The Cantilevered Spirit Quest: April Update

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 12^th grade, but a 12^th grade diploma no longer means anything. According to my fellow teachers, even just a decade ago a 12^th 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 12^th 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 11^th graders barely have a 6^th 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.