After the blah two weeks I’ve been having- mostly trying to adjust back to site and finding some kind of direction, I must say that I was desperately in need for a day like this.
As I wandered around on Monday at my center school, trying to find something to do so it looks like I actually do something, I overheard a teacher complaining about the P-7 class. Apparently the P-7 class rebelled against the teachers and was refusing to be taught. Interesting. Not something you hear everyday here around here.
What exactly is a P-7 class? The Ugandan school system is broken down into two basic sections. Primary school and Secondary school. Primary school is P-1 to P-7, and essentially equivalent to our first to seventh grade. Here’s the catch. In order to move from P-7 to secondary school, you must pass the infamous Primary Leaving Exam (PLE). The PLE is comprised of four sections, namely English, Science, Mathematics and Social Studies. Usually, a primary school is rated only as good as its P-7 pupils’ PLE scores. Most schools ignore the Ugandan law that students must be promoted automatically, regardless of their abilities. So, many pupils are held back until they are deemed ready to sit for the PLE. The average age in this particular class at my center school is 15 years old, although the range is from 13-18. The staff tends to put a lot of pressure on the P-7 candidates, particularly in Term III- the Ugandan school calendar runs from February to December. Currently, we’re at the crunch time of Term III. Only six weeks before the big test.
Back to our revolting P-7 class. I honestly don’t know why they were revolting. Their reasoning was because they wanted to review their notes and books before trying to cram more information into their heads. That sounds fair enough, but the staff was livid. They complained that “Those stubborn children need some life skills!” Ding ding ding. It’s like a bell had just gone off in my head. Life skills, huh? Hey, I can do that.
Alright, so technically my job is to “teach teachers,” but I’m here to teach teachers to help the children, right? That’s how I look at it. Quickly, I jumped into action. Ok, that might be a little bit of an exaggeration because I was really tired on Monday, but still. By Friday, I had launched the idea to the Head Teacher, who loved it. I had roped in a staff member, who agreed to be present at all meetings- hey, I’ll teach this teacher how to teach life skills. Bingo. See- I’m even still doing my job.
Now that I had the go ahead from the school, all I needed to figure out what we were going to do exactly in this wonderful life skills club that I’d romantically dreamed up. Thankfully, we just had life skills training from Peace Corps, and they sent us home with a few books. Phew, disaster adverted.
I have to admit, when I walked into P-7 today to conduct our life skills extravaganza, I don’t think any of those kids were happy to see me. I don’t blame them. It’s Friday afternoon, and here I come, barging in, telling they “WAIT just a minute! You’re not done quite yet.” I did a brief introduction about what’s to come over the next six weeks. A lot of face time with Madam Chelsea! But also, learning about those marvelous things called “Life Skills.” For those of you at home, life skills are defined by “skills that help us lead healthy and safe lives.” I might even throw in there a happy life too. Some good examples of life skills are effective communication, empathy, decision making, resisting peer pressure, critical thinking, etc. They still seemed bored, and I was definitely getting a vibe of teenage angst. Thankfully, they perked up a little when I explained this would also be the time that we would communicate with our American classroom in the states- we’ve matched up with a class in the Denver to learn about each other.
Regardless, their jaws dropped at the next part. I told them we had to leave our lovely P-7 classroom and move to an activity in the P-1 classroom. As I left the room to lead the way, I skipped out singing the chant of the Ugandan football team, “We goooo, we go, we go, we go… Uganda Cranes WE GO!” I’m not sure they’ve ever seen a teacher skip to anything, let alone sing at the same time. At least it helped them lighten up a bit.
Before our session, I had prepared the P1 classroom, which has no desks or furniture. On the ground, I marked 33 boxes in a circle with chalk. I have 32 pupils, plus me and my fellow staff member who’s lagging behind wondering what in the world he’s agreed to be a part of. The game we played is a bizarre version of musical chairs. There are 33 spots but 34 of us, so someone is bound to be stuck in the middle. The person in the middle has to say the phrase, “The wind blows for those who….” and then say something true about themselves, such as “The wind blows for those who wear black shoes/who like rice/who are girls/who have sweaters.” If you belong to that group of people, you have to move and try to find a new free box. At first, the game was a disaster, and I began to doubt if it would work at all. Finally, they began to get the hang of it and loved it. I ended the game with, “The wind blows for those who want to do well on the PLE.” Everyone ran like mad.
My second activity was quite different. No one was allowed to speak. If you spoke, you would be asked to sit down, and later explain to everyone why you were the one to speak. Ironically, the only one that spoke was my staff member, but I let it slide. The objective: arrange the group by the day and month they were born. Wow. That was nearly impossible. They looked at me, and just thought I was crazy. It took me running around the circle pumping both my hands showing 10 for at least a full minute until they realized what in the world I was trying to say. Finally, we got arranged by birth month, although the way they sign for numbers in Uganda is very different from America, so I tended to get confused. We tried to organize for day, but we completely failed. I have to admit we gave up on that one, but oh well. At least we got the months right? They begged to play a few more rounds of the monkey in the middle game before we went back to our P-7 class to debrief what these activities meant.
And what did they mean? According to my P-7 pupils:
-To listen to each other
-To exercise
-To use signs
-To make friends
-To know the months of the year
All good answers, but the ones I was looking for could take some prompting.
What happened if the person in the middle spoke quietly, like many Ugandan children do? No one responded to you, and you were left alone, again, in the circle.
What happened if you weren't paying attention to the person in the middle? Once everyone started moving, you had no idea what to do.
Did we arrange ourselves without each other’s help? No.
Did we have to use a different way to talk since we couldn't speak? Yes.
Did they notice that I "spoke" differently from them? Yes.
But, once they slowed down and "listened," we could understand each other, right? Right.
We need to use effective communication and work together! They seemed to understand the point I was trying to make. They promised that next time they would speak loudly and clearly, and try to work as a team. I also asked them to remember that our circle game taught us that we have things in common. Some of us wear belts, some of us like matooke, some of us like math and all of us want to do well on our PLEs. They are not alone.
Now, as we were closing, I allowed them to write two anonymous questions to ask our friends in America. Wow, that got the class quiet fast and thinking hard. I initially asked my fellow staff member if he would like a piece of paper too. He quickly turned it down, laughing- like he would have something to ask a classroom of American children. As I walked around collecting the questions, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the teacher had relented. He had borrowed paper from a pupil to jot down his questions too and acted very flustered when I started my countdown for the final questions to be submitted. So now, I have 66 questions waiting to be answered. I’ll be sure to post some here when I’ve finally sorted through them.
When I left the classroom at 4:30 pm, I noticed a change. Don’t worry. I’m not completely self-absorbed. I don’t think I made some phenomenal change in their lives today. But, at least a change in their attitude for our next Life Skills meeting.
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