Well, apparently I never posted this when I wrote it over 2 years ago. I think I meant to add to it, or just make sure I had taken anything out that sounded too angry..... but anyways, here it is, exactly as I found it. I haven't changed anything, though as I'm reading it through, I find that there are, of course, numerous things I'd like to correct. But, at the same time, much of it remains surprisingly accurate, despite me learning much about the Burkinabe school system during my two years in math classroom.
August 25, 2011
Model School
About a month ago, we started model school.
 |
| My model school class, with Evan (math) and Nina (science). |
Model school is basically like summer school,
with classes Monday-Friday from 8am-noon, except that we’re the teachers, and
most of us have never taught before…so it’s also like student teaching for us
Peace Corps Trainees. The students
participating are from the local community (most are our host
brothers/sisters), and they had to pay a small fee to participate in model
school and receive this “extra educating.”
Essentially, we’re giving them a head-start on whatever material they’ll
be learning this October when school starts…so naturally they had to pay a
price to go to school and be taught by people who don’t know how to teach…or
speak French...or (worst-case scenario) both.
Education isn’t free, ya know…
For formal educators like moi (that’s French for “me”),
there’s classrooms of 14-30 kids for each grade level – which is just a small
fraction of the 100+ students we’ll have in our real classrooms this fall! –
starting with 6e (i.e. the American equivalent of 6th grade) through
3e (i.e. 9th grade). Each
classroom has 4 of us PC teachers: 2 math and 2 science. Each of us teaches one 55-minute class a day
in our discipline (Math, Science, IT…) and occasionally we might have a second
class where we teach English or a “Life Skills” lesson (i.e. how to wash your
hands). For the non-formal educators
(previously known as “Girls Education and Empowerment” volunteers), there’s
tutoring with elementary kids in small groups of 2-4 students, though sometimes
groups combine together to play games or do a large-group activity. All of us spend our mornings
teaching/tutoring, planning lessons for the next day, or correcting
assignments; then we eat lunch, followed by our normal afternoon language
classes or sessions on administrative Peace Corps topics, such as “Organizing
Income-Generating Activities” or “How to Retrieve Your Monthly Living Allowance
Once You’re At Site...even if there’s no bank remotely close to your village.”
The 4 weeks of model school have gone by really fast and as I reflect
upon this teaching experience, I find it ironic that today is actually my last
day with these kids. Well, besides for
tomorrow, when we hand back their final tests, eat popcorn and drink bisap
juice, and then play soccer: students vs. teachers. I’m prepared for us Americans to get our
butts kicked in soccer…despite the fact that our students will be wearing
plastic flip flops (or no shoes at all) while we sport fancy Adidas tennis shoes
and athletic shorts. It should be fun…and
probably slightly embarrassing.
Throughout the past month, my ideas and perceptions of education have
changed significantly, as well as my own teaching philosophies and what Peace
Corps’ main objective is with having us in formal classrooms. Had I written about model school when it
first started, or even a week ago, most (or all) of my thoughts would have
given off a very negative, depressing, and angry undertone. A lot of those feelings might still come across;
however, I now feel that my overall opinion of model school and, in general,
Education in Burkina Faso, is considerably better. I have an improved outlook that’s more
positive, as well as a more thorough understanding of why things are the way
they are here, along with the ability to be more tolerant of practices that I
don’t agree with.
Even if we have taught or worked with kids in some way before, speaking
French and trying to teach “like” Burkinabe do (which I’ll painfully describe
in a bit) is difficult and a huge
learning experience for all of us.
Especially for those who have never really interacted with kids
before. Case in point: fellow PCT Mary.
(I’ve changed her name to keep confidentiality.) Before PC, Mary served as a corrections
officer…aka she was a prison guard.
She’s pretty tough because of this…and some might even say she looks a
little intimidating also. And yet, after
her first day of model school, she stated: “I’ve worked with prison inmates…and
been in some pretty intense situations…but I’ve never been more scared in all
my life than I was today, standing in front of 8-year-olds.”
Having been through formal teacher training and having had lots of
practice planning lessons, even I struggled at first and felt really awful
about my teaching abilities. In fact, on
my first day, I remember walking out of my classroom after my horrible math
lesson thinking to myself, “Send me back to the U.S. now -- I want my classroom full of American kids who have textbooks
to look at and decent chalkboards to write on.”
When there’s nothing for the kids to use or look at (or
curriculum/examples for a teacher to base a lesson on), teaching is extremely
difficult. Not knowing French doesn’t
help any, either. Not only am I unable
to visually show them anything to help explain concepts, but I can’t even
verbally tell them anything or explain a term in “other words” besides what the
definition says as I don’t yet have the vocabulary base to do that. And I definitely can’t ask questions, because
not only do the students not understand me, but whatever they respond with –
right or wrong – I haven’t a clue what they’re saying. Not good.
Because of my teacher training, I know exactly what I’m missing in my
lessons (from an American standpoint), which perhaps made the whole experience
worse, since I could compare it to how I would teach in an American classroom
or what questions/activities I would normally include in a lesson. Yes, my teacher training definitely helped me
be more flexible, feel comfortable with kids, and have tons of ideas to draw
from that I could try to modify and make work here in Burkina, but it also made
me realize just how much kids in Burkina are missing in their education right
now, which naturally, made me really depressed.
Sure, my colleagues felt bad because they were scared of kids AND didn’t
know how to teach or speak French, but at least they didn’t have to feel like
they were diminishing in their teaching abilities. No one ever wants to get worse at anything –
everyone inertly seeks improvement. My PC friends could, in all honesty, only
improve: improve at French, at feeling comfortable with kids, and at being a
successful teacher. I could improve
too, but first I had to back-track and live through being a period of being a
bad teacher – like the same level I was at (if not worse, due to lack of French
fluency) during my first year of college when I first began doing practicums
and teaching experiences. To return to
that level after 5 years of formal study, practice, student teaching, and
substituting in various schools was difficult and made me question why I was
even in Burkina, rather than in America where I knew my teaching skills would
have been put to use and appreciated…
And so speaking of having my teaching skills “appreciated”… just like how food, clothing, and languages
are different here compared to the USA, so is the school system and how
classrooms operate. A lot of
improvements have been made in Burkina Faso in recent years to develop stronger
curriculum programs, safer classroom environments, and well-trained
teachers….but there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done. For the most part, the way teachers teach in
Burkina would not be approved of in America, and probably not even called
“teaching.” Once again, don’t get me wrong – there ARE good teachers in Burkina
who are very successful in their classrooms and are “positive deviants” (as we
like to call them in the Peace Corps), practicing other methods/styles of
teaching that are different from the norm.
However, the education system overall (and its teachers) appear to be in
dire need of positive reform, as right now the typical Burkinabe classroom is
not an optimal place for anyone to be or for a kid to actually learn anything,
whether math facts, how to speak an opinion, or how to solve problems. This is a result of many factors:
1.
Personal
attitudes (i.e. lack of passion for the job). For many of the “educated” people in Burkina,
the only job available is as a teacher. While pay and job conditions aren’t
great (a similar complaint of teaching jobs in America), it’s much better than
being jobless or resorting to selling mangos on the side of the road. Often times, teachers end up taking a job in
a community other than their own, and so during the school week they live near
school, but during weekends and summers, they have nothing to do with the
community or their students. So unless they really desire to be a teacher,
there’s not a lot of motivation for a person to emotionally invest in his/her
students or to try to be a successful teacher.
2.
Lack of
teacher/professional training. To be
an elementary teacher, one only needs to pass through middle school, pass the
corresponding test that all middle school kids take to get into high school,
and then complete a brief training/certification. To be a middle school teacher, one needs to
have completed all the requirements/tests of high school and undergo a brief
teacher training. And, to be a high school teacher, one needs to have done two
years of university. Although secondary
school teachers are generally “more educated” than primary school teachers,
neither have actual college training or anything at all comparable to what is
required of teachers in the USA. From
what I’ve seen/heard, the only people at a school who have “college” degrees
are the supervisors/directors (essentially the equivalent of American
principals or superintendents). I could
be mistaken with the facts here and all the exact details, but the general idea
remains: a person doesn’t have to be “highly qualified” to be declared a
teacher and be entrusted with 100+ kids.
3.
Limited
resources. This is a big one. Forget smart boards, math manipulatives,
construction paper, or, well, any paper.
There’s no books, no examples or pictures or science labs or computers
or anything. Except for the little
notebooks that each student is required to buy along with their 3 pens (red,
black, and blue), pencil, ruler, and protractor. That’s it.
Oh, I almost forgot, we do have chalkboards….very very crappy
chalkboards aka pieces of wood covered in black paint. But that’s all we got to
work with. Do you have any idea how
frustrating it is to teach about the make-up of a cell, when there are NO
pictures for students to look at and see where the cell wall and nucleus are
actually located? Or to demonstrate how
to use a computer when there isn’t one within 50km of their village? The best alternative is to attempt to draw a
picture of it on the pathetic chalkboards and be like, “Look, here’s a
computer. And this here is the mouse
that you’d put your hand on to move the arrow that would show up on the
computer screen, provided there’s electricity so you can turn the computer
on.” It’s so sad to think that the only
image of a computer or plant cell or x-y-z coordinate plane that they’ll ever
see is whatever the teacher can draw with white chalk…hopefully the teacher has
some artistic skills…and hopefully the kids do too cuz the only picture they’ll
have to refer to or study from is what they copy down into their little
notebook – they’re basically writing their own textbooks, since they don’t have
real textbooks to use. Furthermore, it’s
hard to improve literacy when the kids never get to read stories or even read
passages from textbooks aloud. The might
copy down the sentences from the board, but that doesn’t mean they know how to
read it, whether mentally in their heads or verbally aloud with correct
pronunciation.
4.
Too many
students. 100+ students crammed 4 or
5 to a little desk, with barely enough room between each row for the teacher to
walk through, really restricts what types are things are done in class. No group activities cuz there’s nowhere for
the students to go besides outside…but Burkinabe frown upon that…plus it’s
really difficult to monitor aka “babysit” 100+ teenagers when they’re given the
freedom to do something outside of the boundaries of the 20x20 foot
classroom. Little to no homework,
projects, or assignments given, cuz what teacher wants to grade 100+ papers
each night, multiplied by however many classes they teach each day? No one.
Thus, no homework or practice problems occur, and if they do, they’re
rarely corrected and so students never know if they’re doing it right or wrong…
5.
Repeating
history. Teachers teach like they
were taught themselves. It’s all they know. If the only thing they ever did in school was
copy down sentences from the chalkboard, why would they even think to do
something different, like plan an activity or sing a song or talk about a
current event for the first 5 minutes of class.
This also applies to their actual teaching methods. Here, “teaching” is reading a
passage/definition aloud to the students, having the students copy it word for
word in their notebook, and then having each student recite it aloud. For example, let’s say I was teaching about
angles. The Burkinabe way would have me
say and write on the board: A right angle measures exactly 90 degrees. Then each kid would stand up, one at a time,
and say, “A right angle measures exactly 90 degrees,” and then the next kid, “A
right angle measures exactly 90 degrees,” and the next, “A right angle measures
exactly…” Now everyone has repeated the
definition and so everyone knows what right angles are. Done.
Time to move on to acute angles.
There’s no application, no asking students to rephrase the definition in
their own words, nothing like that. If
they can repeat the definition, then they must know it (and understand
it), right? Fun fact about
Burkinabe kids: They are masterminds at memorizing and repeating definitions
word for word; I can stand in front of a class and ask, “What’s malaria?” Or a
light-year? Or a verb? And I will get the exact definition from the dictionary, from every kid, every
time. Yet, if I ask what that means, or
for an example, no one has a clue. They’re
never asked questions like that.
Implementing new teaching methods is what is going to have the most
impact on improving education in Burkina; instead of just having kids memorize
facts and definitions, other teaching styles would encourage them to ask
questions, take risks, speak up, learn HOW to learn, respect each other
(whether male or female), and more. All
of which are necessary key ingredients for helping develop the youth of a
nation so that they can have the skills and confidence to continue developing
their nation themselves.
To get a better idea of how all these factors contribute to the
environment of a Burkinabe classroom, as well as why I was frustrated and
feeling extremely negative about education in Burkina (from an American teacher
perspective), here’s some personal examples of things I experienced/observed
throughout my four weeks of model school:
**While observing a Burkinabe teacher, only those who raised their
hands where called on. Girls hardly ever
volunteered to answer a question, and so the teacher never picked them and thus
girls (and some boys, too) were silent the whole class. Also, a teacher wrote 7 rather simple review
problems on the board to start class for the day. Once everyone finished, they went through the
answers. Well, questions 1 and 2, that
is. That’s all they did that hour. If
this had been America, the review and correcting would have taken a whole 10
minutes (if even that) and then the rest of the hour would have been spent on
learning something new. Class here moves
realllllly slowly. Yes, this is also partly a cultural thing –
no one is in as big of a hurry or worried about efficiency like we are in the
USA. But still, if class moved just a
little bit quicker, students would cover twice as much material each year.
**Being told that it was not possible – in fact, pretty much
“unacceptable” – to ever take students outside.
My friends who teach science wanted to take their classes on a short
nature walk to collect different leaves for looking at under a microscope, and
even they were told no. So, as you can
imagine, as a math teacher, I was definitely shot down. What could you possibly learn about numbers
or shapes outside, without a chalkboard?
(I had planned to draw a life-size XY-coordinate plane in the dirt and
then have them practice “graphing points” by placing themselves on whatever
spot I said, i.e. “Mohamed, skip to the origin…Djamilla, hop to (-3, 1).” So much for my creativity and trying to make
math fun.)
** I was teaching geometry, specifically how the 3 angles of a triangle
ALWAYS equal 180. I could have just told
them: “The sum of the 3 angles of a triangle are always equal exactly 180
degrees.” That would have been easy and
taken a whole 30 seconds. But critical
thinking is lacking here, so I decided to first ask the students if they knew
(and of course no one did…or at least would admit to knowing it). So then I proceeded to have the students draw
triangles, measure each angle, and find the sum of the three angles. We did this for several triangles, getting a
sum of 180 each time, taking a whole 8 minutes – maybe 10 minutes – of class,
before the students came to the conclusion themselves that the sum of a triangle’s
angles is always 180. Next we did some
practice problems, where I gave them 2 angles and they found the third. This was no problem for them and we only had
to do a few examples, as they all clearly understood, having discovered the
property for themselves. We then
proceeded to move onto the sum of the 4 angles of a quadrilateral using a
similar process (which they quickly grasped), and so at the end of the
55-minute class period, I gave them some homework problems on finding the
missing angles of triangles and quadrilaterals.
I only had about 2 minutes left before class was over, so I quickly
wrote the homework problems on the board.
By hand I drew what resembled an isosceles triangle, wrote A, B, and C,
respectively for each angle, and below the triangle made a chart with A, B, and
C at the top and then 5 rows under it, with 2 measurements given but not the
third; for example, A=60 and C=20; B=?
I did the same thing for quadrilaterals; quickly drawing what should
have been a parallelogram but didn’t really have lines that were all that
parallel… The kids understood what to
do, copied the homework problems down so they could finish them at home, and
then left because class was over. Good
lesson…or at least, not bad, right? So I
thought. I was feeling pretty good about
that day.
Until I got my feedback from
our Burkinabe supervisors:
1.
Don’t have
the student’s find their own sum of a triangle’s angles. It takes too much time. Also, they might only total 170 instead of
180, and then they will think that the 3 angles always equal 170. It is better
if you tell them the property and write it on the board, and then have everyone
repeat it aloud. That’s all you need to
do, don’t try to plan activities. They will
only learn that it’s 180 degrees if you tell them the definition of a triangle
and they repeat it. (I explained
that it was a “fun” exercise for them to do and required them to use critical
thinking and discovery processes, even if it did take a few more minutes than
just straight out telling them “A triangle’s angles = 180.” I also clarified that I made certain every
triangle’s angles added up to 180 so the students couldn’t draw inaccurate
conclusions, and that at the end of the activity, I did do the standard
Burkinabe “write the definition and have the kids read it”…but it didn’t
matter. My activity was wrong and
prevented the kids from truly learning the definition and repeating it aloud
for at least 10-15 minutes like we apparently were supposed to.)
2.
The
curriculum requires that you spend 2 hours teaching the sum of angles in a
triangle and 3 hours on quadrilaterals, for a total of 5 hours on this
chapter. You only spent 55 minutes on
BOTH. You can’t do that. Today’s lesson should ONLY have been
triangles. And tomorrow’s should be
triangles again. Quadrilaterals shouldn’t be until next week at the earliest. (I tried to justify that the students clearly
understood the concepts, and that’s why I moved on to quadrilaterals right
away. Doesn’t matter. The curriculum says 5 hours and that’s what
needs to be done so that the students learn the material. If I don’t do this amount of time, the
students will NOT learn. …thus Burkina
tends to base student progress/success on the amount of time spent doing
something, whether or not the student actually masters the topic during that
said amount of time.)
3.
You ask a
lot of questions to the students. Spend
more time telling them information that they need to copy into their notebook,
and less time asking them what they think or to explain how they found the
answer. It’s not necessary to ask
questions like that. (This type of
feedback was common to all of us PC trainees.
Almost everyone was told at least once to do less “teaching” and more
“dictating.” It doesn’t take a very
skilled person to be a teacher in classrooms here (or much time to plan
lessons), if all’s you have to do for the majority of most class periods is
read paragraphs out of a textbook, slowly, word-for-word, sentence by sentence,
so the kids can copy it down.)
4.
Don’t use
the same book as the students. You had the
student’s version of the curriculum at your desk, rather than the teacher’s
book. If your students see you using the
student book, they will lose respect for you because it shows that their
teacher isn’t smart enough to use the teacher book and thus must only be at the
same level of mathematics as they are.
(I presented several points with this issue. Firstly, yes I had the student book, but I
didn’t use it or ever refer to it during class – not even once! It remained closed the whole time. Next, the teacher’s book is exactly the same
as the student’s, except the cover is blue.
There is nothing different about the books except for the teacher’s
version having answers to some of the practice exercises. Plus, the students don’t have books for
themselves anyways, so how would they even know I’m using the “student”
book? And finally, I explained that in
America teachers often use the same materials as their students, even if a
teacher’s version is available. This is
because it shows that the teacher is looking at the exact same thing as the
students, thus having the same information (nothing extra or special), and
consequently that the teacher is learning/discovering the material right
alongside his/her students – that they are learning TOGETHER. That didn’t fly here…none of my reasons did.)
5. Here in Burkina, you must always use
didactic tools when drawing shapes on the board. You
cannot free-hand a circle or triangle or any shape, even if they are extremely
accurate. For example, when making a rectangle,
you must use the compass and measure each angle to ensure it’s exactly 90
degrees. You must also use the large
ruler to create perpendicular lines and confirm each side is the same length as
the other. You cannot call it a rectangle, unless you have actually truly drawn
one; you may not even tell the students to imagine or pretend the shape is a
rectangle, no matter how closely it resembles one. (Once again, I had several
justifications. The lesson was not on
drawing shapes or on the actual properties/laws of what defines a rectangle
from a square from a rhombus, etc., as the kids are taught how to draw all
shapes, using their special tools to make perfect angles and parallel lines,
from the time they are little tikes in primary school. Thus, why do I need to spend all that time on
perfecting the shapes on the chalkboard, with middle school kids who already
know how to do it, when that is not what’s important for this lesson. Had I drawn each shape perfectly using the
didactic tools, we would have only gotten through 2 examples in the 55-minute
class period, and not the 15+ that we did and corrected.)
6. Your French has been improving…but you have
difficulties with pronunciation and your diction is bad. Also, it’s “l’angle”
not “le angle.” (Perfect. Just what I wanted to hear. I have “bad” diction.” That’s constructive. Most of the feedback we received was like
this, except that we got about 100 more comments of this type…each day…to every 1 or 2 critiques we
received about our actual teaching.
Unfortunately, feedback tended to be primarily based around our mediocre
French skills, rather than on our teaching methods or rapport with
students. Yes, it’s important to be able
to speak the language, but at the same time, don’t worry about it. Our French has been improving and will
continue to improve because we speak it all the time: at the market, in
language class, with our host families.
Teaching strategies, on the other hand, will not be learned anywhere
else except actually in the classroom, so it’s more important right now to get
constructive criticism on our teaching…not our French. Plus, of course my French sucks. What do you expect? I’ve only been speaking it for 2 months now
and most of these math terms I’ve NEVER ever heard or said before, unlike the
everyday life words we hear on a regular basis, such as eau (water) or dormir
(to sleep). So of course they’re going to come out wrong or slightly
mispronounced. I’d like to see you teach
a math class…in English…with perfect diction.
Besides, l’angle…le angle…la angle…whatever, it’s all the same. The
students knew what I meant. They didn’t
have a problem understanding me. And
that’s the important thing.)
When it comes down to it, those of us PC volunteers in Burkina who are
assigned to a formal classroom for a whole 10 hours a week (yes, that’s right,
only a measly TEN hours each week; essentially one 2-hour lesson a day), are
not here to actually teach Burkinabe students biology or turn them into
mathematicians. Inspire them, yes. Encourage them to continue studying math at
University and become a math teacher, definitely. Help them get a better grasp on basic
algebra, sure, why not? Improve their
study methods so they have a better chance of passing the BEPC and continuing
their education past middle school, of course.
But in the long run, creating high-achieving, academically successful
students who can rattle of exactly the speed of light or all of the periodic
table of elements isn’t going to do much to fix Burkina. At this stage in development, what’s going to
most help the people of Burkina is eating nutritious diets, brushing teeth and
washing hands, sleeping under mosquito nets to prevent Malaria, going to the
local clinic to give birth rather than giving birth at home, giving equal
rights/respect to men and women, getting girls to go to school, etc. While our influence within schools will be
important, our success should not solely be based on how “good” of a math or
biology or chemistry teacher one is.
Really, even if we absolutely suck at teaching (or even understanding)
our subject matter, it’s no big deal. My
students could spend the whole school year with me and never actually learn how
to multiply fractions like they’re supposed to, according to the 20-year-old
curriculum standards Burkina follows, but it’s okay. Because as Peace Corps Teachers, we’re
striving to teach other things. Things
more important and crucial at this point in time for the students/people of
Burkina than knowing how many feet are in a mile (which they’ll never learn, by
the way, since this is Africa and Africa uses the metric system…like everywhere
else in the world does, except for the USA).
Rather, our success as teachers will be based on whether or not we
create a safe environment where girls aren’t afraid to raise their hand and
kids not only ask questions but also seek answers for themselves instead of
relying solely on what someone says or what the teacher writes on the
blackboard.
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