And This is How We Do It

Teaching about bacteria and viruses and comparing them to cells (April 8, 2013)

Best way to learn about insects is to find them

Being a teacher is hard, and doing it in a country where the whole school system is different from the one you grew up with makes it even harder.  For example, punishments that work in the US just don’t work here.  My students are experts in doing absolutely nothing (it’s a cultural thing). So punishing students with detention just wouldn’t work.  Students are already expected to keep their classrooms clean so that is not a punishment.  You can’t take points away from their grades because grades are based purely on tests.

My 2013 Form A (8th grade) class

Another challenge is the lack of teaching materials.  I went to school where teachers used projectors, computers, worksheets, and posters designed for teaching.  While these materials may be available here they are not available where I stay or extremely expensive.  In other words, it’s not sustainable.  So I have had to learn to make my own materials.

Drawing pictures of insects

Some background: a lot of school in Lesotho have no textbooks and no electricity.  My school has some textbooks (many of my students do not pay the school rental fee), and has electricity which allows us to have a printer and a computer.  But my school is quite poor and so we use the printer limitedly.  I very rarely use to the printer to copy worksheets or to copy information for the students.  For the most part the only time our school uses the printer is when we print our June and December tests.  We do not have a science lab, but we do have a few chemicals (no lab equipment and the chemicals are not all useful) and no computer lab so the students can’t do research.  The school has a small library (which I set up).  Overall, my school is one of the better equipped schools in the country but there are quite a few schools in Lesotho with a lab, large library, computer, a printer, and electricity in all the classrooms (we only have it in the office).

Diagrams and Posters:

Learning about sexual reproduction in humans

Any high school student taking biology knows that it’s all about pictures.  Some teachers here draw the pictures on the board using up precious class time on trying to make a half way decent picture.  Others tell the students to copy the picture in the book.  I like to use visuals to explain how organs work together so I need a visual on the board.  Therefore many times I draw the picture before hand so I spend less time drawing and more time explaining.  Drawing the pictures on paper also allows me to use different colors which is helpful in certain lessons.

Kinesthetic Learners:

During training we talked about different types of learners; some learn better by hearing information,

Balancing equations is a tough topic for my Form Bs

some by seeing or through visual interpretations of the information, some by interacting with the information.  A good teacher tries to incorporate all of these in to a lesson to accommodate all the students.  The visual and auditory learners are the easiest to incorporate in to a lesson but trying to create interactive activities can be a little more difficult.  Having materials makes it much easier.

If at first you don’t succeed then try again…

March 8th 2012

The reality is that no matter how many materials I make myself nothing substitutes a fully equipped lab or a large library with books my students could look at for additional resources.  And the amount of time I spend writing things on the board when a worksheet would have made it so much easier is a lot.  All I can do with these frustrations are accept that they exist and try to work with them the best I can.  Besides, who joins Peace Corps because it’s easy?

Learning about the human skeleton, stretching, and spelling COCONUT all at the same time