You know, just being a teacher.

(I started writing this post about two weeks ago, but computer troubles have delayed its completion… but it’s done finally, thanks for waiting.)

“Those who can’t do, teach”- the misconception of a lifetime

I heard it on the movie “School of Rock”, which features Jack Black portraying a washed up musician turned substitute teacher. If you can’t do it, teach it. Har har, how funny, they’re right, teaching can’t be that hard. SHOOT.

Well, you’re looking at a four-week-in teacher, and it is pretty crazy. It’s an amazing challenge and one that I am super pumped to be tackling, but I catch myself just LAUGHING, at myself, multiple times every week simply because I know so LITTLE. Talk about humbling. I teach English to two classes of Standard 3 (third grade), communication and technology (ICT) to two classes of Standard 4, Personality Development and Sports (PDS) to Standard 7, and Religion to two classes of Standard 5. WHEW. Each class has about 30-40 students, and I teach 22 periods per week. So those are the logistics, but let me take you back to the beginning.

A bit of background- Gonzaga Primary is an English Medium school, which means that all of the classes (except for their Kiswahili classes) are taught in English. The students have a very good grasp on the language, which makes it much easier to teach, but I need to remind myself that English is their second language, and patience is the most IMPORTANT thing to remember while teaching. I am the class teacher for the standard 3A class, which means that I am with them every Tuesday and Thursday morning for a half hour, and also whenever a teacher is not in the room to teach them. I’ve really grown to love the little crazies already, but we still need to get used to each other. My accent is THICK to them, and theirs is to me, so sometimes a whole lesson is spent just trying to understand one another. It’s really frustrating, to say the least, but there are also awesome moments of understanding when we just GET each other. The biggest struggle has been discipline, and since Cat and I do not beat the children for misbehaving (which is common here), it’s a little more difficult to gain control when things get out of hand, and for the students to take me seriously. Not that I’d rather be hitting them, but it’s hard when that’s the discipline go-to here. The thing that’s been the most difficult to deal with is how often class is interrupted by a student who will tug on my shirt in the middle of the lesson crying and saying “this one took my pen” and “this one is beating me” and “this one has broken my ruler” and “my pen has stopped working”. It happens at least 3 times a class, usually more, especially in standard three, and at first I was so confused… just DON’T hit people, it’s really simple. After countless gentle talks about how bad it is to steal and hit, I realized how precious and important the possessions of these children are. When I was in third grade, I never really thought to take another person’s pen or hit a classmate for taking mine, because I had a pencil case with about 5 pens, 3 pencils, a sharpener, a set of crayons, markers, and two rulers. If my pen ran out of ink, I could just get another one from my classroom or my mom. It just wasn’t a big deal. Here, the resources aren’t so plentiful, and there seems to be a lot of value in taking SUPER good care of what you have. If a student loses a pen or the ink runs out, they usually do not have 5 extras sitting in their desks, and if they are bold enough to take one from a classmate, they risk getting hit. That’s the way it works. I’m planning on bringing a BUNCH of pens in next week to try to avoid this common conflict, so hopefully there won’t be as many class interruptions.

That being said, teaching is WONDERFUL. The students are so bright and are so happy when they understand something. The most successful lessons have been those that involve creativity and fun, and it took me a little while to finally understand that. These children are YOUNG, and if I just give them notes and class exercises to complete, their attention goes right out the window, and that’s when it gets harder to control. But, singing songs about how to spell “favourite” (yes, there’s a ‘u’, they do the british spelling here), drawing pictures that describe when to use “many, some, a, or an”, and asking students to act out “Brian went to the blackboard, and then jumped two times. Rahim jumped two times, too” and then choosing when to use to, two, or too, it’s just fun. These activities cannot happen all of the time, but yeah, that’s when I’ve felt the most confident so far.

At a staff meeting two weeks ago, I volunteered to take over the Drawing Club, which Gretchen had run during her second JV year. Clubs meet twice a week for 40 minutes each time, and the teacher pretty much has free reign as to how the club functions. Good thing, because I am an awful artist and cannot draw for crap. I enjoy arts and crafts, though, and if you know me at all, you know that dancing is my THING. Totally love it. So now the club has switched to “Creativity Club”. Every Tuesday we’ll do some form of craft, and every Thursday is DANCING. The first Thursday was a little rough… about 50 children came into my room during club time because there was music playing, and I was so focused on showing them a few steps that I did not even bother figuring out which club they were supposed to be going to. Try to picture 50 children between the ages of seven and thirteen trying to follow choreography in a small classroom with over 30 desks. Chaotic, to say the least, but these students can keep a BEAT, man oh man. That’s what this year will be like, I think. Mostly chaotic, but falling into a rhythm when it has to. Sometimes I feel just RIDICULOUS, like, I am in no way prepared or qualified to be doing this job, but then I’ll get a note from a student or have a really successful lesson, and there’s the rhythm.

(Speaking of notes from students, here’s a gem that one of my standard three youngsters gave me after I taught a few consecutive days with a grossly hoarse and sore voice… I just told them that I was sick and jokingly threatened to stop teaching if they continued to disturb the class:

“Dear teacher Bethany,
Sorry for sicki. I love you bat not live me and ather peopl. I will not stab you in a class thank you asante kwa ku pokea”

Translation (or what I think he meant): Dear teacher Bethany, my condolences for your sore throat. I very much enjoy being in your class, please do not leave me and my fellow classmates. I will not disturb the class. Thank you, thank you for somethinginswahili.”

To top it off, he did a great drawing of a butterfly in the background and hand-delivered the note to my office in a paper-envelope decorated with an ostrich stamp that he drew, cut out, and pasted to the front. Made my day.)

In other news, HAPPY TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY, TANZANIA! My house mates and I celebrated by going out to a little bar/restaurant place about a 10 minute walk from our house to get chips mayai (basically an omelet with French fries inside) and a beer, both of which were delicious and very, VERY well deserved after we completed our third full week of teaching for the year.  Other fun news, just before writing this blog post, I went outside to the water cistern in our compound to fill up a bucket for doing dishes, and discovered a giant dead crow floating in a bucket of old laundry water. Apparently it drank some of the water and was poisoned. SO CREEPY. Figuring out how the remove it caused a bit of a stir in our house, but we just burned the dead bird in our trash area. The vegetarian (or, at least the former vegetarian) in me felt a little bad for the bird’s fate, but after being chased by a flock of crows while running around a nearby field last week, I don’t have much sympathy for them. That’s just life here. Giant grasshoppers in the house, chickens and goats roaming around the neighborhood, crows or other loud creatures getting stuck in our REALLY LOUD tin roof, and salamanders that scurry up the walls at random intervals. It’s different, but I LOVE IT.

Sorry for the ridiculous length, hope you enjoy!