The time began last Friday when I volunteered to help grade entrance examinations for those who are just arriving to the college. I graded seventeen exams and the opportunity gave me an insight in the troubles I shall encounter. First of all, the difference between fifty and fifteen (or any number that ends with a “ty” and the “teens”) needs to be iterated; second, basic vocabulary. I learned, though, that a main reason many of these students do not know the word Fromage is because many of them do not have cheese in their daily lives and may never have even seen it. It is like suddenly having to translate haggis—though that may be a more difficult problem. With the entrance exams under my belt, and a rough understanding of what we will have to work on, spelling, numbers, food groups, I began to plan my first week of teaching. This was facilitated by my learning that on Saturday I was to receive the dispensation of school supplies. Look at the picture! Do you see all the athletes? They are famous. I don’t know them. I did, though, know the person gracing the cover of the notebook that the teacher ahead of me received, he got the advertising poster for the Angelina Jolie film Salt on one cover and on the other a scantily clad pop singer named Katy Perry. I explained that her tunes are all one heard on the radio before I left and in the stores. But now, I have no idea what one hears. Soon I shall be as clueless as everyone else here what the Hits are.
(these are my school supplies)This past week was solely to discover the level of my classes. I have three, 5B, 5C, and 4A. These match up, roughly, with our seventh and eighth grades. But what a difference there is. For one, the students range in age considerably. Some are no more than eleven while others are far into their teens. Everything depends on whence the students come. Some cannot leave villages until they are older, others have failed a certain class several times, and others just started late or had to wait until they saved enough money to enter the College. This makes for a fair amount of shyness; indeed, it is remarkable that my most vociferous students are the shortest and youngest; of course they are also some of my great troublemakers. But, as a rambunctious short middle-schooler myself, they could definitely do with some lessons on mischief making. It will not, however, be me who teaches them such hi-jinks.
(morning assembly and flag raising)In order to begin to discover what the students know, especially basic vocabulary. I drew a figurine of the human body on the board. Now, I make no claims to excellence with regard to artistic refinement, but the body looked like a body. Nonetheless, it took a while to convince the students that it was such—it helped when I warped my body into a strange contortion and said “See, it is me!” From there we learned the words for: head, nose, eyes, ears, mouth, tongue, hair, shoulders, hands, arms, legs, stomach / belly, feet, foot, back. One of the great difficulties I have discovered is that of the song “Head, shoulders knees and toes.” As a result of someone having taught them this song, frequently when I would point to my legs and ask “What are these” the students would mumble “head shoulders” and then shout “KNEES.” So, I had to deal with that. Suddenly, I was interrupted. “Date” one young woman demanded. Indeed, everyday she demands the same thing, that I write the date on the board. But then when I ask what the date is, everyone knows. Nonetheless, I broke off my admittedly less than awesome lesson plan to write on the board: “What is the date today?” (one of my main focuses is getting the students to ask questions and give answers in full sentences). And then they cry out in unison “The date of today is….” Well, no wonder they wanted me to ask, they had a formulaic answer to it, though one of awful awkwardness. I did not let it bother me, until they used it every day. Finally yesterday I wrote “The date of today is…” and then drew an enormous X through it and emphasized “Today is…” Well, what shocked faces greeted me. It turns out someone had taught them that their response was the right one and normal. Immediately I began back-peddling, but as I had no bicycle I stopped the pantomime and said instead that in other classes they can say what they had been taught, but in mine we are attempting to speak as people speak. But I get ahead of myself.
(the empty school, before term begins)I decided, once we had this awesome vocabulary that we ought to ask questions and provide answers. So I taught them “What is this, what is that?” And “What are these, what are those?” It went very well. I stood in from and pointed to my nose “What is this?” I asked “Nose” they answered. STOP. “That is a / the nose.” Ahh, everyone understands. “What are these” I said, pointing to my shoulders.” Shoooldrs” Well, we fixed the pronunciation and added the sentence “Those are (my) shoulders.” Awesome. Time to break up into small groups. I told them to take up a partner and practice asking questions and answering others. I asked if everyone understood and eager faces nodded to me. Great, I began walking around. No one talked. “Ask and Answer” I said again and took up my eraser (a huge piece of foam rubber) and acted out both parts. Understood. I began to go around. The first group:
A: “What is this” he does not point.
WOAH, I suddenly realized that we had to learn a new verb. Rushing to the front, I wrote “TO POINT” and then I had them conjugate it, a task they performed admirably. “I point, you point, he/she/it points, we point, they point.” At first they wanted to have a vous person (second person plural / honorary plural) but I would not let them have it. And then to explain, I began pointing at everything I could. A great cheer arose as they began pointing wildly. So then I taught the focused point. Begin again.
A: “What is this” he does not point.
(the teachers' lounge)So I asked the questions to the small groups. See, my teaching philosophy is that even if we learn hardly anything in a day as long as each student has the opportunity to speak some English and hear my corrections then he or she gets a lot more out of it than if I talk the whole time. I think this might be something they are not used to, though, because it has taken all week to get into the groove of small group / partner activities. –a brief side note, last night Mia, Phil, and I went out to eat and Phil explained that pointing is rude in Africa. Well, that may be, but not when it comes to asking questions, the simple head jerk that some use could just as well be asking “what is that “(chin, sky, zit, epilepsy, Plato’s theory of the Forms, my village over in Chad). We need very specific points. Well, after I had gone around the whole room, I had a sense of who my talkers were, who had great pronunciation and what we need to work on. One thing to work on, getting boys and girls to work together. As soon as the class caught on to what I was doing, their were subtle seat exchanges so that no boys and girls would work together and if someone failed in the eerily silent musical chairs that they all played, then the student would sit silently when asked. It was quite a phenomenon. The main difficulty, though, by leaps and bounds is the aural understanding of the difference between EARS and EYES. If I did not point and asked instead “where are my ears” the class would flip the proverbial coin and point to either the ears or the eyes. We are still working on this difficulty. The other one is plural and singular and adding the “S” ending. These are things that the fifth levels learned last year, but I don’t think that they had a lot of practice with it, the fourth level is a bit better.
Well, on to the second day. One of the most effective ways of teaching, I’ve found is a very short review of what was learned the day before. Thus, at the start of class, I wrote “Review” on the board and drew my person. The students demanded my lame joke of “it is me” and then identified some parts of the body. I had to stop my review, though, because I had forgotten to put the date on the board. And so I did that. Unfortunately, or rather embarrassingly, right as I was fitting myself into the groove of the class like the wheels of a train fit into the iron pathway upon which it rolls (for the sound it makes, abracadabra, see Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children one of the late chapters where he takes his son and the snake charmer to Bombay), another of the teachers knocked on the door. Ooops, I had gone to the wrong classroom of level fivers. Rats. First big mistake of what I am sure will be many—and most will probably be just as innocuous. I continued into the leaped right into the lesson, after putting the date on the board. We practiced with our plurals and we practiced pointing. As I left class, I did so to a resounding chorus of small voices raised in euphony POINT POINT POINT.
And now came Wednesday. This is my short day because I don’t meet with the fourth years. Instead there is English club, but not yet in the first week, so I will have some tales about that soon, I hope. I decided to introduce some new vocabulary so that we would have new things to POINT to. I introduced classroom vocab: First word. Wall. I then wrote the French because I wanted to be clear (even though I was slapping the wall and saying WALL). Two of my more eager students rose in protest exclaiming that I ought not write the French. So I erased what I had written and then introduced the next word: Ceiling. As I pointed and looked at their nods, I proceeded to chair. But I was proceeding through a chorus of protest, for suddenly I had to write the French. So le plafond found itself on the door. Other words: desk, table, chalkboard, window, door and floor. As I had them play my favorite game of “what is…that is” I had to emphasize that to ask “what are” questions one had to point to more than one thing. But suddenly students who were practicing were pointing to the most random things and so I had to ask that they only use the new vocabulary. The game went well except for a certain difficulty between floor and ceiling. Oh well, every set of words has those that get confused (though eyes/ears seems a bit more acceptable that floor/ceiling). I then had the bright idea of introducing “bench” because it gave me the opportunity of showing the plural “benches” students were crazy excited about that, it broke all the rules!
(my classroom, sans eleves)Thursday was a rather special day, though in a sad way, because the night before a senior night watchman had passed away and there was to be a funeral. I arrived at the church at 8am when I was told the service would begin, but it was locked tight. I proceeded to the school to learn that everything had been delayed for a while. Monsieur Oliver (the head of the English department), found me hanging out at the teacher’s lounge (PICTURE) and invited me inside to watch his class. He is teaching Terminale (our seniors) and boy they were all over the various verb tenses—it is always strange to see advanced grammar of one’s own language, especially when things are termed a bit differently. Thus the imperfect tense is called the past continuous. But even here some pronunciations were difficult, so I think that I am going to make tongue twisters a major feature of my lessons. After this I headed to my next class at 9.20, I was met with an exodus of students. Time for the funeral. 10 minutes later they all filed back to the school. The funeral had been delayed again. After a long delay (I could have held class) the funeral came. And the church was packed brimful. The entire student body, friends, faculty, family were all scrunched together. And I mean scrunched. I had to sit sideways and when we stood people alternated who was in front and who behind. The service was moving, but rather strange. There was an insistence on using electronic instruments, but the machinery was turned all the way up and so the sound cracked and echoed in a discomfiting manner. And, though I could be way wrong on this, the two eulogists were chosen for their place in society and not for close personal connection. That is too bad, in my eyes. Near the end, everyone in the church files up and past the coffin which has sat in the front and gives money to an offering for the family of the deceased. Once over, school began again. This seemed strange as a great many of the students were quite distraught. What it also meant, though, is that my 5B students were now far advanced. I had not even gotten to teach 5c the new classroom words and my 4a students, with whom I had been doing question words, had not seen me for two days, but the week rolls inexorably on.
(coming to school)Friday. YEAH Friday’s are dictation day. This is the most important part of the week for me because I would finally have an opportunity of seeing what they were hearing me say. The 5b students did not get to do dictation because, sadly, I had not gotten far enough with them to have any words to say, but for 5b I had the following brilliant piece of prose:
A woman walks into the classroom. She points to the blackboard and the benches. She falls on the floor and yells. Then she says: “that is the ceiling.”
Well, after reciting it excruciatingly slowly twice. And I mean slowly. Try reading the above statement so that it takes four and a half minutes, it is hard. But then I said “normal speed” and read it at a bit slower than normal. Whoomph, it was as though the world’s biggest pterodactyl had suddenly entered the room and flapped its wings. The students reared back in shock (of seeing a dinosaur) and physical discomfort (of the wind). I then said that such a speed was our goal for the year. Then I said it once more very slowly. After this I walked around and had every student read to me what he or she had heard me say and written down. None were perfect and the spelling was surreal, but for the most part they read the majority of what I had said. All sort of petered out near the end and also, to my disappointment, had missed the spelling of “benches” and “points” I then taught the new vocabulary of “to fall” and “to yell.”
When I got to 4a, I surprised them with the dictation, for they had no idea it was coming. For them I had another inspired action narrative that only Lara Croft could star in the film version of:
A woman came into the room. She pointed to her nose. “What is this?” Then she asked “Where are my eyes?” A boy pointed to her ears. “No” she said, “These are my ears, and these are my eyes. Who are you?”
Notice the awesome past tense and the tight concatenation of question words. Well the students did a fair job, though only three perhaps got the difference between ears and eyes correct. That is just going to take a crazy amount of work.
Ahh, I had forgotten to mention that the favorite part of class for all three groups is when I take attendance. If I dare begin to forget, they remind me forcefully and then drown in the gales of laughter that meet my pronunciation of their last names. I do fairly well on the first, which are for the most part French, but I am just the Steve Martin of showmanship for the middle and last names. Also, interestingly, the naming don’t seem to have any gender relationship, or at least very little. Thus one of the young women is Blaise Pascal…and a young man Celeste.
And how many are there? Well, each roster has about forty students on it, but the most I have yet to see are 22. At the least it seems that between 15 and 19 students are gone every day. I don’t know if they will soon come, but it might get too chaotic if they all do show up. Also, I teach three classes a day and there is no system. Sometimes I begin at 7.30 sometimes not until 11.50 and the classes are all jumbled. I think it would be hard to be a student under such a system.
Thus ended my first week of teaching, most of which I invented myself. See if I don’t turn into a Rousseau or a Dewey by the end of the year.
(taking a break)
(jungle)
(me)
(forest)
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