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Published: September 14th 2006
Last night we arrived in Mamou for the final part of our Pre-Service Training: Counterpart Workshop. I met my future principal and spent the day discussing the role of the Peace Corps volunteer in the village. My principal is also the French teacher in the college (le college = French for middle school), and he seems very friendly and willing to help me out.
It’s nice to be in Mamou, in the mountains, again. It’s probably 75 degrees here but it feels cool compared to the low, humid costal region where we’ve spent the summer.
Since my last update I have been in Forecariah for the most intense part of our training, known as Practice School. PC organized three weeks of free summer school for the kids in Forecariah, providing interested students with extra practice as well as an opportunity to come watch the strange white people fumble around the classroom. Knowing barely enough French to teach our subjects, we were thrown into classrooms full of Guinean students with some chalk, a given amount of material to cover, and a number of observers ready to critique our work.
Week One was characterized by shock and frustration at the widely-varying levels of ability among the students, the nonsensical French/Guinean curriculum, the amount of class time dedicated to copying information from the blackboard into notebooks (for lack of textbooks)and the illogical, rote memorization style of learning to which the students are accustomed. Not to mention the cheating—Guinean students will find any means possible to cheat on tests, and will feel no remorse for doing so. Apparently the idea of a “collectivist culture” (i.e. I have, you have not, so I should share) also applies to answers on exams. And why feel bad for cheating? Most of the wealthy, respected members of African society have achieved their positions wealth and power through some dishonest means…but I digress…
We taught for two hours per day and each class was observed by several trainers, Guinean teachers, other trainees, and volunteers who have been in-country for at least a year. Each observer then met with us individually for a formal “feedback session” in which all of the lesson’s failures and humiliations were painfully reiterated. OK, once in a while I did something right, and the comments and suggestions were generally helpful. But overall that first week was…let’s call it a learning experience.
During Weeks Two and Three, I started to figure out how to tailor my lessons to fit a Guinean classroom. Every concept needs to be broken down into discrete and concise points that can be repeated aloud again and again and than practiced with many many exercises. Example: “This is a vector. Point A is called the origin and point B is called the extremity. What is point A called? What is point B called? Which point is the origin? Which point is the extremity? What did he just say?” etc. Simple, redundant questions seem to encourage the kids here, since here it’s cool to be the kid who knows the answer. Students like to participate in the lesson, to answer questions and to do problems at the board. And a ridiculous amount of practice is necessary because they have no books to study and homework is a foreign concept. In fact, when students return home after school they only have a few daylight hours in which to do household chores as well as schoolwork.
Even as I started to get the hang of it, lesson planning ate up all of my evenings. I would teach and observe others all morning, attend language classes all afternoon, then return home and spend the evening coming up with a method of explaining addition of vectors to ninth graders that would not leave them hopelessly confused. I had to carefully plan everything I wanted to write on the board, as it would end up in their notebooks as their only written reference on the subject. I tried to plan multiple ways of explaining everything, to anticipate the questions I would receive, and to look up every French word that I could possibly need for the lesson. As a result, planning a two-hour lesson for the next day took all evening, working by candlelight or headlamp and silently cursing the volunteers who were teaching English and could prepare a lesson in 30 minutes.
By the end of Practice School I had become more efficient in planning lessons and actually managed to get ahead by a few days. But I realize now that the first few weeks of the school year are going to involve a lot of work and perhaps a good deal of frustration. I left Practice School with hope, since it seemed that most of the students were making a valid effort and in the end some of them even seemed to have learned something.
Though the experience was painful at times, the method of tossing us into classrooms and watching us crash and burn was probably the speediest way to train us. It also allowed us to make most of our initial mistakes in front of a group of students we won’t see again. Though I will never feel completely prepared for the school year, I now have a much better idea of what I’m getting into and how to deal with the challenges I’ll face.
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Greg
non-member comment
Boo Hoo
Boo hoo, I feel so bad for you. I have to work for 2 hours a day and make up lesson plans. I can't understand the students and they don't understand me. At least you don't have to deal with that damn Moody! If I were you I would totally half ass it. Remember you are not getting paid! Have fun and best of luck!