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| Some of our kids taking assembly (outside, in front of 1000 other children.... brave kids) |
It’s insane that we have already done our 6 weeks of teaching. I think for the first time ever, I’m not ready for a teaching placement to be over! We really got quite involved in the school; we even took assembly on Monday. The kids were so sweet to us on our last day. They had prepared, of their own accord, various songs (with lyrics like “I will miss you when you go”), dances and poems for us. It was a tear-jerking day! We made them each up a little goodie bag which they were absolutely ecstatic about. The bag included a copybook, pens, crayons, stickers, sweets and a toothbrush. It took us hours to write a note in all 64 of their copybooks but it was definitely worth it to see their little faces light up!
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| Roping in some Aussie and Swedish friends to help us make goodbye bags |
I suppose, this week, it’s only appropriate to reflect on the kids’ education as a whole and our time with them. The entire time that we’ve been here, I’ve thought that there were two main problems holding these kids back from really striving in their education. I put the problem of them struggling to construct simple sentences or do basic maths sums down to a serious lack of resources and an overcrowding of classrooms. Statistically, there is one teacher to every 87 pupils here. Last year on teaching Practice, there were 23 kids in my class and I thought that was bad!
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| Giving out medals that my friend Ruth sent over for their final spelling tests |
When we first started teaching in the Mighty Zambezi Basic School, they literally hung onto our every word but over the last few weeks, their behaviour has… shall we say… declined ever so slightly. They are adorable when we’re not trying to teach them something important, it’s just when we’ve got something we want to get done that they seem to all act out! We have had 3 girls balling their eyes out for 17 minutes straight while we try to teach. We have had children climbing over tables to hit other children while we try to reprimand a different child at the other side of the room for throwing a pencil at somebody’s eye. We have had to confiscate pages of everything from misspelt hymn lyrics to ‘I love you teacher’ notes (a welcome change from the things you find kids at home scribbling!).We have had to literally race children to the back of the class in order to prevent them from cheating on tests by changing their answers on the teacher’s desk. We have also had to think of various obscure things to keep them focused, familiarly known to most teachers as ‘time fillers’, such as retelling the story of Charlie and the chocolate factory. Amy’s version of this was set in a town called Stranmillis and the characters were all friends… do Rachel Gloop and Callum Wonka sound familiar?!? The class mimicked as Amy pranced about singing the Oompa Lumpa song, thinking it was some traditional Irish song! Hilarious!
Having so many children in one classroom with no resources to keep them interested with is tiring! Behavioural wise, it has been pretty difficult to control them. We try to keep our lessons as interesting as possible. Even when none of them are talking though, the rustling alone mixed with the various noises from the class next door (which only has a shutter to divide it) makes for a pretty headachy day!
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| Some of the class happy with their parting gifts |
Corporal Punishment was abolished here in 2004, but that’s not to say that the kids aren’t used to regular ear twisting and knocks on the head. The first time we saw a teacher hurting a kid, we were pretty shocked but it’s the only way they know how to keep control over so many of them. One day, while we were trying to quieten the class down, there were some pretty defiant boys at the back who just would not listen. A girl turned to us and told us that “if you want them to listen, you just need to beat them”. Even the children themselves see this as a suitable way to manage a classroom!
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| Cutting some shapes in the schoolground- boy can those kids shake their hips. I've definatley learnt a move or two! |
All the behavioural management techniques which we have been developing over the last few years seem completely useless here! We’ve tried clapping out rhythms and doing Simon Says. We’ve tried whispering, shouting and speaking somewhere in between. We’ve even tried singing to them. If the kids here aren’t afraid of you, it takes a lot to keep them calm.
The huge class numbers have made catering for the massive range of abilities pretty tough too. We try to differentiate and have generally had different questions for the ones in the class who find certain subjects less challenging than others. It’s demanding though when even amongst the very weak children there are ones who don’t understand a word we say, and ones who just make little mistakes like spelling the word tomorrow, “tmarwa”.
Having nothing but a blackboard has really brought out the creative side of us; we have been acting in our English lessons, playing games for Maths and dancing in other classes.
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| The female teachers from or school on Women's day with the scholl banner which Amy and I were nominated to carry around town. |
On Tuesday, Amy and I dressed in traditional Chitenga dresses (which we had made for us) matching our fellow teachers, and paraded around town holding a banner for our school alongside about 2000 Zambian women to commemorate women’s day. It was a massive celebration of the progress that women in Africa have made and is a national holiday. There was dancing, singing, speeches and nibbles.
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| Holding snakes was scary but I think the scariest thing was that the Pythons and Cobras on the glass cages behind us had all been caught locally. |
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| Holding onto a baby crocodile! |
Patrick Kayawe (our main contact from the teacher’s training college here) has been around for some chats about the education system and even introduced us to some crocodiles and snakes this afternoon! He reckons that to solve the problems with the education system here, you need to go much deeper than just decongesting classrooms and filling them with resources. He thinks that the root of the problems lies with the role of women in society.
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| Our dresses for Women's day |
There is a huge stigma attached to not being able to have children. While visiting a church last Sunday, the pastor suggested that life was not complete without having your own children. Because of this mind frame, the woman’s main role is to reproduce. The average woman here has something like 6.2 children. Patrick sees this as being the reason why the government cannot fund schools to have smaller classes and better resources. There are simply too many children! He suggests that by educating children in school about what it takes to raise families- adequate funds, space, resources- they will make wiser choices when they grow up and eventually the system will improve.
For now though, it seems the teacher’s here will just have to do the best they can with what they’ve got!
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