Matisa, Term 3?

Term 3 kicked off on the wrong foot for me, I was rather ill the first week of school. Luckily, by the second week of school , I was feeling better and school didn’t seem so daunting.
The first weeks of school have been going well for me. I hope that saying so won’t jinx me. Even though term 3 has as many days (65) as the other terms, there is less actually teaching time, because ¼ of the term is spent reviewing for end of term exams and the a ¼ is spent actually taking the exams (or at least that’s how it seems). The last day to finish “teaching” is the 29th of October, and then it’s reviewing and covering problem areas (which is actually like… every area). That means I’ve got to have every taught as least covered in 4 more weeks. Thinking of it like that, the school day isn’t long enough, the days aren’t long enough, and the class periods aren’t long enough.
I teach only 21 periods a week (unless I steal periods from other teachers, which I sometimes do). That’s 7 English periods for Grade 6 and Grade 7, each, and 7 maths periods for grade 6. Other volunteers are teaching as many as 32 periods a week, which is a lot (more than we’re officially allowed to teaching according to Peace Corps). But, despite the fact that some days I have off more periods than I teach (like Tuesdays, I only teach 3 periods, I’m off 5), it seems that I still don’t have enough time at school to get done everything that I want to get done. At the beginning of the year, I wondered, “How am I going to be able to fill all these periods??”. Now, filling the periods isn’t the problem. It’s figuring out how to steal periods from other teachers that I try to figure out now. 
All grades take exams at the end of every term, which seems, on many levels, like a colossal waste of time, but it does help to keep the teachers up to speed on where they should be in terms of the national syllabus. It also reinforces the material taught during the term, which learners so quickly forget. (Seriously, I’ll teach something on Monday, I’ll give a practice assignment on Tuesday, by Friday, my learners will have forgotten everything I taught them on Monday.) All across Namibia, volunteers struggle with information retention of learners. It’s why I spent 4 weeks teaching multiplication, it’s why my colleague teaching secondary math can’t teach variables (because his learners in grade 8, 9, 10 still don’t know times tables), it’s why I’m struggling to teach my learners to round. In my case, much of what I’m teaching is grade 5 math, because grade 5’s math teacher left halfway through last year to take a post in the ministry, and left the school without a math teacher. It’s hard to teach grade 6 math when the learners don’t have the grade 5 foundation. BUT… all that aside, there’s an issue of basic information retention, and much of it goes back to basic necessity. If the learners don’t use the information daily, they see no need to know it or learn it. And, most of them refuse to study outside of school, so telling them to make flashcards and study at home is a joke. And, to add insult to (injury??), a lot of my learners are OVCs (orphaned or vulnerable children), so they might not have parents, or live with a relative that doesn’t want them. Many of them ARE the parents in their families (mind you, these are primary school learners), so assigning homework is difficult, because if I assign homework to a learner that cares for 4 or 5 or 6 younger siblings, and that learner doesn’t complete the homework bc he or she is caring for a family, in essence I’m punishing that learner for doing “the right thing.”
Assigning homework and marking exercise books are a Namibian tradition that I don’t necessarily agree with. Namibian teachers mark exercise books everyday, or several times a week. When you think that every class is 30-40 learners, that’s a lot of marking. However, one of my keys to success this term has been giving them assignments to complete in their exercise books, and then the regular marking of exercise books (at least once a week). It’s also helping me collect the necessary marks in a timely manner.
In Namibia (and even Namibians will tell you this) there isn’t much of a reading culture. Most people don’t read for pleasure, or are illiterate. That’s why I get really excited when I stumble upon things that my learners love to read. The first and second terms it was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This term it’s Shel Silverstein poems. I’d seen the poems that appear on the exams, and I’d seen the poems in the English books (there are several different English textbooks used throughout Namibia), and OF COURSE the learners hate poetry. The poems given to them by other teachers don’t have relevance to their lives, or they’re just boring. Apparently the syllabus lays out exactly what kind of poems the learners must read (at least that’s what the Grade 5 English teacher told me when I suggested she do haiku with her learners), but me, I’m just trying to promote a culture of reading and enjoyment of poetry in my classroom.
So to show the learners that poetry doesn’t have to be boring, and that it can even be fun, I made Shel Silverstein’s poem “Lazy Jane” into a poster for my classroom. They loved it. I had them copy it into their workbooks with their own illustrations. We also read “Rain,” and they made illustrations in their books for that poem, too (and that was better, because they weren’t predisposed to the ideas of Shel Silverstein. It was fun to look through their workbooks to see what they saw in their minds when we read the poem as a class. I also found a collection of mp3s of Shel Silverstein reading the poems from Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends. I burned the poems onto a CD, hoping to use one of the CD players that my school has in class on a day when it seemed appropriate (of course, I’ve given up on planning for such a day because even my best laid plans have a tendency to collapse. Friday the 24th in the morning turned out to be the day, but of course it didn’t go smoothly even then because the one CD player that works (the other’s broken? Go figure) was locked in an absent teacher’s classroom cabinet. I managed to use the principal’s office radio/cd/cassette player, and we read and listened to “Boa Constrictor.” First I read it, then they read it, then we listened. 4 times. MAGICAL. I get so excited when things work in my classroom. So excited, in fact, that I gave the CD and some poems to my HOD, who also got quite excited. (And score one for me, it’s seldom that I share my resources with him and he doesn’t find some way to criticize them or find a reason for them not to work.)
On the maths front, I’m finally caught up with the principal (because he teaches the other grade 6 maths class). For a while I was SO far behind because I couldn’t in good conscious move beyond a subject if a majority of the class was scoring in the 30%-40% range. Then I remembered that I could, since learners only need 30% in maths, English, and science to pass. So, despite the fact that most of my learners can’t reliably multiply, divide, or navigate word problems employing any of the four basic operations, on we go. Teaching maths is hard, because often the subject matter has little relevance to their lives now now, like changing millimeters to centimeters or meters, or changing hours to days, how to read an analog clock (most of them don’t have clocks in their homes, or have only digital clocks), etc. Of course this is important subject matter for them to learn, but it’s hard to convince them of that.
The week before last, I walked into the principal’s office and said, “Sir, I’ve been teaching for 9 months now and you have not observed me yet.” I got an observation that same day. Really, I just wanted to showcase the usefulness of the overhead projector, since I use it almost every day. Despite not having lesson plans, I think my observation went well.
In terms of interpersonal conflict at school, Term 3 is going much better. I’m really sensitive to interpersonal conflict to begin with, and life here tends to amplify all of my emotions. However, I’ve been trying really hard this term to avoid situations which could lead to comments or actions that will upset me. I’ve been trying to be more forthcoming and a bit more extroverted, which is emotionally draining but seems to be paying off. I just hope that the remainder of the term is good.
The week of September 20th was (apparently) Readathon week. I admire the effort by the Ministry of Education to promote reading, but (in my humble opinion) every week should be Readathon week. In 2004 the Ministry sent out a circular to schools outlining what English teachers should be reading every day of the week with their learners; of course, they didn’t send out such a circular this year and (typically) I didn’t see the circular from 2004 until the last day of the Readathon week. All week they were talking about a “programme” but in Namlish “programme” can mean any number of things; in this case I interpreted it to be the program of reading I was using for the week. It turned out to be an actual assembly on Friday the 24th (the same day we read/listened to “Boa Constrictor) in our school hall in which the learners from each class stood in front of the school and read something. Lucky for me, I was able to pull some Shel Silverstein poems for my learners to read. I even made a transparency for the poem “Rain” printed from the computer complete with blue raindrops, which I projected onto the wall behind the learner reading the poem so the rest of the school could read along. It was cute.
That same Friday the volunteers from Group32 left Okahandja for site visit. I’d been in contact with the volunteer coming to Gobabis, but of course one can’t tell much about another person based solely on SMSes, but he seemed perfectly nice. When I arrived in Gobabis for site visit during PST, the volunteer here was nice enough, but in some ways really made my experience here unnecessarily difficult and sometimes uncomfortable. I vowed I wouldn’t do that to another volunteer if they decided to send one here, so on Friday after school I took the new volunteer around town and gave him the lowdown on everything. At the risk of predisposing him to certain ideas, but keeping in mind that he’s an adult capable of making his own decisions and forming his own opinions, I gave him the ins and outs, goods and bads of Gobabis (as I see them). Friday night I talked about my school, the things that have been successful, the things I like, the things I struggled with at first, both at school and in life, and the things that I still struggle with. No new volunteer wants to think that they’re struggling alone, or that the struggles will never stop, so I did my best to highlight good things, while being honest about the not-so-good things. Saturday I realized that something wasn’t right, we talked a bit, and he told me that he was starting to think that maybe PC/Nam wasn’t a good fit. We talked about it, I listened, I told him that he wasn’t alone in any of his feelings. However, the bottom line is that Peace Corps isn’t for everyone. Even people who do well in Peace Corps programs in other countries might not do well here. In the end, he decided that leaving Namibia was the right decision for him. It was a super bummer for me, too; I was really looking forward to having a sitemate.
Anyway, there’s another post coming soon soon, it’s already mostly written (!), I’m just putting the finishing touches on it. Check back soon!
I hope you’re well, wherever you may be! Thanks for reading. :)