “beatings” (hitting) real quick and somehow manage to find pens when they hear “I don’t care” enough.

3)     The library when the students are left to their own devices: I’m happy that they’re excited about the books, but it looks like a tornado came in. I don’t blame them though-they’ve never seen so many books in one place and they’ve certainly never been inside a library. The other teachers and I are slowly teaching them how to put the books back on the shelves in the right way and the like. I know more about libraries and books than anyone just by virtue of being in a lot of libraries and reading a lot of books, so I was kind of put in charge of the book organization when we got the donation at the beginning of the year. It’s fine for now, but I’m not interested in putting more energy into it than I have to. My goal for the end of the year is for it to be an entirely self-sustaining, student organized place.

The Funny (a list of recent quotes and events)

1)     6^th grade boy: “Madam Mpho, I am going to Australia next Monday!” Me: “Oh Cool! Give me a call.” Boy: “Madam I am speaking English!”

2)     To practice letter writing (yes, it’s on the syllabus), I had the grade six students work in small groups and write letters to me telling me anything they wanted about them selves. Four or five of them were signed, “your son”, at the end, until I laughed and said, “am I your mother?!”

3)     Baby-makin’. To illustrate how a baby is made one day in life skills, I had the grade six students (yes, they’re my favorites, in case you can’t tell yet) role-play the entire reproductive process. Lines of students facing each other were fallopian tubes, two clusters of students were the eggs, an oval of students was the uterus, a boy was the sperm etc. It was hilarious and SUPER effective. Thinking I might have a future in sex-education.

**There’s a lot more of the funny, this is just what I can think of right now.

Given the situation, though, it could be much worse. Some volunteers have really domineering principals or tough relationships with their co-teachers. Some volunteers have their teachers digging through their personal belongings. One person doesn’t even have classrooms to teach in and conducts all of her lessons outside (which often get interrupted by goats and cows). Some volunteers teach upwards of 60 and 70 students. So I really am lucky in a lot of ways.

Overtime I’ll get used to/learn more ways of coping with the hard stuff and I’ll get clearer about my purpose. For now though, every day is full of ups and downs, and I’m riding the waves.  

Khotso.