Finally teaching

Day 6 – May 5

Today I finally got to teach some classes. The Form I English teacher, who had told me on Friday that she would tell me on Monday what I should teach (so much for preparation) did not show up for the start of classes, so I just went on my own with Friday’s “Teach verbs” lingering in my head.

The students greeted me and I started with a self-introduction, talking about Canada and its difference in size and population from Tanzania. Whereas in Japan the sheer size of Canada compared to Japan wowed the students, here it didn’t produce much of a reaction. I continued on, talking about my family. They were taken aback when they found out my mother is older than my father, but the big winner on the day was the fact that my brothers and I are all one year apart. I guess this is not the norm here. While the students were all attentive, some never put up their hand to guess at answers, while others did so for every question. In that respect, it wasn’t entirely different from teaching in Canada.

I continued on with the English lesson but it quickly became clear that no one had any idea what a verb was, or at least how to define it. Falling back on nouns, I didn’t have much success with that either, so I decided to spend the lesson reviewing exactly what nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are. Again, they were quite attentive and by the end of the double period I felt we had made some progress. Not sure if any of it is part of their curriculum, but it can’t hurt.

Immediate following was another double period with the other Form I class. I began as before, but when one of the students at the back “guessed” the breadth of Canada from coast to coast on the first try, I had a feeling something was amiss. I let it go, but when the same student came up with the exact population of Canada, I finally recognized that he was the same student that had been sitting in the back row of the previous class, and I called him on it. Yep, he had been to both classes. Ah well, can’t fault the kid for loving English, but I told him he couldn’t reply anymore, and that from today onwards, he had better stick to the class to which he is assigned.

At break time today (after 5th period), I brought out the Frisbee that I had brought from home. It was an instant hit as almost all the students gathered around and watched as another teacher and I threw it about. It wasn’t long before they wanted in, so everyone had a go at throwing it, and it was uproarious laughter every time a student’s throw went awry. Standing in crowds like that, it was a bit dangerous, as on occasion the throws winged immediately right or left. Fortunately only twice did another student get a Frisbee in the face, and there were no injuries. I am hoping that the Frisbee (and the soccer balls that I presented the other day) will help to break the ice with the students, not only outside the classroom, but also inside it. With any luck, I will see the effects of that tomorrow.

After break I was caught off-guard when the form two teacher summoned me to go with her to class. There must have been some misunderstanding with what we had discussed last week, but I had no great objections with going to observe another class. However, it didn’t work out that way. About 10 minutes into her 80 minute lesson on shopping, she called to me from the front of the class, “Mr. Chris, would you like to continue the lesson?”

“Uh…..huh?” I stammered. But she came back and handed me the chalk and I tried to think of things as I slowly walked to the front of the class. Each English teacher has now done this to me once. I led the class in a little exercise on making comparisons and while they were writing a few sentences, I went to the back to clarify things with the teacher. I asked her if what I had done was sufficient and if she had material to continue the lesson, to which she replied that she had.

So after taking up the exercise, I once again took my seat at the back of the class and proceeded to witness a horrid disaster. The teacher went up to the class, looked for a little while in her book, and then started going off about the negative form, writing random sentences on the board and randomly asking students to put them into the negative. There was absolutely no connection to the previous part of the lesson and no particular merit in what she was doing, but what was worse, was that she was teaching the students that “I didn’t ate” was the negative form of “I ate”. Furthermore, when a student gave the answer “I didn’t walk” to “I walk,” she told her she was wrong and made her repeat “I didn’t walked.” I was mortified and really wanted to correct things, but there was no opportunity to do it discreetly and correcting as big an error as that in front of the entire class (and a native speaker correcting the regular teacher to boot) would not have been good for either the teacher’s confidence or the student’s confidence and respect in the teacher, so I held my breath (it was difficult).

She moved from there to switching random sentences to the present continuous, even if the resulting sentence was not at all proper English. When she had run out of random sentences, she proceeded to have the students read the questions and answers to an exercise in their notebooks that she had already corrected and handed back. It was all extremely painful to watch, and I was thankful when the bell was mercifully rung.

It is such a dilemma for headmasters and the school system in general to hire unqualified teachers (basically just Form VI graduates). The need someone to “teach” the subjects to the students, but you have to wonder if it is really benefitting them at all. This teacher, despite being in the school for months called everyone by the name “YOU!” and even tossed chalk at a student to get her attention! If a student answered wrong, she would just shake her head and say, “No, sit down!”

Apparently, only three teachers at the school, including the headmaster, are qualified teachers (they have passed the two year diploma course at college). The difference in quality of teaching, ethics of teaching, and professionalism is very, very evident.

Once again after that class, a good chunk of the teachers were milling about and talking in the staff room while the timetable showed a full schedule. I still can’t figure that out, but it’ll have to be left for another day.