Back to School

The end of the rainy-season is finally here. All of the villagers are transitioning to harvesting and subsequently drying their crops, which they will eat/sell over the next year. School finally started the second week of October and once again I’ll be teaching English (this time only 1 class, not 3 since I have to commit more time to my other business projects). I’m with the quatrième students (which is their 9^th year in school) who have already had two previous years of English instruction. Even though their English level is novice at best, the fact that they are in their 9^th year of school signifies that they are strong students who have endured all the way to this year in school. I gave them a pre-test the 2^nd week of school to gauge their initial English levels and hopefully by the end of the year they will have improved.

A picture of my house in its entirety. Far left is my shower/latrine, middle-left is my hand-washing station and to the far right is my front gate. Took this at the end of the rainy season standing in my neighbors courtyard.

Before school started, my school director and I discussed the most pragmatic class for me to teach. We opted for the 9^th year class because I will be able to speak more English with my students instead of just teaching them in French. Having them hear my authentic English accent will train them on the correct pronunciations and sentence structures. Before school started I unrealistically wanted to only speak English and implement an “immersion” style course, where the kids would eventually pick-up on English due to the fact that it would be the only language that I speak. However, a month into class I find it difficult to do this because explications in French are almost always necessary for complete comprehension of my lessons. Later on in the academic year I’m sure I’ll switch to more English.

When living in a weakly fortified house in Africa...(There were four in total in one night)

Overall teaching is going great so far. My much smaller class size and easy schedule gives me something to do each week, yet leaves ample time to work on other projects. I’m also holding office hours and English club each week to let students ask questions 1-on-1 as well as do some cooler activities in English (last week we translated and learned the lyrics to “Tree Little Birds” by Bob Marley, which they thought was super fun).  My students are responsive; not too much baby-sitting going on which makes it more durable for me. To make things more interesting I split my class into teams and award points for various accomplishments with a “special” prize awaiting the team with the most points. My students love this. It’s a great way to “hack” students into learning and participating more in class. They are doing all this extra work to win points for that prize at the end, but what they don’t know is that they are actually learning English at the same time haha!

I went to my neighbor Sarah's village to help set-up a hand-washing station for her family compound (She's an English Teaching Volunteer who lives 7km from me). Washing hands with soap properly seems like an elementary activity yet many kids here didn't know how to. We then did a mini training with her family on how to wash hands with soap and why it's important. Not only is it dirty here, but people wipe after going number 2 with their hands as well as eat with them, but most don't use soap. Such a simple project with such large benefits.

Going back to school to the school environment has been good so far, but it also reiterates to me how hard it is to succeed with academics here in Burkina Faso. I often look back to my upbringing to recap my educational experience and what was available to me as a student. I had parents who read to me at night, top-notch schools with highly-trained teachers and all sorts of external resources to help further my academic studies. In Burkina, and especially in smaller villages such as Ramsa, the educational experience is almost the exact opposite of mine. First, they must undergo schooling in French which is not their native tongue. French is never spoken in the household which makes it hard for students to learn the language. Even some of my 9^th year students have trouble speaking basic French. There are no books (academic or novels) so students can only learn from what is written on the chalk-board. Their informational intake is very limited in this respect. At the household level, parents aren’t involved on a daily basis with their children’s studies. It’s tough because most parents don’t speak French but even so they typically don’t give any motivation or follow their students’ progress. Instead, I mainly hear parents calling their kids “stupid” when their studies are failing, instead of encouraging them to do better. And finally, the school environment isn’t a very positive place that doesn’t foster both education and personal development. Most teachers didn’t want to be teachers when choosing their professions. They wanted a government job with a salary, so they decided to settle for teaching since there are many openings. I’ve had many talks with my teachers and they are all concerned with the development of their country and all agree how important education is, but when I see them in class it’s hard to agree that their teaching methods are efficiently contributing to the country’s human development. Almost all teachers yell and shame students not only if they misbehave, but if they try and are incorrect. This makes students extremely shy and timid. As a result their public speaking skills and overall confidence at low levels. I don’t think physical violence is a daily practice but I’ve seen it happen a few times. This last part definitely derives from the “hitting” culture here, where parents hit their kids daily and kids hit each-other just as much. Hitting would cause an outrage in the States but here it’s so common that women often joke about which of their actions would make their husbands hit them.

Hanging-out with my Village Chief drinking dolo. He's an extraordinary Burkinabe.

I’m doing my best to change this culture little by little. I tell my colleagues the importance of positive discipline and how physical violence is not effective. But most importantly my changes are taking place in my classroom. I give participation points to those who volunteer in class, even if they’re wrong. If someone laughs at another for making a mistake, I put them in their place. I talk about the importance of school and how with hard-work and determination anything is possible. Writing this blog it’s so apparent the cultural differences between our countries. Back in the US we do everything for our kids to give them the best chances to succeed, but here in Burkina hardly anything is being done. A kid’s success in life is almost solely dependent on themselves. I wish it wasn’t like this. But, as most development practitioners know the biggest roadblocks are often cultural.

My English class taking their first test. 48 kids in total.

Maybe my student has the words "father" and "great-great-grandfather" mixed up haha. Whatever the case, 115 years old and still a farmer? Impressive.

After my students finished their tests I told them to draw on the back. One of my favorite students left me this note. He also got a 100% on the test. It's little things like this, appreciation and seeing improvement, which make this job worth-while.

Outside of the educational sphere, my CED related work is starting to pick-up. The moringa garden is almost underway once we cement in the fencing to the ground. Our soybeans are in the process of drying and afterwards we will start out tofu transformations. My counterpart and I are also preparing a multitude of other trainings to present to our saving’s groups which will take place over the course of the dry season. One thing that particularly excites me is the heightened interest in opening a village pre-school. I’ve shared with my community that other volunteers have started local pre-schools/kinder-gardens to help prepare children before entering primary school. We would teach them some basic writing skills, basic French, classroom behaviors, motor-skills and other activities to make the transition easier. It would start-out very small and informal with the potential to grow in size and legitimacy. It would be great to see this particular project come to fruition since as show in the paragraphs up above, the educational situation here in Ramsa needs all the help it can get.

In other news, it’s still blazing hot during the day but at night it’s finally getting cold! I finally slept inside my house for the first time by choice since coming to Ramsa. Group 29 (the volunteers who came in October 2013) are finally leaving back to the US which makes my Group 31 officially “juniors”. It’s crazy that I’ve already been here for 10+ months. I know that they next 17 months will go by even faster. Trip to the Ivory Coast hopefully just after Christmas.

Hope all is well back in the US.

Until next time,

MB