Back To School I Go...

This week marked the first week of me being a Rwandan teacher and wow was it a change. Coming from an American school, the first day is normally spent having students introduce themselves and going over classroom expectations and rules, but in Rwandan the first day of school is spent registering students for school, finding where to put all the students, and arguing over class timetables (schedules). So instead of jumping in and teaching I did a whole lot of nothing during this first week of school, but I fully expected this week to be filled with just finding my grounding with my fellow teachers and the students. By Friday, I was in the classroom teaching and it felt amazing (see video below)! There’s something about being in a classroom full of students that are eager to learn that makes me happy. It always feels good to be in the classroom, even on the worst teaching days. Instead of bringing you through my day by day of this week I wanted to do an overview and highlight some amazing moments from this week.

Rwandan schools are set up in a very different way from American schools. For starters, P1-P3 (US equivalent to K- Grade 2) are taught only in Kinyarwanda. While students have English class the mode of instruction is still in Kinyarwanda until students reach P4 which is the switch to English instruction for all subjects. Due to this abrupt switch P4 can be extremely difficult for students and many teachers revert back to Kinyarwanda to ensure students understand of a topic. Another unique aspect of Rwandan schools is students (P1-P4) only come to school for half

the day and this is the first year P5 students have all day school with the older students. This makes scheduling classes and teaching that much harder. Say P4A comes in the morning on Monday and P4B comes in the afternoon that day, then Tuesday P4B will come in the morning and P4A will come in the afternoon. This means the schedule is always changing for the students and teachers, making it hard to keep track. Despite the extreme differences in resources and teaching styles, students in Rwanda come to school to learn everyday, some coming from 1-2 hours away just to learn until lunch. Schools assembly starts promptly at 7AM (Rwandan time, soooo 7:30AM-ish) which is where students sing (what I think) is the national anthem and say a prayer (my school is Catholic) before beginning the day. While students usually have back to back classes with a short break in between, this week was different and many teachers spent the days prepping for the year instead of teaching (teachers don’t have time to prep before the first day of school). My fellow teachers also spent a lot of time trying to figure out a schedule for each class that fit the mandated requirements from the Rwandan Education Board, but by the end of the week we had a schedule for each grade. At lunch, all the students and teaches return home to eat before the second half of the day. Some schools have a feeding program (our secondary school 20 minutes away does), but our primary school does not. After lunch teaches return to the next group of students and begin the teaching schedule again. While getting used to the different (non-existant) sense of time in Rwanda I was also getting used to leaving students unattended in class, a wearing a lab coat (all teachers are mandated to wear a lab coat in Rwanda which is mainly for keeping chalk off you clothes) all day long. I also was welcomed with he Rwanda custom of doing nothing when it rains. We didn’t have class all of Friday afternoon due to the rain starting at lunch which prevented students and teachers from returning (Rwandans do not walk in the rain). Even if we had made it back to school before the rain, due to tin roofs it almost impossible to teach an effective lesson over the noise.

Highlights of the Week:

1. On Monday, the little boy (age 3) who always cries when he sees me in the road came running up to me yelling ‘Ivey!’ (incase I haven’t said it before I go by Ivey in village since Sydney is hard to pronounce). This was an amazing moment to finally win over Kevin and to receive a giant hug from him. This was also followed by the all the children I already know who live in my village introducing me to their friends, so excited that they already know the new teacher.

1. I did a model lesson for some fellow teachers to see me teach and this began a long discussion about punishment and different ways to manage a classroom without beating children. After the teachers saw how I congratulated students who came to answer question on the board, despite their answers being incorrect, this prompted several teachers to ask many questions about encouraging students and different forms of punishment in the classroom. While I want to be clear, corporal punishment is illegal in Rwanda, sadly it is still a reality in schools and sadly I have experienced this aspect of Rwandan school this past week. With teachers not having any other tools or strategies to manage students, corporal punishment becomes the only resource they have to keep classes under control. But this week, I had one of the first, of I’m sure many, discussions about classroom management and encouraging students to help them enjoy learning instead of being scared. While I know I did not change anything at my school yet, this was an amazing start, especially for the first week, to see that my fellow teachers are open to learning different ways to manage a classroom. While I knew this was going to be a challenge I was going to face, it doesn’t make it any easier to see, hear, or know that this behavior is happening. Although it isn’t easy, I was very encouraged by teacher’s openness about the subject and curiosity about the knowledge I bring to this new environment.

1. Many teachers through out the week came to me with different questions about everything from what do American eat, to definitions of random words, to wanting help writing a lesson plan. While this is technically my job I was so happy the teaches felt comfortable enough to starts asking all sorts fo questions so soon. I had fun trying to explain that I buy the same fruits and vegetables they do, that sweet potatoes in America can be orange, that there are black Americans and yes they can be teachers, that yes Barack Obama is American, that many classrooms in America have what we call a SmartBoard (extremely hard to explain), and so many other amazing questions. I even had the P6 teach ask me for helping changing a lesson in the curriculum to be more useful in the classroom (the curriculum assumes every child has a textbook and a workbook

which is impossible in almost any school in Rwanda). Her excitement over acting out different sports and hobbies with the students was amazing and I’m so glad I could help at least one teacher this week.

1. Teaching!!!!! Of course teaching my new students is a highlight of the week. After finally getting a schedule, I was able to go into class and review the alphabet with all of my students. Sadly this is a very necessary step before we can continue on to learning any more English this year. Below is the video of a game I played with my students. I used the alphabet cards I made on a rainy day and had a movement for each word on the cards (Anne Wilcox taught me well!! VISUALS, VISUALS, VISUALS). After the students learned each movement and sound of that letter they had to make the sound of any movement I was making. For example, I would pretend to bounce a ball and they would copy and say <b>. They had so much fun with this and hopefully you can hear them in the video.

This week was so amazing and hopefully it shows what the rest of the year will be like!

Also thank you for all the support on my first vlog! It feels amazing to have so many friends and family supporting me from so far away (sadly not a reality for all volunteers). Hopefully the next video will be a tour of my house this week, or it might be a compilation of me trying to deal with my rat problem!!!