Failures and Praises

I like having things go my way; don’t we all?  True, I have those moments where I just don’t try and I receive a mediocre result but when I put in time and effort I get results.  It’s always been that way.

Being a teacher is therefore very, very frustrating for me.  There are just too many variables that I can’t control: the weather, the materials available, but mainly my students.

I spent a long time thinking and writing this post and I’ll let you know that I’ve thought long and hard how I want to approach this.  I don’t want to complain; I do it enough and I don’t need the whole world hearing it.  But I want to be honest and share my frustrations with my friends and family.  So here is my compromise.

I may have mentioned before that I was involved with training the new education volunteers during the end of last year.  Training was still eye opening the second time around because the first time around I was so overwhelmed (and a little bored) that I missed some things.  Doing it the second time gave me a new perspective and strangely reminded me how unaccustomed I’ve become to the American way of things.  For example, teachers in the U.S. never really deny students use of the bathroom.  There may be consequences for using it during class but no teacher will ever tell a student that they can’t use it.  I deny that right to my students all the time.  I’m not proud of it but I have to maintain a sense of discipline and order in my class and if I let one student go then in ten minutes another student will ask to go too.  In America teachers don’t send kids to buy them items from a shop, fill up their water bottles, and clean their dishes.  Students here are also responsible for keeping their own classrooms clean; we don’t have a janitor.

You can blame these differences on different values and different culture but it really comes down to school isn’t just about learning; it’s about learning how to be a good citizen.  So students are made to fetch, clean, and everything else in hopes that when they become adults they will be able to do it all themselves.  Therefore students end up missing class for a variety of reasons.  The boys take turns fetching water for the cook and often miss class for that (the girls missed class for a week because the cook's daughter had a baby and was absent and someone had to cook lunch).  We miss class for mass since we are a church school and attending church is a priority.  We will miss class to practice for competitions.  Teachers will refuse to teach a class if they feel it is unkempt.  It’s been one of my biggest frustrations here because I like to plan ahead and when I miss a class I have to redo my plan for the week.  I have learned to only plan my lessons a day in advanced to reduce my frustrations but I still have to have some idea when I’m teaching a lesson or when I will be doing an activity with the class.

But my biggest frustration is my students.  As a teacher I want all my students to do well and I put in the effort to do as much as I can to make sure they do as well as they can do.  In the end, I’m always disappointed with the results.  I know there are many reasons why my students don’t do well.  For example a lot of my students have tough family situations.  They are orphans and are responsible for their younger siblings or have chores they are responsible for.  Or they stay with grandparents (which is very common here even if both parents are living) and have to help them.  I would say very few of my students have a family where they are encouraged to study and do homework at home.  I don’t mean that they are not encouraged to do well at school.  It’s just that school is at school and at home you have to work.

Other students struggle with English and all classes except Sesotho are in English.  As a school we punish students for speaking Sesotho so that they will improve and become more comfortable in their second language.  Recently I also helped the school open a library containing books in English.  But it’s still a struggle for my students and I know part of the reason the assessments are so poor is because they simply can’t understand what the question is asking.

The school also has many students who repeat grades.  I was oblivious to them last year but this year I am very aware of them since I know them from last year.  My school lets students take a class three times before it refuses to take a student back.  And I have quite a few third time repeaters in my classes.  And the reason they are repeating is not because they failed but because they failed miserably (we still let students who fail go to the next grade).  So two years of failing miserably and they aren’t doing any better this year.  How do you explain that?  And it’s not just one or two subjects but everything.  Maybe it’s a learning disability but to be honest I wouldn’t know how to spot one.  And with all the other reasons for students not to be doing well it’s not like such a student would stick out.  And some students just don’t care.

But in the end, when I try to reason it all out, I’m left with the possibility that maybe it’s me.  Maybe I’m not a very good teacher or maybe I’m just not trying hard enough.  It’s moments like this that I have to remind myself that I’m not in control of everything and I just have to let it go.  There’s only so much I can do for my students and only so much I can do with the time I have here.  So while all these concerns may bring me down I just have to wash my hands of it and look at what is working.  Maybe that’s not the best decision, maybe not even the right one, but it works for me.