Somewhere South of the Sun

I blinked and the school year was over. Sure, it helps that the third trimester was barely five weeks of teaching, and that the heat has melted my brain. But I can still hardly believe that summer is already upon us. (Check out my last day of school pictures!)

As I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, a French family visited our village a couple of months ago. (You can test out your French on their blog.) They donated several sets of math and science text books, and I’ve been anxiously awaiting an opportunity to use them with my students. The last unit in my 7th grade class was three dimensional objects: prisms, cylinders, pyramids and cones. Perfect. They’re a pain to draw on the blackboard and the books have great illustrations and lots of practice problems.

Before assigning the students reading and problems, I smartly gave them time to look through the books. Colors, glossy pages, and cartoon learning aids were all new. So was the realization that math in France is pretty much the same as math in Burkina Faso. “Monsieur, we studied this, too!” Then disaster struck. Most of the kids had never used a textbook, and so they didn’t know how to use a textbook.

Things that I took for granted after a lifetime of daily math readings and homework were completely foreign to them: the table of contents, the glossary, the idea of reading to learn, example problems and chapter summaries. Every single group had their hand up with questions the entire class period. Being just one person against their 60, I was completely outnumbered. When I wasn’t helping a group, they were chatting with their friends, wandering outside, or complaining about not understanding. Even once they knew the answer to a question, they didn’t know what to do: I literally had to tell one group to write the answer on a piece of paper. We accomplished nothing.

I went home that afternoon and just stared at the wall. I wasn’t able to understand how I had been beaten so badly by what was supposed to be a fun lesson. What had I not explained well? Why were they unable or unwilling to use the books as I had expected? I finally realized that because textbook use in class was a brand new concept, I had to start from the very beginning. The next day I gave them a crash course in book use and a cheesy speech about how we were trying a new learning method. They were used to copying and memorizing a teacher’s notes, but today they were going to have to search out the answers on their own. It worked for about ten minutes. I eventually threatened a test the next day, and when some kid ran out of the room, another threw a pencil, and several others had a yelling contest, I made good on my threat. I wasn’t happy; they weren’t happy; and their grade averages certainly weren’t happy. It wasn’t a good way to end the year in my favorite class, but I’m glad I tried. Seeing their reaction to a new learning style and different problems makes me want to provide all the more variety in my classes next year. And the textbooks will certainly be back.

The second crazy experience of the trimester was much more positive.

Outside of classes, the last three weeks of school were consumed by the first annual Headmaster’s Cup, a school-wide soccer tournament, complete with jerseys, a trophy, and monetary prizes for the winning classes. As the head teacher for one of the sixth grade classes, I found myself as the coach and number one fan of what would undoubtedly be the underdog team in all of our games. I took the (apparently unusual) step of deciding to have fun with the kids, and we organized a practice game for our team. Most of the boys in the class showed up (and a bunch of kids from other classes), and we had a great three-hour game. (”Young Africans never get tired, monsieur.” OK, play on!) Everyone- the team, the substitutes and the other students- got as much playing time as they wanted. That makes it sound too formal. Let me try again.

There were 30-40 kids on the field at all times. Cartwheels were performed anytime someone touched the ball. With all the team-switching, I have no idea how they kept track of who was going which direction. The field had no out-of-bounds lines, so we played until the cows got in the way or until someone decided to throw the ball in. One small speedy kid got stuck playing goalie for a while (no crossbar on the goal…which is two large branches dug into the ground). After making some amazing saves, he took to yelling “Small but dangerous!” every so often from the goal box. He was so adament about it, that we adopted his saying for the team’s slogan and never looked back.

We caught a couple of lucky breaks in our first two games, and at the end of the round found ourselves advancing with the older teams. In a fantastic game, we won our semi-final match against the 7th grade team, and the superiour 8th grade team lost to the lucky 9th graders.

And just like that we were in the finals. The day of the final match was cool and cloudy- perfect for playing soccer. The school had invited the mayor, prefet, school inspector, and all the other important people in the village to the game. And most of the villagers showed up as well. Why not, right? Before the match everyone was talking about how the 9th graders were going to stomp all over my 6th graders. By halftime, we had made fans out of every one of the naysayers. Though the score remained 0-0, we had played very well with the older, bigger, and stronger kids; our goalie had made some fantastic saves; and our offense had several near misses. Midway through the second half, our legs started to give out, and the 9th graders took advantage of our fatigue. They won 3-0, but the damage had been done. They had not creamed the little kids, and we deflated their egos, if only just barely.

What was our prize? A new soccer ball and the equivalent of about $25! Yup! $25. How crazy is that? The next day I talked to the class president and we decided to buy candy and peanuts and crackers for the entire class. Even though they are almost 100 strong, $25 can provide quite the sugar high for a bunch of sixth graders. It was chaos. Candy candy candy. They loved it. I had problems with class control, but it wasn’t too bad…after all, it was a party. Watch out for us next year. We’ll be a little less small, but still very dangerous.

Now that summer is upon us, I find myself staring at a void with quite a bit of downtime. I’m going to be helping with the training of the new volunteers who are arriving in a couple of weeks. I’m really excited to meet the new people and help them get ready for their service. It will also be nice to see my former host family in Ouahigouya, where our training was last year and where the training will be this summer. Additionally, I hope to do some traveling- possibly to Togo and Benin- later in the summer. Despite my excitement, however, I will definitely miss my students, and am extremely glad that I’m coming back for another year in the fall.

Sweating it Out in Village

My latest “I’m not in Kansas anymore” moment came a couple of weeks ago during my afternoon math class with 95 6th graders. We’re in the middle of our hot season, and the temperature in the classroom was easily 110 degrees. With the glare from the sun, the blackboard is hard to see from the front corners of the room, so I had to close the door while writing at the edge of the board. This cut off basically all airflow to the room. In the time it took me to write the definition of a histogram, almost every student had taken off his or her uniform shirt (for some unfathomable reason, they almost all wear undershirts) and were using them as fans. I looked out to see a sea of swirling shirts and sweating students.

My first thought was, “Huh, this looks a lot like Homer Hankie time at a Minnesota Twins game.” Now, I’m sure the school has a rule somewhere about kids being required to actually wear their school uniforms, but at the time I was sweating buckets, and I knew the temperature in the back of the classroom- where the older, bigger kids sit- was probably 10 degrees hotter. I decided to let the rule slide.Needless to say, we finished class early that day.

Sweating has become a recreational activity for me. On a cool day, if I sit in one spot in the shade fanning myself and there’s a breeze I can almost stop sweating. The slightest activity however, such as turning the page of my book, brings back the perspiration with full force. On a hot day I feel like I just got out of the swimming pool.

Constantly. I’m never more than five feet from a water bottle, and when I drink I immediately see an increase in my sweat production.

It’s like the water doesn’t even bother to go down my throat. My front porch gets sun pretty much all day; it heats up so much that I can’t even walk barefoot on it in the middle of the night.

I have two saving graces. One, my cannery. This is a large clay pot full of water that I keep sitting on moist sand. Magically the water stays cool. It’s not exactly a refrigerator, but it works pretty darn well. My second saving grace are mangoes. Mango season coincides with the hot season, and there’s nothing quite as refreshing as eating a juicy mango after a long day chasing kids…uh, I mean teaching kids.

The hot season is almost over now though…I think. We’ve gotten several rain showers and one decent storm in the past couple of weeks.

The first rain storm kept the temperatures under 95 degrees for almost 12 hours, but the subsequent storms have done better. Last week we had two days that actually felt comfortable. Of course, I’m not quite sure what that translates to in terms of degrees. I was talking to my mom on the phone last week and told her- honestly- that it didn’t feel too bad at the moment. Then I looked at my thermometer: 98 degrees. What am I going to do when I have to go back to a Minnesota winter?

One more thing. Last week I gave a series of lessons on the Beatles to my English class. They had never heard of them, and I thought that was an atrocity. I talked about their music, their importance to music history, and their influence on the culture of the 1960’s in America and Europe. I brought in my iPod and some speakers I borrowed from a friend, and we listened to several songs. The favorite: “I Want to Hold Your Hand”. For the grand finale, I busted out my guitar and taught them “Let it Be”. If you have ever questioned the importance of arts education, question no more. I’m not a very good guitarist, and my vocal skills are…decidedly sub-par. But they loved it. We had a great time, and they demanded lyrics to more songs. They also wanted to dance. “Let it Be” isn’t exactly a dancing kind of tune, but luckily my iPod has plenty of songs from one of the most popular American artists they do know: Micheal Jackson.

(Why do they know him? Remember “We are the World”?) “Thriller” was a big hit, as was “Billy Jean”. I think they think I’m crazy- what teacher plays music and sings and lets them dance during class?- but that’s OK once in a while. Now I have to somehow write a test on what we learned.
Hope all is well.