the school year in review

...well, at least the half when I was here.

No more pencils

No more books

No more teacher's dirty looks

Well we got no class

And we got no principles

And we got no innocence

We can't even think of a word that rhymes

School's out for summer...

-Alice Cooper

That’s right, Alice, school is indeed out for summer. And let me tell you: even though I’m a teacher now, summer break is just as exciting as it was when I was a student.

So how did this school year treat me?

When the new semester came and I finally started teaching, things were rough. It absolutely broke my heart when, in the first few weeks of teaching, I learned that my entire class had gone to the administration complaining that they couldn't understand the new American teacher. It was discouraging, devastating even. What good was I if I couldn't even deliver a comprehensible lesson to my students? But I had no choice but to learn from the situation and trudge on. I reminded my classes to ask questions if something isn't clear. I included more comprehension checks in my lesson plans. I had students repeat, in their own words, what I had said. And I think my classes improved.

So we learned, together. I learned to put more effort into speaking clear French, and to take it slow. My students learned about the states of matter, the phases of the moon, the different ways of arranging an electrical circuit, and combustion reactions. I prepared them well for the next year, I'm sure. I even threw in lewis dot structures and balancing chemical equations, which are pretty much my favorite things ever.

And speaking of favorite things, I think I discovered my least favorite thing ever: dealing with discipline. To make a long story short, I got lazy and gave two exams on two different days that were insufficiently different (stupid, I know). Cheating for the class that took it on the second day was rampant. And I had to come down hard by taking away a lot of points. And the kids weren't happy about it. So they went to whoever they could, including their parents and the principal. One parent in particular put pressure on the principal, who then told me to change my grades. Major ethical dilemma. The principal tried to explain fairness to me, and we obviously have different ideas about it. I don't even know what's right anymore. We ended up compromising. All in all, not fun. Being fair is incredibly hard. And I still have a lot to learn as a teacher.

Anyway, here are my end-of-the-year class photos that I took. Me and my two classes of (roughly 9th grade) physical sciences. Can you spot me? Where's Waldo?

My Monday/Wednesday class: the "insatiably curious about America and my personal life" class.

My Tuesday/Friday class: the "seriously how many times do I have to ask for silence?" class.

Voila. Thanks kids, you put up with a lot this year (as did I).

I'm learning to fall.

I can't hardly breathe.

When I'm going down,

don't worry about me.

- Boys Like Girls

And oh right, there's this whole other giant aspect of my job: the computer lab. Yes, I breathed a sigh of relief when I had finally fixed up all the computers. But the real struggle was only just beginning. My administration and I can never quite see eye-to-eye on how it should be managed. To be fair, they're not quite getting what they expected back when the requested a volunteer. They wanted someone to sit in the computer lab all day everday and magically form classes and teach computer lessons and basically never leave the lab. And I said hell no to that.

When the school was given the computers (by some Belgian NGO, as I am told), two teachers were trained on how to give computer classes. This is the computer. This is the mouse. This is the keyboard. This is the monitor. You click like this. You type like this. You open documents like this. This is the internet. All the stuff that I seriously do not have the patience or temperament to teach. And it worked! Last year they held regular classes and did trainings and students got certificates. Success! This year they decided that the computers had gotten too many viruses and were slow to the point of uselessness. So they closed the lab (until my arrival).

I was happy to fix up the computers. But I had no interest in taking over teaching computer classes. After spending weeks trying to drum up support for forming classes, I realized that teachers here want nothing to do with the computer lab. They hate it just as much as I do, perhaps even more. In fact, there's a teacher here who owns the cyber cafe right next to the school. Conflict of interest? I think yes. And it also raises the question of what the hell I'm doing here in the first place when the school obviously has the resources to run the computer lab themselves, but that's a whole other story.

So I decided I would go to the students. There are students here that have laptops, and even internet connections at home. There are also students who have never seen a computer in their life. So together they should be able to do some peer-teaching.

I put a lot of effort into posting for computer lab assistant positions, interviewing students who applied, and training the ones that I chose. And they did pretty great. So I let them do their thing. We held open computer lab hours. We operated on a self-learning model with my assistants acting as general supervisors and lab problem-solvers. But apparently having students in charge of stuff is not ok. The school administration shut down my computer lab, and we were at a stand-still for several weeks. My APCD (Peace Corps boss) recently came down and helped with some cross-cultural communication, which resulted in the re-re-opening of the lab. And now my assistants can do their thing. So I think things are pretty much set for the computer lab now.

Here are my computer lab assistants: Didier, Anselme, and Aubain.

And here are some students working in the computer lab.

Once upon a time,

I didn't give a damn.

But now, here we are.

Whatya want from me?

Whatya want from me?

- Adam Lambert

And that's my school year in review. What do I have planned for the summer? Well, I'll talk about that later. More Koupela (Keeping Kool) pictures added. Peace out for now.