April 10, 2013
The last few months have brought an end to both the dank hot
tropical summer and the sweet joys of mango season. With the cooler (relatively
speaking: 90 in the shade, death heat in the sun) drier weather, farmers have
begun to reap their harvests; the market has exploded from colorless spreads of
garlic, onions, and potatoes to include the greens and reds of cucumber,
squash, tomatoes, okra, and even (very recently) some lettuce.
The school year finally got going in early-February. I
enjoyed focusing only on physics this trimester. Teaching eleventh-grade math
to kids who never learned arithmetic was kind of soul-crushing last year;
teaching physics requires some math but you can make it fun through its real-world
intuitive applications. A year of experience has also made a world of
difference. No surprise there, I guess. My Portuguese is more fluent, I have a
better feel for where I need to slow down and for where I can skip over things,
and generally have a stronger grasp on the Mozambican classroom environment (I
also have smaller classes this year – 50-60, the kids actually have desks, and
I have chalkboards that aren’t falling off the wall). Last year I entered the
classroom about five days after flying back into country from two months of
medical evacuation (post-car accident) and just kind of dove in without any
chance to test the waters or even acclimate to my community and living
environment. In hindsight I was pretty much a deer in the headlights just
plowing forward without much sense of what was working and what wasn’t (in my
defense, my school last year barely held itself together as an organization).
This year I knew what to expect and am feeling pretty good about my command of
the students. I can write a general outline of my lesson and improvise as I see
what is catching and what isn’t. They know that I show up consistently and
on-time. So they show up (for the most part) consistently and on-time. They sit
down, shut up, and respect me when I’m teaching (classroom management is pretty
easy – makes me feel very unsure about how I would do as a teacher in the
States where I imagine classroom management isn’t so simple).
A lot of the material still goes way over the kids (by kids
I mean 17-35 year-olds) heads (lack of any math skills makes things tough), but
the few semi-prepared kids in every class appreciate, I think, that I spend a
lot of time relating the material using real-world examples and props that I
bring into class. Some of the less-prepared students seem to feel pretty
overwhelmed by the complexity of even the most basic physics calculation, but
within that group it seems that there is still some appreciation for the fact
that I don’t just copy notes out of the book and walk out of the room. One girl
(who really doesn’t seem to follow a lot of material but is at least
consistently in class and attentive) has regularly brought in textbook
questions on the material that we are studying. I’m pretty sure that she
doesn’t follow much of the thinking in the on-the-spot solutions I provide; rather,
she seems to be testing if I really get the material as much as maybe I seem to
(I do most examples on the blackboard without referring to my notes). I take
pride in showing that I am not just regurgitating someone else’s notes. I think
(at least I hope) that my students appreciate that a bit.
Of course, school in Mozambique is still school in
Mozambique. The majority of students are ill-prepared for the given curriculum
(you can’t learn college level physics if you can’t divide or understand what a
negative number is!) and very very few of them do any studying outside of
school. Without my very generous grading scheme about 90-95% of students would
fail (and you only need 10/20 to pass!). School directors, because they must
answer to provincial directors who must answer to Maputo who must answer to
foreign governments and aid organizations, have to allow the majority of
students to pass (to meet statistics demanded by the outside money). Hence, all
of the ill-prepared students I have in eleventh grade and hence my generous
grading scheme. The result of “Millennium Goals” for increased high school
enrollment has been the erosion of the integrity of the high school system. Way
more kids are studying through 12th grade, but a 12th
grade diploma no longer means anything. According to my fellow teachers, even
just a decade ago a 12th grade diploma essentially guaranteed
employment; very few people got them because they were hard to get – the system
had some sort of integrity. Today, we have illiterate kids who can’t do basic
arithmetic entering 12th grade. And they will pass because the
directors have to meet their mandated pass-percentages. Failing them would be a
waste anyway: the students would keep repeating a grade in which the curriculum
is way too advanced for their skillset never gaining the base education that
they missed out on at the elementary and middle levels (because teachers didn’t
show up, teachers didn’t teach, or the schools didn’t hold them to any
standards – maybe the erosion of passing standards has contributed to teachers
not really caring? When your grades stop meaning anything and your students
enter your grade without any of the background needed to learn the material you
teach, it can be hard to stay motivated. Maintaining motivation for two years
has been hard enough for me – I can’t imagine making a career of it).
Part of the thinking behind Peace Corps’ education project
goals here in Mozambique is that volunteers will pass on their enthusiasm and
methodology to local teachers. The goal makes sense in theory (and on some
level, especially with younger motivated teachers, it may happen). But I think
the biggest issue is not that Mozambican teachers are, by nature, lazy people
who don’t give a shit about their work; the problem is that Mozambican teachers
work within a system where their work is systematically undermined and in which
they almost never see positive results from hard work. I know a ton of
Mozambicans who work their asses off taking care of their machambas (farms).
They work their asses off because they know that if they do, their food will
grow. But if I’m a teacher working within a system where my 11th
graders barely have a 6th grade educational background (and I’m
required to teach an advanced curriculum, by law and because the provincial
trimester exams and national final exams will cover said material) and in which
putting time into crafting a just meritocracy will ultimately be wasted when
directors change all of my grades, why bust my ass? My kids aren’t going to get
the material anyway. And the ones that do won’t be set apart from the ones who
don’t because, ultimately, everyone will pass.
To me, improving schools is much more a matter of systematic
change than it is motivating and improving the methodology of local teachers.
How can we expect someone to stay motivated and put time into teaching when
they work within a school that systematically crushes their work? I try my best
here, but god knows I would have a lot of trouble staying motivated after
another few years. When the system changes (starting from primary school real
passing standards; a more reasonable curriculum; teachers only being paid when
they show up), new methodologies and motivations might be able to catch hold
and affect more change (but do we expect the Mozambican government to turn down
aid dollars and systematically tear-down and re-build their educational
system?).
But I digress… Most of us spent a lot of time complaining to
each other about the educational system last year. Those still hanging in at
this point have mostly learned to let it be and make peace with the work they are
able to get done, myself included. We may not change the system, but I think
our unique perspective is still valuable to students. Those students will
eventually become teachers. Maybe there is something to that…
This school year is going pretty well and has been enjoyable
for the most part. Got some good kids and, because I now know what to expect
from the system, I am less frustrated and surprised by the inevitable B.S.
On the side, I started a Science Club that meets for about
an hour every week. We do science experiments and I try to engage the kids
about their curiosities about the world. How do rainbows form? Why does a heavy
tree float while a light coin sinks? It’s fun stuff. Most students have little
to no exposure to critical thought (one of most Peace Corps teachers’ biggest
frustrations) and rarely see the applications of the science theory they learn
in class. I’m hoping that guiding students through the scientific method in our
various experiments will boost the critical thinking a bit and also prepare
them to enter the local science fair.
I’m working with the Chiure District government to put on a
district science fair that will include students from all four secondary-level
schools in our district, the two in Chiure-Sede (district capital), the one in
Ocua, and the one professional agricultural school also in Ocua (where I have a
PC friend teaching English). The winners from our district fair will continue
on to the provincial fair in Pemba which I am working with the provincial
Ministry of Science and Technology to organize. Local fair should be in June,
provincial in July, National in August or September.
On the home front: Our cat, to our great pleasure, has become a rat killing machine. Eric woke up for a late-night piss the other night and found the cat tossing around a recent kill. A few days before that, I found him gobbling down (bones and all) the previous night's kill. Face first. Gnarly. Our "alpendra" (gazebo thing) fell down in a storm. But we re-built it. New papaya trees are coming up. We got lemon grass, piri-piri, basil, pumpkin, and bananas growing. We are eating a lot of leaves.
Last week I proctored provincial trimester exams and was also
able to complete my grading. I will turn in my final grade sheets to the school
in the next few days. This week I am mostly hanging out: no classes, grades are
done, science club is done until next trimester. I’m waiting to hear if I’m
going to have to fly down to Maputo to enter a witness statement for the case
against the drunk dipshit who flipped the car over last year, killed two of my
friends, and almost killed me (he was hiding out in South Africa but came back
to Mozambique and was arrested a couple of weeks ago). If I don’t have to do
that, I will hopefully do a little bit of traveling – see some friends and
drink a few beers on a tropical beach somewhere… life is hard in the Peace
Corps.
In the meantime, I’m researching grad programs (water resources
engineering or geomatics) and trying to figure my shit out a bit post-Peace
Corps. I’ll be back in school in a couple weeks, will be busy with teaching,
science club, and organizing science fairs. I get two weeks off in July (climb
Kilimanjaro? visits from friends? be a vegetable on a deserted island?), have a
Peace Corps conference in August/September, will begin applying to grad school
in Septmeber/October, and will then literally be on my way out of here (third
trimester tends to kind of fall apart at school; given that 2013 is an election
year, we are told that things will taper off especially early). I will be done
in about seven months. Not a short time, but on the scale of 27 months (and the
mentality you put yourself into entering that time period) it feels like nothing.
Terrifying. I don’t even want to know how much the world has sped up since I
left (most people weren’t carrying smart phones), especially in relation to how
much my world has slowed down (a busy day: morning run, coffee and bread, bike
into town to buy food, bike home, go to school and teach for 2-3 hours, come
home, make dinner, sleep).
Catch ya’ll Stateside in December. Until then, I’ll try to
write a few updates.
Mozambican Engineering: Re-building my bedroom
Cat and Mouse: Dog and Cat
All four boys staying warm by the stove on a rainy morning.
