They showed up! This week each of my classes had atleast 55 kids and I was able to really get started. I have two classes of 6ème (first level) and two classes of 5ème (second level) and there's such a difference between the two! The 6ème kids are brand new to the school and English, so their mostly just scared right now. Most seem really engaged though and we've actually gone through all of my lessons faster than expected.
The 5ème kids, on the other hand, are much more difficult to handle for a variety of reasons. My first 5ème class on Tuesday started protesting in French when I was speaking and giving all directions in English. Then they were mocking me and talking so much I made them stand until they were silent and ended up waiting 20 minutes. After that things went much smoother, and much to my surprise my second 5ème class that afternoon was actually very respectful and well behaved. Another challenge I face with my 5èmès is that they only got halfway through the 6ème book, and I'm finding that review exercises are turning into re-teaching exercises. I'm hoping this week might move a little quicker and hopefully we can begin with some new stuff next week.
A very interesting challenge is a Nigerian boy in one 5ème class. Since they speak English in Nigeria, my class is basically useless for him. While he doesn't need the basics of 5ème, I know his more advanced English does need work, and although it's nice to have my own personal helper when nobody else understands, I want him to be challenged. So I'm really going to sit down and think about what types of things I can do with him. I asked him to think about it as well and whether he might like to write stories or read books or work on more advanced exercises. It's a fun opportunity to do something a little outside the box and I'm pretty excited to see what we come up with. I asked the other English profs if they've ever faced this and/or if they had any ideas. They didn't seem to understand the problem and so I left it at that.
This week was also the first meeting of the English dept. It's scheduled weekly from 10-12 on Thursdays (so we started at 10:45) in the "teacher's lounge". The teacher's lounge is an open cement platform covered by a tin roof in the middle of the school grounds. There is a large table and about 8 chairs. During breaks, teachers sitting here send female students to buy them food from the Mama's selling food at the school's entrance (I fully intend to do this with male students on occasion). Anyway, so at the meeting I found out there is a new female English teacher. This is her first year teaching and they told me I was in charge of teaching her how to teach the material. Now, this is ironic not only because I myself am a first year teacher, but also because we had just finished a discussion about how I won't be using the English book and they were a little upset by that. (Peace Corps encourages us not to use the book because they find that volunteers often create more dynamic and effective lessons on their own, and kids don't have books anyway). I'm pretty sure there is no experience or certification necessary to be a teacher in Benin, so I'm happy to help her get started, but it won't be at all helpful in explaining the rigid structures that profs here feel bound to follow. She'll also be teaching another 5ème class, so it'll be interesting to see how the two of us progress.
In other exciting news...word around town is "la lancée" (the tall one) speaks Aja! The French doctor who I take Aja classes with every week told me that someone at her church told her that, and I'm so excited! For one, it's nice that people are so happy with me for trying to speak and practice Aja, and for two, it's nice to know that people are saying good things. Dogbo is also in no way a village, so the fact that my Aja is getting around the town is a little surprising. I've still got a long, long way to go, but so far just practicing little by little has made me lots of friends and is a fun addition to marché visits.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
My "First Week of School"...
Or should I say my first week of school?
The national school year officially began on Monday, October 6th, but as of yet, I'm the only professor at school to be holding classes. I showed up the first day at 8 am just to see what was going on to find the school yard empty. Over the next 2 hours, most professors showed up to pick up their schedules and mingle. As for students, there were about 15 around to check if they'd passed into the next grade (a good portion of kids can't predict if they'll pass or not after exams, and they find out the next year). Turns out the students are smart not to show up because the first week of school is reserved completely for manual labor. About 3 feet of brush has grown across the entire school yard (about 3 acres) and the youngest students are expected to clear it. The older students are smart not to show up because their professors aren't there anyway.
In the following days more and more kids were hanging around to clean but mostly to get their schedules. Tuesday morning I walked around to each of my rooms to write on the board when English class would be held. During the first week, profs write when they will be there and then the students must come to figure out their schedules. I asked the head of the English department when we would start and he replied, "Don't be in such a hurry! Next week maybe..."
The delay in the start is very much a self-fulfilling prophecy because the professors say, "well, the students won't come" and the students say, "the professors haven't started." So, I showed up Wednesday at 8 am w/a novel prepared to sit alone in my class just to get the ball rolling. Much to my surprise (I didn't have a lesson planned!), about 12 kids (out of 70) showed up to each of my two classes. After my initial shock and terror, my impromptu lessons on basic greetings went well, and I welcomed the chance to memorize a few faces and gauge their abilities. I was better prepared for my classes on Thursday, and again only had between 12 and 16 students. Even w/so few students, after an eight hour day I was so exhausted I didn't think I'd make the bike ride home!
After my classes I'd run into another prof or two sitting in the school yard and they'd say, "Oh, you began your classes?" Some with a slight smirk, others with a surprised but approving nod. I wonder if they think I'm being snooty or stubborn or just stupid. Regardless, the first few classes were an interesting test run and I really looked forward to 40 or 50 kids come week two.
Much to my dismay, I showed up this past Tuesday to find 2 students. Turns out the all the profs were having regional "formations" all this week to learn how to teach the material and nobody ever told me. That was extra obnoxious because I was incredibly sick but went to school anyway because I thought more kids would be there. :-(
So, the rest of this week I spent at the formation, which turned out to be really interesting. We practiced writing plans for different types of lessons (writing, listening, reading, etc.). We also discussed the fundamental goals of the lessons and how to build such skills in students. I found it very enlightening not just for the actual information I learned about skills development, but also to realize how such skills are often taken for granted as obvious in our own system and yet are very new to teaching and education here. For example, we spent four hours discussing and designing lessons to teach children how to identify a topic sentence. My foreign language teachers at home would never have done such a thing, because that was already done as a basic and essential part of English class. I realized that a big difference here is that every language in school is a foreign language. They are slightly more advanced in French, but French is still usually only begun in grammar school. Because most Americans already know how to speak English long before we enter an English class, we can move onto writing and reading skills much earlier.
Besides all the formal discussions and work, the formation was worthwhile because during our downtime (which was overly abundant), I got to start getting to know the other English profs at my school and in my region. In our boredom I taught some of them tic-tac-toe and dots, and during one short morning break the facilitator invited me up to teach a song. I offered a tongue twister instead, and it was pretty hilarious to hear 45 African men trying to say "How much wood would a wood chuck chuck..."
As for class, I've been assured they'll show up next week........
The national school year officially began on Monday, October 6th, but as of yet, I'm the only professor at school to be holding classes. I showed up the first day at 8 am just to see what was going on to find the school yard empty. Over the next 2 hours, most professors showed up to pick up their schedules and mingle. As for students, there were about 15 around to check if they'd passed into the next grade (a good portion of kids can't predict if they'll pass or not after exams, and they find out the next year). Turns out the students are smart not to show up because the first week of school is reserved completely for manual labor. About 3 feet of brush has grown across the entire school yard (about 3 acres) and the youngest students are expected to clear it. The older students are smart not to show up because their professors aren't there anyway.
In the following days more and more kids were hanging around to clean but mostly to get their schedules. Tuesday morning I walked around to each of my rooms to write on the board when English class would be held. During the first week, profs write when they will be there and then the students must come to figure out their schedules. I asked the head of the English department when we would start and he replied, "Don't be in such a hurry! Next week maybe..."
The delay in the start is very much a self-fulfilling prophecy because the professors say, "well, the students won't come" and the students say, "the professors haven't started." So, I showed up Wednesday at 8 am w/a novel prepared to sit alone in my class just to get the ball rolling. Much to my surprise (I didn't have a lesson planned!), about 12 kids (out of 70) showed up to each of my two classes. After my initial shock and terror, my impromptu lessons on basic greetings went well, and I welcomed the chance to memorize a few faces and gauge their abilities. I was better prepared for my classes on Thursday, and again only had between 12 and 16 students. Even w/so few students, after an eight hour day I was so exhausted I didn't think I'd make the bike ride home!
After my classes I'd run into another prof or two sitting in the school yard and they'd say, "Oh, you began your classes?" Some with a slight smirk, others with a surprised but approving nod. I wonder if they think I'm being snooty or stubborn or just stupid. Regardless, the first few classes were an interesting test run and I really looked forward to 40 or 50 kids come week two.
Much to my dismay, I showed up this past Tuesday to find 2 students. Turns out the all the profs were having regional "formations" all this week to learn how to teach the material and nobody ever told me. That was extra obnoxious because I was incredibly sick but went to school anyway because I thought more kids would be there. :-(
So, the rest of this week I spent at the formation, which turned out to be really interesting. We practiced writing plans for different types of lessons (writing, listening, reading, etc.). We also discussed the fundamental goals of the lessons and how to build such skills in students. I found it very enlightening not just for the actual information I learned about skills development, but also to realize how such skills are often taken for granted as obvious in our own system and yet are very new to teaching and education here. For example, we spent four hours discussing and designing lessons to teach children how to identify a topic sentence. My foreign language teachers at home would never have done such a thing, because that was already done as a basic and essential part of English class. I realized that a big difference here is that every language in school is a foreign language. They are slightly more advanced in French, but French is still usually only begun in grammar school. Because most Americans already know how to speak English long before we enter an English class, we can move onto writing and reading skills much earlier.
Besides all the formal discussions and work, the formation was worthwhile because during our downtime (which was overly abundant), I got to start getting to know the other English profs at my school and in my region. In our boredom I taught some of them tic-tac-toe and dots, and during one short morning break the facilitator invited me up to teach a song. I offered a tongue twister instead, and it was pretty hilarious to hear 45 African men trying to say "How much wood would a wood chuck chuck..."
As for class, I've been assured they'll show up next week........
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Ohhh Benin...
And now for the perfect story to sum it all up...
School starts on Monday, so this past Friday all of the teachers from two regions were brought together at a high school for a Journée Pédagogique- a day to reflect on a certain topic (chosen by the national education system) related to teaching and education. This year's topic was time management-- a very very fitting choice given that the school year was nationally extended a month last year due to strikes and teachers not effectively covering enough of the material in time.
So, as it was scheduled to begin at 8 am, I arrived at 9:15 and we began around 10:30. If you can believe it, thats a fairly good job on their part of getting things started. I moved into a classroom with all of the other (male) English and Physics professors, about 120 in all. We squeezed in three to a desk and began to work on small group activities. Our first small group activity was to read a short story about 4 professors working in a group to get things done for a deadline. One didn't show up, the other two didn't have their work done from the previous meeting, and the 4th needed them to finish their work on Tuesday because he had a tennis tournament on the weekend he couldn't miss. The groups were to discuss why tension might be rising in the group, what the causes of it were, and how it might be fixed. Although the activity took forever, I was bored to death, and you might think it completely pointless and obvious, the truth is that this was a very good idea for an exercise. I was slightly encouraged that the moral of the story- respect your group members and get your work done- might actually stick with a few of the professors in the room. If you're wondering why I might say such a thing, keep reading...
So...here comes the best part...Activity 2. Question 1- "what is time?" (weird question, but ok). Question 2-"What is time management?" Question 3- "Are you capable or incapable of managing your time? Why?" Now, when I read this question to myself, a perfect résumé response came to my mind that I'm sure we've all repeated at job interviews many times- "Yes, I have very good time management skills as can be seen by my work schedule and extracurricular activities." So, you can imagine my slight astonishment when a man stood up and announced that he is incapable of managing his time. It took me a second to realize that in fact he said we are all incapable of managing our time due to constraints and unexpected circumstances. Here again, I was a little surprised, and was slightly relieved when a man stood up to object. His objection, however, was that constraints and unexpected circumstances are not really different and one is merely the subcategory of the other. A 15 minute argument ensued, involving all 100+ men in the room. After that was finally settled (they can be different, but don't have to be), everyone was content to move on to question 4.
Now, when I entered this room and began working on this I had resigned myself to stay quiet, observant, and overall, patient. The one other woman in the room had spoken during activity 1 and although the room would not stop talking to listen to her, you could barely hear her speak anyway. I also didn't see the need to draw even further attention to myself, it was already clear to everyone that I was there. That being said, I couldn't let it go, and I had to raise my hand. The moderator had a huge grin on his face and asked me if I had a question. In the loudest, most calm, cool, and collected French I could muster, I said that I merely wanted to point out that we have all come here today to talk about our problems with time management and how we should work to fix them, thus I do not understand why everyone is content to say that we are completely incapable of managing our time. We wouldn't be here if we couldn't work to fix it, and therefore, I am not in agreement with the response."
The entire room erupted in laughter. I don't know if it's because they thought it was an idiotic and naive response, if they were just laughing because I'm a woman who voiced her opposition, or if because a white woman just told an entire room of men they were wrong and was correct in doing so. I like to think it's a mixture of the three. Anyway, after about a minute of laughter and chatter, the moderator calmed everyone down enough to address me. "Madame, madame, of course in the West, you are fully capable of managing your time. But here, of course you do not know, things are very different, and we cannot manage our time in the same way." (laughter and chatter). Much to his surprise I raised my hand again to respond. "I understand, Monseiur, that time is different here, I get it. I myself arrived at 9:15 this morning, not 8 am. I just want to say that the point of today is to talk about how we can better manage our time, and if you think we are incapable of doing so, we should all just go home." (laughter and chatter).
"Ok, Ok," he announced to the group, "listen, listen...you do not give a child an egg and tell them not to break it...you give a child an egg and tell them to be careful with it..." I have absolutely no idea if he meant that I'm the naive child with the egg of culture, or if they are the children slowly learning how to take care of the egg of time. I really wish I knew. Anywho, they ended up changing the response on the blackboard to "we are not completely capable of managing our time due to constraints and unexpected circumstances." As the group moved on I sat there completely content with myself and my response and even highly amused at the ordeal, regardless of its outcome. Not until later that night did I become infuriated at the entire situation and their willingness to sit in a professional setting (if you could call it that) and admit that it's beyond their control when they can't get their work done. Now I'm back to amusement. Overall, I think it was quite the quintessential Beninese experience and it's a lesson I'll always remember as I begin what is sure to be quite an interesting school year.
School starts on Monday, so this past Friday all of the teachers from two regions were brought together at a high school for a Journée Pédagogique- a day to reflect on a certain topic (chosen by the national education system) related to teaching and education. This year's topic was time management-- a very very fitting choice given that the school year was nationally extended a month last year due to strikes and teachers not effectively covering enough of the material in time.
So, as it was scheduled to begin at 8 am, I arrived at 9:15 and we began around 10:30. If you can believe it, thats a fairly good job on their part of getting things started. I moved into a classroom with all of the other (male) English and Physics professors, about 120 in all. We squeezed in three to a desk and began to work on small group activities. Our first small group activity was to read a short story about 4 professors working in a group to get things done for a deadline. One didn't show up, the other two didn't have their work done from the previous meeting, and the 4th needed them to finish their work on Tuesday because he had a tennis tournament on the weekend he couldn't miss. The groups were to discuss why tension might be rising in the group, what the causes of it were, and how it might be fixed. Although the activity took forever, I was bored to death, and you might think it completely pointless and obvious, the truth is that this was a very good idea for an exercise. I was slightly encouraged that the moral of the story- respect your group members and get your work done- might actually stick with a few of the professors in the room. If you're wondering why I might say such a thing, keep reading...
So...here comes the best part...Activity 2. Question 1- "what is time?" (weird question, but ok). Question 2-"What is time management?" Question 3- "Are you capable or incapable of managing your time? Why?" Now, when I read this question to myself, a perfect résumé response came to my mind that I'm sure we've all repeated at job interviews many times- "Yes, I have very good time management skills as can be seen by my work schedule and extracurricular activities." So, you can imagine my slight astonishment when a man stood up and announced that he is incapable of managing his time. It took me a second to realize that in fact he said we are all incapable of managing our time due to constraints and unexpected circumstances. Here again, I was a little surprised, and was slightly relieved when a man stood up to object. His objection, however, was that constraints and unexpected circumstances are not really different and one is merely the subcategory of the other. A 15 minute argument ensued, involving all 100+ men in the room. After that was finally settled (they can be different, but don't have to be), everyone was content to move on to question 4.
Now, when I entered this room and began working on this I had resigned myself to stay quiet, observant, and overall, patient. The one other woman in the room had spoken during activity 1 and although the room would not stop talking to listen to her, you could barely hear her speak anyway. I also didn't see the need to draw even further attention to myself, it was already clear to everyone that I was there. That being said, I couldn't let it go, and I had to raise my hand. The moderator had a huge grin on his face and asked me if I had a question. In the loudest, most calm, cool, and collected French I could muster, I said that I merely wanted to point out that we have all come here today to talk about our problems with time management and how we should work to fix them, thus I do not understand why everyone is content to say that we are completely incapable of managing our time. We wouldn't be here if we couldn't work to fix it, and therefore, I am not in agreement with the response."
The entire room erupted in laughter. I don't know if it's because they thought it was an idiotic and naive response, if they were just laughing because I'm a woman who voiced her opposition, or if because a white woman just told an entire room of men they were wrong and was correct in doing so. I like to think it's a mixture of the three. Anyway, after about a minute of laughter and chatter, the moderator calmed everyone down enough to address me. "Madame, madame, of course in the West, you are fully capable of managing your time. But here, of course you do not know, things are very different, and we cannot manage our time in the same way." (laughter and chatter). Much to his surprise I raised my hand again to respond. "I understand, Monseiur, that time is different here, I get it. I myself arrived at 9:15 this morning, not 8 am. I just want to say that the point of today is to talk about how we can better manage our time, and if you think we are incapable of doing so, we should all just go home." (laughter and chatter).
"Ok, Ok," he announced to the group, "listen, listen...you do not give a child an egg and tell them not to break it...you give a child an egg and tell them to be careful with it..." I have absolutely no idea if he meant that I'm the naive child with the egg of culture, or if they are the children slowly learning how to take care of the egg of time. I really wish I knew. Anywho, they ended up changing the response on the blackboard to "we are not completely capable of managing our time due to constraints and unexpected circumstances." As the group moved on I sat there completely content with myself and my response and even highly amused at the ordeal, regardless of its outcome. Not until later that night did I become infuriated at the entire situation and their willingness to sit in a professional setting (if you could call it that) and admit that it's beyond their control when they can't get their work done. Now I'm back to amusement. Overall, I think it was quite the quintessential Beninese experience and it's a lesson I'll always remember as I begin what is sure to be quite an interesting school year.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
3 months...
Wow, where does the time go? It's pretty incredible that I left home 3 months ago today, because I feel like I just said goodbye at the airport. Time's a funny thing here though -- the days are never-ending, but the weeks fly by. On the Air France flight to Benin we received a Toblerone bar, and I just ate mine last night. I never ate it because everyday I just thought it could wait until tomorrow, but then I realized that all those tomorrows have added up to three months! Not sure if it was out of a sense of accomplishment or stress, but I felt like I'd saved it long enough (and I'm hoping for packages with a replacement of chocolate supplies soon :-) ).
Looking back it's amazing how far I've come since those first five days in Cotonou when they wouldn't let us out of the building. Haggling the price for everything, riding taxi-motos, and even boiling our water seemed so overwhelming. Even though that all comes so easily now, moving to post really reinforces what the real challenges are and will continue to be. Among these are trying to find people genuinely interested in being your friend rather than just marrying you, trying to learn the local language, and just trying to get half an idea about how everything really functions around here. Existing here is not altogether that difficult, but really living here is going to take much longer than I thought. I don't know if that's because Dogbo is a bigger town, or because of the Aja culture that exists here, or maybe a lot of volunteers have the same sort of feelings. Not that I'm discouraged at all, but navigating the culture and society is just such a challenge that really can only be overcome with a lot of time, observation, and patience I think.
I was talking to the veterinarian the other day and found it strangely refreshing. I couldn't pinpoint why but later realized that for the first time I felt like I was talking to an equal. On a daily basis I feel like everyone is either looking up to me or down on me because of the color of my skin -- never is it a person addressing a fellow human being. They all think I'm rich, and atleast 5 men a day ask me if I'm "Madame" or "Mademoiselle" in the hopes that I'll marry them and take them home with me. "Madame," I say, "he's still 'la-bas' (there in my country), but he's coming soon." 1 in 10 people asks for either my money, something out of my purse, my jewelry, or just says "what did you bring me today?" There are people I say hi to who don't respond and many who mock my voice by speaking in an excessively high pitch. On the other hand, I can't wait anywhere more than 5 minutes before someone gives up a chair for me, I'm always given a fork and napkin even if everyone else is eating with their right hand, and I've already been on national television 3 times. So I don't know what it was about the veterinarian that day, something in the way he spoke to me, I guess. I just hope that with time and a better understanding of the local language I can hope to have these regular conversations with more and more people here and not have to constantly be reminded that they think of me as an altogether different type of human being.
The first three months being over, the next three will be filled with one of the biggest challenges of all -- school! Classes start on Monday and I'll be teaching 4 classes of roughly 7th and 8th graders (although ages will vary). Each class will have about 70 students dressed head to toe in khaki, which means I'm going to have lots of fun learning all 280 names and faces in the first few weeks. The upside is that I only teach Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, giving me weekends to relax, prep, and take short trips to big cities and to see friends. Currently I'm extremely nervous, but anxious to get started because I know it'll go just fine once we get rolling. It'll also be nice to have something to do! Of course I haven't started preparing my classes yet, but in traditional Beninese fashion, there's really no rush ;-).
Love you and miss you all...don't forget those letters and packages!!
Looking back it's amazing how far I've come since those first five days in Cotonou when they wouldn't let us out of the building. Haggling the price for everything, riding taxi-motos, and even boiling our water seemed so overwhelming. Even though that all comes so easily now, moving to post really reinforces what the real challenges are and will continue to be. Among these are trying to find people genuinely interested in being your friend rather than just marrying you, trying to learn the local language, and just trying to get half an idea about how everything really functions around here. Existing here is not altogether that difficult, but really living here is going to take much longer than I thought. I don't know if that's because Dogbo is a bigger town, or because of the Aja culture that exists here, or maybe a lot of volunteers have the same sort of feelings. Not that I'm discouraged at all, but navigating the culture and society is just such a challenge that really can only be overcome with a lot of time, observation, and patience I think.
I was talking to the veterinarian the other day and found it strangely refreshing. I couldn't pinpoint why but later realized that for the first time I felt like I was talking to an equal. On a daily basis I feel like everyone is either looking up to me or down on me because of the color of my skin -- never is it a person addressing a fellow human being. They all think I'm rich, and atleast 5 men a day ask me if I'm "Madame" or "Mademoiselle" in the hopes that I'll marry them and take them home with me. "Madame," I say, "he's still 'la-bas' (there in my country), but he's coming soon." 1 in 10 people asks for either my money, something out of my purse, my jewelry, or just says "what did you bring me today?" There are people I say hi to who don't respond and many who mock my voice by speaking in an excessively high pitch. On the other hand, I can't wait anywhere more than 5 minutes before someone gives up a chair for me, I'm always given a fork and napkin even if everyone else is eating with their right hand, and I've already been on national television 3 times. So I don't know what it was about the veterinarian that day, something in the way he spoke to me, I guess. I just hope that with time and a better understanding of the local language I can hope to have these regular conversations with more and more people here and not have to constantly be reminded that they think of me as an altogether different type of human being.
The first three months being over, the next three will be filled with one of the biggest challenges of all -- school! Classes start on Monday and I'll be teaching 4 classes of roughly 7th and 8th graders (although ages will vary). Each class will have about 70 students dressed head to toe in khaki, which means I'm going to have lots of fun learning all 280 names and faces in the first few weeks. The upside is that I only teach Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, giving me weekends to relax, prep, and take short trips to big cities and to see friends. Currently I'm extremely nervous, but anxious to get started because I know it'll go just fine once we get rolling. It'll also be nice to have something to do! Of course I haven't started preparing my classes yet, but in traditional Beninese fashion, there's really no rush ;-).
Love you and miss you all...don't forget those letters and packages!!
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