Ah! The joys of teaching. Today marked the official beginning of my World Wise Schools (WWS) correspondence program with students in America. I brought in letters from a 6th grade class that, conveniently enough, my mother teaches at the school I went to growing up in Evergreen. The chaos that ensued was too precious not to take some time away from marking papers to record it.
Right off the bat, my students were dumbfounded by the difficulty of the task: to read a letter and to write a letter. While their English is definitely at a level where they were able to understand the assignment, their self-confidence is not. After I explained the instructions for the task in each of my classes, there were absolutely no questions...that is, until it was time to begin. Suddenly, my instructions were completely unclear and my students were telling me they had no idea what I could possibly expect of them. When we went step by step through the instructions a second time, I found that they actually understood each word perfectly, so I asked the what the question was. The only response they had for me was, “It is difficult, teacher.” It wasn't that they didn't understand what I expected of them, it was that they were terrified of actually doing it.
Eventually, I did manage to calm them enough to break into groups to read the letters, but then I found that they wanted to write back in groups. Of course, we all know how the story of the group project. One person does all the work, the rest learn nothing, and they all end up with the same score. I had to vehemently deny this option and insist on the fact that my students are in fact separate entities and could, in fact, write a letter about themselves all on their own. I had overcome my second hurdle.
Once they began writing, the results were magnificent. First, Innocentos in my S6 class just about cried when he came to the end of a letter and found that the author had ended it by saying, “I can't wait to hear from you.” He started dashing madly around the classroom to ask each of his peers what it could have possibly meant and was convinced that it meant his pen pal was not looking forward to hearing him. Even after I had identified the problem, forced him to sit down, and explained that “I can't wait” is a common English phrase that also means “I am excited,” he didn't believe me and ended up including the following in his letter:
I'm not happy for you because at the end of your letter you wrote “I can't wait to hear back from you!” I will be happy when you will tell me why you wrote it.
Who knew such a harmless and well-intentioned phrase could cause so much damage?
On the whole though, the results of the letter writing project were phenomenal. Sure, some students copied their pen pal's letters word for word, which led them to write that I had once been a student at their school and that my mother is their teacher or that they had recently gotten a few inches of snow....none of which are true, but some of the other results were both hilarious and heartwarming.
One student had just been reading an entertainment section of The Denver Post in Newspaper Club on a day that I had introduced them to comics, crosswords, advice columns and letters to the editor. This particular student was completely shocked by what he read and just had to ask a student in America about it. He wrote:
Dear my friend: John
How are you Me I'am OK Because I have life.
I Had to ask you a few question
I have just read the letter from Disgusted in last week's copy of your news paper in it she makes very wild remarks about the youth of to day and suggests that we are all noisy selfish violent
Where is his evidence
I have met some very disagreeable adults even in my own short life, but know people young and old, are different
Remark like that of Disgusted help no one I am surprised that you found space in your paper to print it and promote his views
My GOD bless you
So there you have it, the opinion of a Rwandan youth on the opinion of an American adult on American youth. That's what this dialogue should be all about: asking questions about a different culture and thinking critically about differences of opinion. Students at the Montessori School of Evergreen are in for a real treat when those letters arrive.
They will also be receiving a huge dose of gratitude. One student wrote:
"Do you eat every morning break fast? How it can be possible?" serving as a reminder of how lucky many of us are to be eating three meals a day. My students' gratitude for having both parents or for having a family with siblings, coupled with decently awkward questions about the marital status of their pen pals (a perfectly normal topic of discussion, here in Rwanda) spoke volumes about the importance of family in this country as their questions about whether or not there are animals like cows and gorillas in Colorado were a good indicator that a correspondence program was a perfect choice to both break down some of the mental barriers constructed from leading an isolated, village life and teach them about life outside of their tiny country. Of course, they will probably also break down some of the barriers of living the sheltered and privileged life of Evergreen, Colorado.
Of course, reading through their letters tonight has also told me how appreciated I am...something a former English teacher of my own has recently reminded me is far too rare an occurrence in the life of an educator. One of my students wrote:
Catie is my teacher explain why she came from America to teach in Rwanda? But for school Catie is best teacher We love so much.
That's the thing about being a teacher, especially here in Rwanda, the benefits always outweigh the costs. Yes, I have come a long way from home to do this, and yes, one some days it has been challenging. Today itself was a challenge just to pull my students' teeth and get them to write a page-long letter a piece, but by the time I got down to reading those letters, it was all absolutely worth it.
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