Our introduction to Model School was something like a parachute drop into a sea of children. Two weeks ago, we were simply thrown into Rwandan classrooms to teach, for the most time mercifully in pairs. However, three days into teaching, it was no longer acceptable to co-teach with your partner and you were completely on your own to sink or float in front of the classroom. And let me tell you, teaching here is simultaneously the most rewarding and frustrating battle of my experience thus far.
After a week and a half of teaching, things are starting to fall into place, but it is also becoming clear that we really have our work cut out for us as teachers. Not only will we face challenges in the classroom, but we will face challenges in the education system as a whole. Rwanda only recently switched over to an Anglophone system and it's educational structure isn't quite developed for it. The National Exam is full of errors, some of them as egregious as asking students to answer questions on the feeding habits of elephants....as part of a reading comprehension unit based upon a passage about malaria. But, I suppose that's the same as standardized testing anywhere.
The Rwandan classroom, however, is dramatically different from anything I have ever experienced in America. Of course, this is partially because I grew up in a Montessori school, which is in and of itself, different from any other system of education. However, it seems that most of the credit can be given to the distinct cultural differences Rwandans and Americans have when it comes to hierarchy and respect. American students are rude...and often encouraged to be if it means that they are using critical thinking and engaged in the classroom. However, in Rwanda, manners take the precedent. This means that the typical school day has been starting off with me asking questions to an audience that often gives me a deer-in-the-headlights look, or even worse, averts their eyes, for several minutes before they finally realize that I really do want them to engage in my lesson. Even then, the most noise that is made is the sound of the Rwandan equivalent of a finger snap, which is really just a flick of the wrist that results in a noise that I would equate with the sound of hundreds of small fish being flung against concrete....and is hardly an encouraging sound. And neither is the sound of rain in the morning. It means that all of the crazy American teachers will show up to class on time only to discover that they will not be teaching because too few students have actually shown up to school. Hence, a Rwandan fear of the mud creates a rain day.
Rwandan students are accustomed to a fairly dry form of teaching. They expect their teachers to walk into the classroom, write some notes on the board, and maybe perform a fill-in-the-blanks exercise, before walking back out. However, with the right attitude and lesson plan, the silence can, in fact, be broken. After spending the greater part of a 50 minute lesson to describe what a game is and to ask my students if they liked games and wanted to play one, I was finally able to introduce them to charades. Each day has been a battle to engage them in something to make them think...or even better, to have fun. However, I have proven that Rwandan students can, in fact, complete a crossword puzzle, and do, in fact, enjoy listening to music in the classroom. I highly doubt if any of my students understood how listening to “California Gurls” and jotting down the words they understood was integral to their understanding of the English language, but they were definitely willing to take the class time to do it.
For all of the children there are in Rwanda, there are very few activities that seem to cater to them. It is not considered acceptable to play with them or to be goofy-a reality that hit me with a fellow trainee told us that her host family had informed her that she would need to stop singing and making animal noises at children when she was married and too much of an adult to behave that way anymore, which can only be expected from a culture that has no word for “fun.” As for the stigma, I'll keep my reputation as an immature and crazy white person if it means that the kids will still like me. Nothing brightens my day like going home to the three screaming children who now live at my house and performing the hokey pokey on what feels like repeat. Really. I think that's the ticket to anything in life; maintain a childlike outlook and it all looks good from there.
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