The N10 fine

After teaching my students 'Speech work', I was packing my notes to leave when I noticed some hesitation. I asked them what the problem was and they expressed that they wanted me to continue the lesson. I was surprised because not only was my time up but it was also break time. And I know these kids don't play with break time/food.

It was either they enjoyed getting fascinated by my pronunciation of the English words I was teaching them or they were actually interested in some more learning. Judging from how they'd chuckle whenever I pronounced what they'd usually call 'os-pi-tah' as 'hos-pi-tul', I'll go with the former. Whatever the reason was, I decided to stay and play some games with them. During the course of this, I realised how horrible their sentence construction was, so I asked for suggestions on how we could tackle this problem. Some suggested break-time lesson, others suggested more reading. Then I heard someone say something about enforcing a N20 fine on anyone who speaks Yoruba in class. And it hit me! THIS IS IT! THIS WILL BE IT! This was the idea we were going to adopt but with a little tweaking. 

In that moment, a new rule was born: Anyone who speaks Yoruba in English class will be fined N10. You won't be fined if you attempt to speak English and end up 'tabon'-ing, the rule would only apply to you if you did decide to speak and it was in Yoruba.

This happened just yesterday, and because I haven't been at school since 'cause today was my day off, the plan won't officially kick off until tomorrow. I'm looking forward to that and just seeing how it pans out as time goes on. I think if we adhere strictly to it, it will make a difference. We've also appointed a "financial secretary" who will be in charge of collecting the funds, lol.

OyaNa! LezzGoDiyeh!


PS: It's a town, not a village! :P

PSS: My camera is temporarily faulty, hence why I've been slacking on sharing pictures. But I'll soon have that sorted out. 
Thanks for understanding :)

Baby steps

I have been wanting to do this post. Not only so you'd know what I've been up to this term but also to serve as a reminder for me, of my goals for the term.

It's been over two weeks since teaching resumed and I'm already enjoying it. A little more than I did last term, I'll add. This is because with now being more familiar with the students, and having a clearer understanding of the areas in which they struggle, I find that so far, teaching this term has been easier and less stressful. As some of you who have been following my journey might know, teaching my kind of students can at times be very difficult and frustrating for several reasons I've mentioned in previous posts. The mistake I made last term was that I focused on trying to strictly follow my lesson note plan. However, I have decided that this term, I will throw caution to the wind and just "freestyle". 

The long break helped me realise that as long as I keep trying to tackle their problem from the top, I will keep getting frustrated, so I've decided to start from the root, as one should with any problem. The problem my students have has eaten so deeply into their system that one can only/must fix it by tackling it from the bottom. For example, if essay writing is scheduled in the syllabus, it would be pointless teaching that when the students aren't even confident enough in their understanding of the basics of constructing a sentence, or of when to use verbs, nouns and pronouns. I realise that I must start by making them understand the smaller things before we can proceed to the more complex things, and we may never even get there seeing as I have about four months left here, but we can still make progress.

As part of the 'baby steps' plan, I've incorporated frequent dictation exercises into the syllabus. Last week was the first of many to come. It was with the JS3s. I dictated 20 words, one of which was 'uniform' and when the time for corrections came, I asked a student to step up and share with us how he had spelt the word. He wrote 'yulifomu'. His mates laughed and before I could even tell them to stop, I found myself chuckling a bit, not because he misspelt it but because he spelt it the exact same way their strong Yoruba accent permits them to pronounce the word. Anyway, I showed him the correct spelling. Knowing my lazy students, I had imagined that they would have forgotten what they had learnt, so the next day, I went to their class and asked the same boy to come to the board like he had done the day before, and spell the same word. What put a smile on my face was not only the fact that he spelt it correctly but the confidence with which he wrote the word on the board. It was a proud moment for me. I repeated the same test a week later (today), and he still didn't disappoint :)

I foresee this new method I've adopted being very time-consuming and putting me behind on lesson notes because topics which should normally be exhausted in one period would now require three periods. But the aim of teaching is less about sticking to lesson notes and more about ensuring the students learn, right?

A fellow corper, Jane, and I got talking the other day about what these students need. We decided that it isn't just about caning them but also about our patience and tolerance as teachers. We've weighed the results of caning them versus speaking sense into them. While the former might be effective in making them see in that moment that they've done something wrong, a lot of times, the latter is how one can truly get through to them. I've had to realise that I have to go easier on them as it's not always a laziness issue that holds them back; that it's not their fault that no matter how hard they try, their background will always reflect in their inability to pronounce the 'sh' sound, and that as much as they'd like to write lovely essays, the reality is that they don't even know how to construct simple sentences. Some of these are things you learn in primary school, which I'm sure for one reason or another, some of them skipped.

The system isn't helping either. Don't even get me started on the fact that 30% was the pass mark last term. I came back this term to discover that the students who were supposed to repeat a class, i.e. the ones who didn't meet the pass mark, have been put through to the next class. Why? Then, our public schools are filled with teachers with questionable qualifications. If their teachers are "tabon-ing", how won't the students do the same?

Like I stated earlier, we might not get through the syllabus this term and that's fine. I'd feel fulfilled leaving here knowing that Suli in JS3 can hold a 5-minute conversation in English. It won't be easy; a lot praying, caning, sweating, yelling will be involved. I've already started cutting into other teachers' periods sef, but oh well, lol.

I've gotten a couple of really good ideas from people on how I can do more with the students. Thanks ID and KK.

Jane and I have taken these ideas into consideration and added a few of our own too and with these, we have some helpful projects planned for the next few months. I'll share them here as time goes on.

Evenings are my fave here in Iwo. Since I love LOVE LOVE!!! evening breeze so much-and today's was exceptional btw-, I decided to type up this post outside. So calm, so yummy.

PS: It's a town, not a village! :P

We're back!…and we're leaving again

Written: 02/10/13

"Aunty! Aunty"

"Oya, lo gba bag won", whispered one to the other. 

"Ma worry", I said to her, as I saw her making her way towards me. "Ye! O wo le!", one of her friends present yelled, covering one eye, as we'd do to mean 'ela oju kan' or 'ela' for short. This they do whenever I refuse to indulge kind gestures such as this one.

Yup, I'm definitely back at Anwar-ul Islam. As I stepped on school soil, the first thing I noticed was that the grasses had grown really bushy. It was clear that we had been away for too long and the environment had been starved of naughty students (since we are surrounded by mass grass coverage, you can imagine that cutting grass/mowing the lawn is a popular punishment for the kids who misbehave).

As I moved closer to the staffroom, I met other students on the way who prostrated themselves with excitement to 'hail' me, to which I responded with a smile. "I have missed these children!", I thought to myself. 

The teachers in the staffroom welcomed me with news about a relocation. Our holiday had lasted so long because Governor Aregbe had been working on merging schools. For us, Anwar-ul Islam would join Islahudeen High School. the latter would be our school for the next school year. This surprised me because when we were first posted here, we had cause to believe that Anwar-ul would be our permanent Place of Primary Assignment (PPA) for the service year. The teachers, however, didn't seem bothered. I guess as a public school teacher, you learn not to get too comfortable anywhere as change is constant and transfers can happen anytime.

We were also told that school time for junior schools would change from 2pm to 3.30pm, and from 2pm to 5pm for the seniors, as afternoon prep would be introduced into the public school system. 

My initial reaction was to grumble but after being enlightened on the intention behind the adjustments, I embraced the idea. I wrote in my 'Last day of school' post about revision being a big problem of the students', so to have heard that they would be getting some supervised after-school prep time was good news.

More time in school would mean less time for their after-school hustle which though it keeps their hands and minds busy, usually doesn't give them time for revision. (Though I won't entirely blame this on their after-school jobs because if they cared about school as much as they did their jobs, then they would squeeze out time to revise). This change in times could go either way but I'm hoping the fact that there'll be supervision will make it an effective 1hr30mins/3hours.

Mrs B., one of the teachers present in the staffroom at the time I received the news, said, "Aregbe knows what he's doing. It's just that we lack structure". I'm pleased that we are taking a step in this direction. Since being here and having a better understanding of how the public school system works, I've felt that our schools could use more attention from the government. After all, public schools are the government's property. What I mean is, more can be done to excite these kids about school and make the environment more conducive to learning. I had expected the worst before I got here and was surprised upon my arrival, to discover that we had sufficient textbooks and stationery and even hold mid-week quizzes for the students. 

Furnished buildings, a better structured timetable (that includes educative games, more sports and visual learning; the other day, I supervised a P.H.E. exam where they were asked to draw a handball court. I smiled because I knew they didn't know what one looked like. They could only draw it not as something they were familiar with or had ever seen, but as something they had been shown in their textbooks in class), more (well-educated) teachers, electricity (there are no bulbs or fans or even a connection to light for us to know when there IS light), doors, school buses (with this new merging system, students are having to spend more on transportation) and the likes could really make a difference.

My father speaks well of the public school structure that existed back in his time and how it was so well organised that private schools weren't even popular because everyone preferred public schools. How nice would it be to have some of that excitement revived? 

Any ideas on what else I can do in my remaining four months here to motivate/help these kids? Bear in mind though, that we are dealing with unmotivated and lazy people so your idea has to be super great and continuous even after my time here is up. I was and still am very enthusiastic about bringing change here. The after-school lesson plan I came up with last term eventually failed 'cause the students lost interest. 

Anyway, glad to be back. Two months is too long for a holiday!

PS: It's a town, not a village! :P