So I went to elementary school, middle school, and high school. I then attended college and graduate school. In all that time I can remember no christmas when there was not a bit of a party or a treat handed out to commemorate the occasion, it was expected and we always said thanks. Well, life is certainly different here in Ngaoundere. Imagine, if you would like to put yourself in the dusty and smoke filled mountain region where I currently dwell, Thankgsiving passes, December encroaches with it's economic and commercial consumptive pressures how best to combat and lethargy descends. Defeat, ohh the teachers complain, the students are distracted, they are tired they are excited only for the Christmas program. It is not the students who are so, but the teachers. And admittedly they deserve to be so. The promises of the administration go unfulfilled concerning holiday bonuses, the donators of punishments stop caring if students enter class on time or return to their rooms in a timely manner, and the dust and smoke are so thick that everyone has sniffles. In addiction, at least three students faint every morning thus further delaying start time. They faint from dehydration perhaps, or poor diet, or in imitation, the bane and play of teachers and students at the middle school level. I decided that those teachers with twenty or more years of experience had to be wrong. I forged ahead. Early December was difficult, for the students were focused on the concert, but I found with a well placed Christmas song that I captured their attention for two class periods and a short review about pronunciation of end consonants in English as well as the present continuous tense. Then this week chaos ensued for there was no class on Monday, instead we had the general meeting of classes. Here in rapid fire manner, each set of teachers for a class (5b, 5c, 4a, which are mine) gather and read the top three students and the bottom three, assign sanctions (which means compliment and placement on the tableau d'honneur) and talk about whose comportment is good and whose bad. I was very pleased that my students who do well in English do well in their other classes, similarly those who misbehave in my class misbehave in their others as well. It was nice to not feel so isolated in my experience, and then followed the strangest experience. The teachers spoke frankly about who they like and don't, who is smart and isn't, and mocked some and complimented others. Welcome, I told myself sarcastically, to the teacher's clownge. (portmanteau of lounge and clown). I limited my remarks to saying that we should find a way to have the eyesight of the students checked. Such a comment checked the laughter and it turns out that this will probably not happen. However, I do want to say that it is great to finally see who the other teachers are of these same students, I wish we could've met earlier at mid trimester as well.
Special note. Afterward the music teacher asked me to ask America if they would like to buy instruments for the college music department. I said that I would ask America and so I am now doing sol if you would be interested in such a project please email me and I will provide more information.
Then on Tuesday I got to have class. Yeah. And despite the fact that several of the other teachers happened to be gone that day, I still had many in class and I taught and taught and taught their eyeballs out. We did exercised on the board, we practiced asking questions in increasingly rapid and normalized style. It was playful and practical. And most of all it was successful. I kept their attention for the period, everyone participated, and the hour was not lost. Wednesday came the grand conseil. At this all the teachers gathering the morning to listen to the heads of the department read the results of their classes and make a complaint. First one would say, ahh their comportment is very bad,another would say, they do not behave well, a third would say, they are unruly. It basically condenses ot the same result. Everyone thinks that their are too many problems and a lack of behavior. Well, there are two solutions, one is to make the punishments more rigid, a horrid plan. The other is to have either fewer students or more teachers, which will never happen for reasons economic. Of course if I could discover the pill to make students proud of their comportment that might help as well. But truly for me I think the problem is one of too much leisure. The middle schoolers have two long breaks, one at 10:10-10:45 but because of the nature of the school we don't actually commence until a bit before eleven. And even though I start class on time the students don't drift in until they want. The second break is from 12:30-1:05, but this too extends very far. Further, class ends on wednesdays and Fridays at noon thirty. Also, the classes don't follow a patterned schedule. This means that students have greater frequency to forget assignments, lose papers and homework, and generally lose themselves in the sound and fury of frustrated professors strutting and fretting their hours (really fifty minutes) upon the stage. But such is life. Their is also a serious lack of pride in one's own work, though plenty of interest in others' grades.
And now the gifts. I assumed naturally enough to my mind, that all sorts of professors would be bringing small things in. But I was the only one, and I became papa Noel with my handouts of flavored biscuits, coco, coconut, and butter. When I went to give the teachers their biscuits they scolded me for not making them song Jingle Bells first. Oh, they have been so funny these past weeks, whenever they see me the teachers mutter s bit of "jungle bells jingle bells hmm hmm hmm hmm HEY." I also mixed up class. I tore in with shouts of jingle bells whilst whirling my opaque bag here and there. The students joined in and as we danced our way into the final chorus, brought forth the small gifts to great cheers and gasps and stamping of feet and banging of tables. Tossing them forth like a presidential opening pitch at the baseball game they leaped for the Kirby Puckett catch. And then, wonder of wonders miracle of miracles, they sat down and waited for class. Then followed enormously successful dictation. So successful that I had an extra ten minutes at the end and so I talked about Christmas and Santa and the Xmas tree and wishing a happy new year. It was marvelous and a fabulous end of the year. I might get in a bit of trouble because one absolutely ingenuous splinter of a child asked if papa Noel was real and I arched my voice and spoke my imagination to the north pole and tales of santa's helpers. Yes, Ngo Zaah, there is a Papa Noel!
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