Model School: It all comes down to this

This week is our last week of pre-service training. All of our language and technical classes have culminated in two weeks of teaching at our Peace Corps model secondary school, beginning last Monday. For model school, all of the trainees enlisted the help of host brothers and sisters, nieces, nephews and neighbors. Any crianças close to 8th, 9th or 10th grade were bribed with promises of cookies at snack time, free notebooks and a certificate for those who come all nine days. To entice the more serious students, we offered review material for upcoming national exams.

 

There were a number of reasons I found the idea of model school terrifying. To start, we would be teaching in Portuguese. I still stumble over everyday exchanges with my neighbors and can barely get through more complicated conversations with my host mother, so presenting complex mathematical ideas to a group sounded a little overwhelming. Add to that my lack of relevant teaching experience. Although I spent a couple of years tutoring and a few years as a teaching assistant, I rarely had to get up in front of a class to introduce brand-new material. Lesson planning for a lecture is quite different from plotting out homework reviews or prepping supporting material. To make things a little harder on myself, I chose to teach an introduction to Set Theory, a more abstract topic that most American high schools don't cover.

Professor Grisha and his Química class

And then there were the students. The scary, scary students. One reason I am excited for the end of PST is that I hope I will no longer be afraid of everything I encounter after leaving the safety of my mosquito net each morning. I understand that the job of our trainers is to make us aware of what we need to do to keep ourselves safe in a new and sometimes risky environment, but sometimes I think that they are taking their role a little too seriously. Each day we are lectured on every danger we are sure to encounter in Mozambique: the PST trifecta of malaria, HIV, sexual assault; schistosomiasis in each beautiful lake or waterfall; ringworm (risk increasing proportionally to the cuteness of the cat you want to pet); potential diarrhea crawling all over the peel of every apple. Discussions of the classroom have had a similar tone: classes are huge and we will constantly be at risk of losing control; cheating runs rampant; the Mozambican systems stifles critical thinking; we will constantly struggle to get girls to participate.

When I visited a current volunteer at her site a few weeks ago, we met some of her students for a review session before their national Chemistry exam. It did a lot of good to meet some real, live, in-the-flesh secondary students as a reminder that they are just kids, some of whom are really excited to learn. Sure, we will all face challenges in classrooms here - probably many will be similar to those found in underfunded, overenrolled American schools. Some, like teaching Information Technology in a school without electricity, let alone computers, may have a particularly Mozambican flair. And I have heard repeatedly from current and former volunteers that one of the biggest challenges here is teaching within a system where the immediate benefit of an education isn't too clear. It can be difficult to stay motivated, and to motivate students, when the economy isn't necessarily able to reward those who earn a degree.

So while the visit to the school in Manjangue was a reminder that not all students are monsters, I found a sense of fear and dread building as model school approached. I was not confident in my ability to control a classroom with my limited Portuguese, even less so in my ability to clearly convey information. Catching students' interest and making them care about set theory seemed impossible. I just didn't want them to eat me alive. I am pretty sure high school students in every country can smell fear.

Professora Amy schools kids on Biologia

After preparing my lesson plan and practicing a couple of times in our tech classes, I was feeling a little bit better. I had chosen Set Theory because, although it is abstract, it lends itself easily to activities. I created sets of fruits, vegetables and school materials and prepared an interactive demonstration and the feedback from my teachers and other trainees was all very positive. Happily, I wasn't scheduled to teach until the second day, so I was able to observe other trainees first and to gauge the level of the students we would be teaching. Model School is set up as a semi-realistic mock-up of a secondary school, in the real Escola Secundária de Namaacha. We start each day with the national anthem, take attendance in the Livro da Turma, have four 45-minute blocks with passing time between each bell; however, each class only has six to (maybe) fifteen students, which makes things a lot easier for us first-time teachers.

Professor Kevin teaches Biologia

Watching classes on the first day was a huge relief. Students were engaged and participating. Although some trainees reported discipline problems, most classes passed without incident. Many students were even helpful: erasing the board, distributing snacks, even helping teachers with vocabulary or friendly corrections to their Portuguese. A pack of cookies and a notebook go a long way here. On the second day, my first class went well, with just a little extra time left at the end. I tried a few harder examples to try to get a sense of how advanced the students at the higher end were. The class ended with a student telling me that the intersection of the set of prime numbers and the set of even numbers is 2, which was a happy surprise.

My second class went much better. Bringing a little more confidence and a better sense of how my subject was being received, I was able to interact much more with the students and draw out increased participation and contributions from the class. Despite the many warnings we had been given that getting kids to think critically or creatively is like pulling teeth, by the last part of the class I had students approaching the board and coming up with their own examples of sets and subsets, and writing out the inclusion relationship. And most did it correctly.

I was feeling good at the end of class and it was Thanksgiving, so I decided to use the last five minutes to do a little cross-cultural exchange. Since no one had any questions, I told them a little about my favorite holiday. I explained that most of our families were back in the US, houses filling with the smell meals and the sounds of friends and family cooking together. I described the food and the students started shouting out their favorite dishes. But I also explained that "Dia de Gratidão" is a day to appreciate all the good things in your life and say a big "thank you." After having such a good class and realizing how important that will be for my confidence going into my real classroom in a couple of months, I was feeling a whole lot of gratitude for the roomful of teenagers who were giving their vacation time to act as guinea pigs for a bunch of inexperienced PC trainees stumbling through Math lessons in broken Portuguese.

Professora Anna keeps aluna Anneke in line

So model school has been a huge help. How fantastic is it that these kids, probably about 100 altogether, are willing to to come each morning for two weeks and sit through extra - disjointed - classes? Probably most of them have already seen the material, or if they haven't, are completely lost. I think that a lot like the opportunity to participate in a Peace Corps activity. Others like to come hang out with their friends or maybe are in it for the cookies. There a probably some who actually to like to learn a little more - especially English classes. Whatever their reasons for coming, I am thankful for the experience they allow us to have. During the snack break after my second class, a student approached with his notebook. He hadn't had a chance to write his example of sets and subsets on the board and wanted me to see if it was correct. That was all I needed to feel like I had done the best that I could to make it worth their time.

Finally - Site Placement!

Last Wednesday was a very exciting day. Six and a half weeks after arriving here, spent learning about our host country, talking to current volunteers about their extremely varied experiences, and finally visiting volunteers at sites spread throughout Mozambique, we learned where we will be spending our next two years.

Jackie's host sister looks out towards our future.

 The Peace Corps puts a heavy emphasis on flexibility and adaptability. Beginning with the application process, continuing through to site placement in-country, and even in building your relationship with your school, it is expected that you will be open to serving where and how help is needed. While applicants can express their preferences as to the region where they want to serve, PC lets you know that your invitation will come for the role that feel is the best fit for your skill set. Since Mozambique is Portuguese-speaking, many trainees here are Spanish speakers who had been hoping to be placed in Latin America. But everyone who accepted the invitation to come here has bought into the PC mantra that it is best to be flexible if you are here to serve.

The same model holds for site placement. When we arrived here, we had no idea where in Mozambique we would actually be teaching. And Mozambique varies a lot. This made packing to come here plenty challenging - there are cool, rainy mountain sites and sweltering hot sites in the northern mato, The conditions in the schools vary just as much, with class sizes that can range from 40 to 120. Teachers may be working without enough desks, without electricity, even without blackboards. Some sites are nears cities with easily accessible grocery stores selling breakfast cereal and cheese, or the nearest market may be 10K away and in some seasons may sell little more than bread, tomatoes and onions.

But the placement is done after we have spent some time in country in order to give us a chance to reflect on what we think are the essentials we will need to be happy, productive volunteers. Again, we were given the opportunity to express our preferences, but asked to be flexible. Most current volunteers told us the same thing: whatever we thought when we first learned about our site, we would most likely grow to love it once we got there. I was surprised that after visiting sites and getting used to the frequent power outages here, I found myself telling the Assistant Peace Corps Director (APCD) I interviewed with that I could live without electricity. In reality, access to fresh fruits and vegetables would be more important.

Lunch break at the Instituto de Formação de Professores

The experience of other volunteers has also taught us that despite the fact that we were brought here as English, Math, Chemistry and Biology teachers, we will need to be flexible about what we are willing to teach. Schools who are working with the Peace Corps  put in requests for a particular discipline, but needs change so quickly here that many volunteers arrive at their schools to discover that the school already found a local Chemistry teacher and but lost two Biology teachers and now the volunteer who has not taken a Bio class since freshman year of college finds themselves teaching it five times a week. One volunteer spent all of training preparing to be a Math teacher, only to spend his first year teaching French full time. Unfortunately, there is so much need in the Mozambican system that we will end up filling roles for which we are surprised to find we are the best option available.

When site placement day came along, we all were experiencing a strange kind of excitement/nervousness/generalized-anxiety. We were all dying to know where we would be going, but also knew that seeing the name of a town on a piece of paper wouldn't actually give us very much information. We would know which other trainees would be near us, and who we might not see again until our mid-service conference. (Mozambique is as long as two Californias and, due to the conditions of roads and transportation infrastructure, traveling from one region to another can be prohibitively difficult without a lot of free time). We also would get letters from the volunteers we would be replacing, but many trainees will be opening new sites and wouldn't even be getting that. So we wanted to know but weren't sure what we would be learning. Wednesday afternoon, we all filed out the basketball court, where the PC staff had drawn a map of Mozambique so we could gather with the others moving to the same province once we learned where we had been placed.

I had an added little bit of anxiety due to my interview with the APCD last Monday. Over the course of my conversation with him, I had mentioned the broad variety of experience I had, both in school and at work. I had been hoping to be put at a site where I could find a way to use my business degree and non-profit experience, at least in secondary projects. He asked if I might be interested in a "less traditional Peace Corps position," namely teaching at a university in a city, instead of at a secondary school in a smaller town. As time passed after the interview, I realized that I had really gotten my hopes up. Although I was really looking forward to the experience of living in a smaller community and the challenge that would come with it, the opportunity to work at a university here was just to good to pass up.

And that is what I will be doing for the next two years! In just over two weeks, I will be moving to Chimoio, the capital of Manica Province, to teach at the Universidade Católica de Moçambique. I spoke with the volunteer who I will replace and it sounds like a dream job. Really more than I ever could have hoped for when coming here. Once I arrive there, I will have the opportunity to work with the school to determine what courses I will be teaching. I will most likely be teaching at least one English class, which I am actually excited for, but the school also has an MBA program, or I may still be teaching math. There are a number of programs there that sound fascinating, including Gestão do Desenvolvimento (Management of Development), that includes courses in Governance, Regional & Local Economic Development, and Sociology & Economics of Development. There is a program in Engenharia Alimentar (Food Engineering is the closest I can get) that basically deals with food production systems, more on the side of technological processes and equipment for processing food. For a country like Mozambique, where agriculture is huge, but mostly on the smallholder/subsistence farming level, this is so important. Giving Mozambicans the education necessary to create systems for processing food that would allow the country to capture so much more value from the crops they grow is crucial.

The future of Mozambique

As I mentioned in my last blog post, the education system in Mozambique is hurting. The infrastructure is cripplingly underdeveloped. There is a tragic lack of skilled professionals here. Mozambique is also home to what may turn out to be the largest coal mine in the world and the recent discovery of huge natural gas fields off the northern coast has drawn significant international attention. As I see it, the best way to ensure that Mozambique can best take advantage of its natural resources and the wealth that may flow from them is education. Education will give Mozambicans the knowledge necessary to help build/design/create/control their own future. While I was already excited to be working at the secondary school level, at the university level I will be working with the students most able to have an impact quickly.


This will be different from the experience that we have been preparing for in training - small town or village, hauling water from the pump, controlling a class of 100 students in my broken Portuguese - but will be full of all kinds of other challenges and, hopefully, rewards. While I may not be able to travel as much, Chimoio is centrally located and the previous volunteer said that she got plenty of visitors. It is also only 6 hours from one of the most beautiful beaches in the country. It is near Gorongosa National Park, home to lions and elephants and a former PCV who runs educational programs. There is great hiking nearby, including a site full of ancient cave paintings.

And did I mention that I will have two spare bedrooms and the exchange rate highly favors the dollar?

This country is really beautiful!

Risk, Opportunity and Education

Living as an American in the country ranked 184th out of 187 on the Human Development Index, it is nearly impossible not to be hyper aware of the differences that exist between life the US and Mozambique. Many are physical and obvious: the deficit of paved roads outside of major cities, an unreliable power grid even in more developed areas, poor-to-non-existent sewer or drainage systems. But the intangible differences become clear after spending some time here, talking with people who grew up here, and of course learning the country's history. One of the most glaring differences is the educational system.

Escola Secundária de Namaacha

First a little commentary on some cultural differences. Most of the Peace Corps training staff is Mozambican, including all of our language teachers, who also serve as "cross-cultural facilitators." One of the most interesting aspects of training has been hearing from them about cultural values and norms. They have been invaluable resources regarding the traditions surrounding birth, death and marriage, explaining some of the practices we may not be comfortable asking our host families about. Recently, we had a conversation with a group of teachers that really stuck with me. We started out comparing how Americans and Mozambicans regard the older members of their families. Frequently, many generations live together in one home here. Our teachers explained that older people are seen as "libraries" here: keepers of history and tradition. Families tend to sprawl in Mozambique, as people absorb children when they lose brothers, sisters or cousins, or sometimes just because a town may have a good school or a father is working in a different province. People look after all of their family members; when someone is doing well, they help out the others because they know that the care will be returned if they fall on hard times.

Later in the day, the conversation turned the concept of risk. I tend to feel that Americans as a culture value taking a risk. Our country as it exists today was founded and populated mostly by immigrants, many of whom took great risks just to arrive there. Although the American Dream is based on hard work and perseverance, we seem to hold people who risk it all for success in high regard. And don't always look well on those afraid to take a chance. Our teacher thought for a little bit before responding that the way he saw it, for every Mozambican tempted to take a chance on an opportunity, there is likely to be an older person in their family reminding them of how many others are depending on them. A risk can't easily be seen as an individual decision with a large, tightly-knit family depending on the outcome. He paused and then added, "And when you take a risk, you can expect to be rewarded, right?"

One of our great Language and Cultural Facilitators

It was a great point and really made me think about what exactly a risk entails in the US. We simply have more wealth and opportunities to spread around. In Mozambique, there just is not as much that makes taking a chance worthwhile; there aren't as many rewards. On the flip side, America also has many more safety nets in place for its citizens. When someone takes a huge financial risk, they will usually have something to fall back on: bankruptcy protection, welfare, a homeless shelter.  None of those are great options, but compared to the support available here, they are at least options. The very environment holds more risk here: bacteria in the water, landmines left from the civil war, Malaria running rampant. If you don't have the means to protect yourself from these threats, why take on more risk voluntarily? Families have created their own safety nets and support systems, why endanger them?

This of course leads to the question, "Why would a bunch of well-off Americans leave the comfort and security of their homes for a country where danger lurks around every corner?" I think that most of us here had at least someone out of their friends and family ask them something similar. The truth is, we come here with the same safety net of American citizenship and governmental support we had at home. While we face more daily challenges here, we can opt out at any moment, unlike the Mozambicans we live with. Additionally, before any of us are placed in a community, it is thoroughly inspected for safety and security. Any area with uncleared ordinance is immediately out. Mozambicans may live there, but we won't. No volunteers are placed in cities with high crime rates. Although Malaria is endemic throughout the whole country, PC volunteers are provided with weekly or daily prophylaxis, a rapid test and treatment on hand. If PC staff finds out someone isn't taking their prophylaxis, this is grounds for administrative separation. We are given a water filter, a mosquito net, a well-stocked medical kit, and most importantly, two phone numbers that allow us to reach an English-speaking doctor 24-hours a day, 7 days  week. In a country with 889 doctors serve the whole population (that is 1MD for every 30,000 people), we have three doctors treating about 200 PC volunteers. If they can't treat us, we will be medevac'ed out in the blink of an eye. My mind was blown when I heard that a volunteer had been flown to South Africa with severe malaria-induced kidney failure in 2008, because there was no dialysis machine in all of Mozambique. And this is a country where malaria accounts for 29% of deaths.

But beyond any of this, what separates us from most members of the communities that we will serve is what we already had when we arrived: education and technical skills.

A little detour into some history: Portuguese colonization, followed by a brutal civil war, left the country severely lacking in the building blocks of a modern nation state. Throughout the colonial period, much of Mozambique's infrastructure was built by a combination of the Portuguese colonists and other European powers, who had a vested interest in developing Mozambique's ports. The British and Portuguese concessionary companies also ran enormous plantations on slave labor until the 20th century and continued to use forced labor until it was abolished in 1961. The conditions were so extremely harsh that many Mozambicans simply up and left the country. The Portuguese also excluded indigenous Mozambicans from the education system they developed in the colony. Mozambicans were sent instead to separate missionary schools overseen by the Catholic Church, but set up in such a way that very few could progress beyond the first three years of education.

Escola Secundária de Manjangue

 When Mozambique gained its independence, most of the Portuguese left, simply abandoning their houses and businesses and frequently destroying any animals or equipment they left behind. At independence, less than 10% of land was being used to grow crops, most of the population was illiterate (over 90%), and there were not even 1,000 indigenous Mozambicans high school graduates. There were 87 doctors in the country, 6 economists, and 2 agronomists. Much of the infrastructure that had been build was destroyed in the ensuing civil war, leading to an even lower rate of land use - down to 4% of land under cultivation in 1988 to provide less than 10% of the food needed. Almost half of the country's clinics had been forced closed due to the violence and only one of four rail lines was still running.

I was here to celebrate the 20th anniversary of peace in Mozambique. Needless to say, it has been a long trudge uphill to begin to recover since the war ended. While the economy has been growing rapidly (averaging 7%) over the last decade, with increasing foreign investment due to rich mineral deposits, the country remains poor and the education system still faces many challenges. According to USAID, the adult literacy rate in 2008 was 47% (32% for Mozambican women). A study in the northern province of Cabo Delgado found that 59% of third grade students were unable to read a single word and 26% of primary school teachers working in the province had no training.

Namaacha celebrates 20 years of peace

So while I did take a risk by quitting a good job to come here, it is a risk tempered by the very life I left behind. I arrived here with the benefit of a stable, supportive family willing to mail me just about anything I might need; friends with the means to reach out and offer words of encouragement from thousands of miles away; a government willing to foot the bill to keep me healthy and happy; and years of quality education that provide me with the wherewithal to make my time here of benefit to those around me. All in all, I think I will come out better off for my time here and with an even greater appreciation for all that I have in my life. Something I love about Peace Corps is that it isn't about giving money to countries in need, but "helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women." In other words, spreading that most valuable of resources: education.

Out Exploring: Site Visits

Time has been passing quickly since I arrived, but the last two weeks just flew. Last week, all of the trainees here in Namaacha scattered throughout the country for site visits. After six weeks of sitting through countless sessions of tech training, safety and security lessons, cross-cultural exchanges, and health and wellness discussions, it was wonderful to get out of the classrooms and visit a real, live volunteer at a real school and see what happens when we are on our own. 

Amy and I suffering through PST

I traveled with a future science teacher - a marine biologist by training - to Manjangue, a small town in the province of Gaza, just north of Maputo, the province we have called home for training. While we didn't get to see a completely different area, we had a much easier time traveling  - only a couple of hours in a chapa (the omnipresent minivan taxi that gets packed as full as possible, sometimes to a point that defies at least a couple of laws of physics). Others were traveling for 2 or 3 days to remote sites in the northern part of the country. And the experience of being at site, away from the hand-holding of our homestay families and training managers, was completely different anyways.

We visited a teacher who arrived as part of Moz 15 (I am a Moz 19er) and was just about ready to finish her service, so she had a full two years of experience and wisdom to impart to us. She had opened her site, meaning she was the first PC volunteer to teach there, and she faced some interesting challenges in establishing her working relationship with the secondary school.

Like many volunteers here, she had work hard to develop a classroom culture free of cheating, and an attendance policy that rewarded students for attending class on-time. The Mozambican system is frequently rigged in such a way that it is difficult to convince schools, let alone individual students, that the long term benefits of forbidding cheating outweigh the short term advantages. I am sure this is a subject I will be writing about plenty more in the future, as the forces at work are powerful and complex. Regarding attendance, the logistics of getting a student population that often lives scattered throughout a very large, sparsely populated region in and out of a school on time is sometimes just too much.

But in addition to these common challenges, she faced some unique to volunteers opening sites. Many teachers here, including our host, live right on school property, meaning that cultural differences extend far beyond the classroom. It is common in many parts of Mozambican culture to have visitors drop by at any time of day. Families themselves can be rather fluid, with nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins, or grandkids coming through to stay for short or extended periods of time based on various needs. Neighbors stop in to borrow food or tools, and stay to share a little fofoca (gossip). Hours are spent on porches or under the shade of a tree, just passing the time. Apparently, this practice extends to colleagues for many teachers who live at or near their schools. For an American accustomed to more privacy, establishing boundaries without offending coworkers was a challenging line to walk.

Goats really are everywhere here.

The Mozambican school year has already ended, but her tenth-grade students were taking their national exams, needed to pass through to eleventh grade. We had the chance to meet a group of her more motivated, extremely bright girls when they stopped by her house after their history test. They were excited and unbelievably entertained to meet two more women science teachers. Our host later explained that it is still a pretty well-established fact that math is a subject for men around there and they almost didn't believe that I was a math teacher. Many of the Mozambicans I have met have a really charming habit of laughing uproariously when they like something or are surprised by something. They let out an "eeeeeeeeeeee" that you can't help but grin at. These girls were practically rolling on the ground when I said I teach math. Another friend walked up shortly after and they made her guess what we taught. Then they all just started laughing again. It made me really happy to be here as a lady math teacher.

Sonia cooks the best prawns, chicken and crab matapa in Mozambique.

 Other highlights of the trip included: the best prawns in Mozambique at a tiny, menu-less restaurant in the beach town of Bilene. Swimming in the Indian Ocean for the first time. Learning the proper way to chop garlic from a French ex-pat diveshop owner and having his homemade coffee ice cream over fresh toaster-oven brownies. Getting a guided tour of the sea life in Bilene's lagoon from my marine-bio travel buddy. Getting up at 4:00 am to watch election results and being treated to oatmeal and breakfast burritos on tortillas cooked in a PC dutch oven (pan on rocks inside another pan; used on an electric burner or charcoal stove by volunteers without ovens). Finding a traditional medicine man's stall, complete with monkey pelts and unidentified bone bits, tucked in the corner of a market.

They tasted even better than they look

All in all, the visit made me really excited to get out and start working. It also drove home exactly how much everything will change in a few weeks when training is over. While we knew from the start that we would be scattering all over the country after ten weeks, after experiencing how difficult travel can be here, the reality that some of us won't see each other until the midservice conference next year is really sinking in. But at the same time, once we arrive at site, we will have a chance to integrate into a whole new Mozambican community. While we will surely face challenges, once we leave the structure of PST and begin to establish ourselves as teachers, neighbors and community members, we will have the opportunity to build brand new relationships and, hopefully, friendships.