Hey there, long-neglected family
and friends! My tail is, indeed, between
my legs; it seems I have done exactly what I said I wouldn’t and totally
slacked off the ol’ writing game once things got busy. Sowwy.
Though we have been hustling hard on the grind, I should’ve tried harder
to keep up with our promise. This is my
first step towards reconciliation. Take
it as you will.
After all of the build-up, I’m sure
you’ve been sitting at the edge of your ergonomic office chairs gripping
keyboards with white knuckles and wondering what on earth teaching is like in
Uganda.
Too bad.
This article will discuss the highs
and lows of amateur birdwatching in Uganda.
Psych! You got me, it’s about
teaching. Though I have been toying with the idea of writing more about the birds
here; there are a whole ton of them…
Anyways, in order for any posts
about teacher-student interactions to make any sense there are a few structural
basics I have to share. First of all,
Bishop Cipriano has two sections; Day School and Boarding School. They are in separate facilities on either
side of a main thoroughfare, and the walk between takes about 4 minutes. Students in the Boarding School pay very high
school fees, and as such are typically much
better-off than their Day School counterparts.
They are also, on the whole, more literate, more insolent, and more
apathetic. The Day School kids come from
our local area (which is not one of the nicer neighborhoods in Kampala), and
tend towards a more enthusiastic, if slightly less educated and hygienic, mode
of existence. Contact is discouraged
between students in the two schools; the only time they really meet is on the
one or two School Days and Dances that happen in a year. If a student leaves the gates of the Boarding
School without express permission they’re expelled. Opportunities for hooliganery are limited.
Most teachers will teach on both Day
and Boarding side during a term, but it seems a general practice to trade
classes with other teachers until you are primarily on one side or the
other. Instructors that make the
quarter-kilometer walk more than twice a week are considered athletes. This is in part due to the general fitness
levels of teachers here; I think there may be blue-collar/white-collar body
image issues at play, but I digress.
There is a single four-story
building for classes on each campus. The
doors from the classrooms open out onto balconies that line the front of the
school. There isn’t any need for hallways
or enclosed spaces because, hey, the equator! The overall effect of this open-air one-sided
building-ness is something like a matching pair of Motel 6es in Oklahoma,
except red brick and a lot less depressing.
One of the reasons they’re less depressing is that they both have the
words “I Care” printed in size one million type on the uppermost balcony. It looks like the buildings really love one
another. It also looks like a student
could have a really fun time getting expelled with a bucket of white paint. “ThI Caress.” Just saying.
Anyways, besides the constant
temperature, the need for hallspace is limited thanks to the immobility of students while school is in session. This was one of the ideas that really blew my
mind on arrival: kids stay in one room for the entire day, while the teachers
move about and come to them. It is an
important tactic in that it minimizes studential hustle, bustle, discipline issues,
and space shufflage.; minimizing space sufflage is very important, because there
is very little space in which to shuffle.
Seriously, these children are crammed closer together than the Black
Keys crowd at Bonnaroo.
As a teacher, this system would be
helpful if it weren’t for the fact that we are afforded about as much shuffling
space as the students. The single staff
room on either side is often packed with teachers and exercise books and
laptops and purses, because it is the only place you can sit down between
classes. Lesson planning, marking,
pedagogical theory discussions, and refueling all occur herein. Marginally legal transactions also occur
herein; one of our fellow English teachers approached Alex the other day, sidling
up slowly to ask if Black would perhaps be interested in purchasing a bunch of
fine bananas. A different female teacher,
who was sitting two meters away, stared at Alex intensely. The madame in question had brought the
bananas in from her village, and asked Brother Paul to ask Alex if he wanted to
buy any because, you know, that’s how the black market should work. (Editor’s note: I did buy the bananas and
they were delicious.)
I always stop in the staff room
before my lesson to check for good deals and stake out a claim, then take my
computer over to whichever class I’m teaching that day. Every age group is divided into 6 color-coded
“streams” (3 per school), each of which gets its own classroom for the
year. My two streams are Senior 1
(general equivalent of 7th grade) White in the Day School and Senior
2 (8th grade) Blue on the Boarding side. Alex has Senior 1 Pink on the day side and
Senior 2 Green on the day side. We both
teach English Language to the Senior 1 classes and Literature to the Senior 2s.
Monday mornings I enter my S1 White
class and face down 85 students in a classroom the size of an inner-city
backyard. They average around 12 or 13
years old; some are as old as 16 or 17, as they couldn’t raise school fees when
they were younger (or had to repeat a level (or three)). There are three columns of three desks each
stretching from front to back, hugging so close that a student on the inside of
a row couldn’t leave their desk without doing at least a couple of
backflips. I plug my computer into the
SmartBoard at the front of the class (a kind of touch-screen computerized white
board) and about 60% of the time it works; when it doesn’t I shrug and start
teaching “American Style” (without a touch-screen computerized white board).
The first time I entered a class
the students went a little crazy—let’s just say they haven’t encountered many white
teachers before. I quieted them down,
introduced myself, and then asked everyone to make a name card for the front of
their desk. Mr. Musanje, the department
head, told us that we should try to take attendance every day. Then he laughed. I have worked hard to get to know names and
faces, but it has been exceedingly difficult: first of all I am not great with
names, second there are a trillion of them and they sit in different places
every day, and third they are all (male and female) required to buzz their hair
to a standard length. Seriously, I dare
you to tell these kids apart. The only
ones that stand out are the 16 year olds, because they are 6 inches taller and
an octave deeper than they children surrounding them. B.C.K. Jump Street.
It might be easier to place names
with personalities if the students spoke at an audible level, but there exists
some unwritten rule wherein a student must answer any question under their
breath in a monotone even when they VOLUNTEERED TO ANSWER THE QUESTION. I have to ask the kids to repeat things at
least three times no matter what, and it is often wholly confounded by the fact
that a bunch of other students who I didn’t call on will shout out what the kid
has been trying to say, all at different times, so that the effect is generally
Teacher Samuel: “Alright, just to
figure out what we know before class starts, can anyone tell me what kind of
word describes a noun or pronoun?”
Student (raising hand): “mumbleshgrumble mumble.”
Teacher Samuel: “What was that?”
Student: “mumbleshgrumble
mumblemumble.”
Teacher Samuel: “I’m sorry, you’ll
have to say that again.”
Student: “mumbleshgrumblemumgrum—“
Other Students:
“MUMBLESHOUTGRUMSHOUTATUMBLE!!!!!”
Teacher Samuel: “Uh, okay, yeah,
adjective is the right answer, moving on.”
When they are not answering
questions the students can be loud and boisterous enough. Indeed, as soon as I have walked somewhere in
a class to “hear” an answer, the part of class I cannot see starts up an
animated conversation about what I assume must be the finer points of English
grammar. I have managed to curb a lot of
this extraneous philosophizing by instituting a “two warnings and I’ll give the
entire class an extra assignment” clause; if there’s one thing students fear
it’s an extra assignment. Or any
assignment at all, for that matter.
Near the end of the lesson I always
make sure to give an assignment. At the
completion of the dreaded exercise students will stack their notebooks in a
couple of massive piles that their class monitors will bring to the staff room
with me. The students usually confront
this great fear with stoicism, if not skill; most of the answers are completely
B.S.ed for lack of consequences. We
can’t mark assignments for credit, because
only exams are counted towards the students’ grades. Thus, marking is pretty much entirely a test
of willpower and care on our parts. A
teacher came up to Alex and looked at the spreadsheet he’d created with all of
his students’ scores and abilities, exclaiming,
“Wow, the ideal teaching method!”
Alex replied, “Yeah it’s pretty helpful
to know how the students are faring, do you guys use it too?”
“HHAAHAHAHAHAAhahahaaaaaha, ha, ha,
aaaah.”
Guess not.
Lest you think I’m being too down
on the system, let me say that I am having a good time and feel I am doing
important work. Some of the kids are
brilliant, some are hilarious personalities, and the other teachers really are
a wonderful and caring bunch. I am just
trying to set the scene a bit. Later
posts (coming soon!) will go into more detail about the kids and lessons
learned (by both sides).
I hope everyone is doing
wonderfully, can’t wait to see you all again.
Drop me a line if you’ve got time,
Sam
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