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.