our own views of the world

The way we see things
Tuesday, 26 October, 2010

People have always said you’re either a geometry person or an algebra person but very rarely both. Geometry is sort of instilled early on in boys in the way they play – building blocks, Legos, even watching the wheels on the cars they play with. Girls generally struggle more with it because the games they play when they’re little don’t further those skills – make believe cooking, dress up, dolls. Having taught a small section of geometry, I’ve seen more kids struggle with it than not – boys and girls alike. Sure, there are the couple really strong learners who stand out in everything they do and they’re doing fine. But some kids who I expected to get it, just didn’t. And other surprised me with their recent test scores who usually don’t stand out at all.

6A is the only class left to write a test on shapes, perimeter and area. They’ll write it tomorrow so today I put up review problems on the board and they worked through them on their own. This is the “slower track” of grade 6, so I struggle with getting them to understand. But I had two great moments watching them do the problems.

First, I realized how much all of my learners have grown in using their exercise books. Usually they’re given 1 book per subject and that should last them the whole year. But in my classes, some kids have filled up 2 or 3, we do that much work. And I watch kids USE the work we do. The flip back to the examples I did on the board, the problems they did on their own and then corrected as a class. Usually the problems would just sit there.

Then I listened and watched as Kapinga Thifafure, Disho Mukoya and Thivute Elizabeth discussed the 4 kinds of angles we learned – acute, obtuse, right and straight. I always ask them to show me with their arms the different angles. So the three of them were looking in their books and also showing each other the different angles with their arms to decide how to draw each one.

I walked away with a smile.

After school Nicky came over. I was marking tests, which I’m adamant about kids not seeing each other’s marks because it’s up to them to share them. So she stood around for about 45 minutes waiting and I had no idea if she was angry or not. I really just had to work. When I finished that, I tried to lesson plan for tomorrow, but I’m just tired of doing that! She’s noticed.

“Madam, why aren’t you giving us homework anymore?”

“I’m getting too lazy like your other teachers.”

“Ms Siyanga, she’s becoming like Ms Ndunda. She hasn’t taught since September.”

“Tomorrow I’ll give you homework, look at all the problems I have written for you.”

“Heeey!”

I pointed toward two drunk looking men walking toward my house, “Do you think they’re looking for me? I don’t want to talk to them!” I hid from someone the other day too and she got rid of him just before we made the fat cakes.

“Go, hide!” I did.

They came. Everything they discussed was in Thimbukushu, but she, Mulela, Fortune and Siyanga kept telling them that I was gone, that no mukuwa lived there, that I was in Rundu, that I was at Ms Siyanga’s house, that I had left forever. They didn’t believe them and they didn’t even know my name. They asked Nicky my name. “Ciara,” she told them, the name of her current favorite song. They started calling out to me, “Madam Ciara, Jeffro Ciara!” I stood behind the wall laughing.

When they finally left, the ice was broken and Nicky and I could talk easily again. “You know what I saw yesterday that was funny.”

“Where,” I asked, thinking I could turn it into a guessing game. Nope.

“Every tree has an acute angle!”

Oh. My. God. I cracked up! Last year I took my grade 7 classes outside FOR THAT SPECIFIC REASON! I told them to look for acute, obtuse, straight, right angles, parallel, perpendicular, horizontal, vertical lines. You get the point. I couldn’t believe it!

Nicky’s effort and success in math has SKYROCKETED this term. She’s living, thinking, breathing math. She’s now one of the top girls in the class, when she was in the bottom third before. Usually at the top of the bottom third, but she’s definitely in the top third now.

We walked half way to her house, talking about me leaving. “I just don’t want to teach anymore, so I don’t want to prepare to teach either. I just want to hang out with you guys!”

“With who?”

“With all the learners because in 38 days I won’t be able to anymore.”

I told her how much I want to come back next year at least for the marathon, so I’ll see her in October 2011. If not then, definitely October 2012. “So you better be in grade 9!”

“I will, I promise.”

She told me that my mom and dad and grandmothers and grandfathers and sister and sister’s husband and Amanda’s mom and my friends will all help to get me back here. Well, maybe. We’ll see. I’ll figure it out.

When we got the half way marker, there was another drunk man I didn’t want to talk to, so just before reaching there, she told me, “Ewa” and I turned back. That’s when I had my greatest idea ever… When I leave for my final trip to Rundu, where I’ll spend 3 nights saying goodbye and getting some last minute things done, I have to bring Nicky. I’ll get there on a Friday. It doesn’t even matter what we do, she’ll be happy running errands with me. I’ll be happy having her there. Then send her back on a combi on Sunday and leave myself on Monday morning. It’ll be the hardest goodbye, but the longer I can put it off, the better.

“It’s black people food.”
Wednesday, 27 October, 2010

This morning started on the WRONG foot. Staff briefings have thankfully been cut down to three a week instead of every morning, but they’re still hellish when they happen. And when the principal is here to conduct them, they’re that much worse. He’s been gone to various places for the last week so other management members have been filling that role. This morning I was rudely reminded how great it’ll be to never have to go to another after the next few weeks are up.

“If you’re living at school, you have to be careful because even after school, you’re still at school. Even if you’re living in your own house on the school grounds. You have to control your husband or wife because if there’s a problem with them, we’ll come to you because you’re the reason they’re living here. So if you’re a husband you have to control your wife and if you’re a wife you have to control you husband. It’s not hard to control them. Just control your husband or wife. People from outside are saying they’re tired of what’s going on here. Yeah, so control you husband or wife.

“On Monday there will be a workshop for the standardized tests for grade 7. The math, English and natural science teachers have to attend. It will be conducted by myself and Mr ‘Cheesa’ and [someone else]. So those teachers are Ms Lori, Ms Mughongora and Ms Ndunda.

“I brought the SSE [school self evaluation] forms to the inspector last week. Yeah, she looked at them and sent them back with me. Yeah, when I got you all there completing them two weeks back [the meeting I walked out of], I thought you weren’t supposed to be doing it that way. You ranked us higher than St. Boniface. You said that our teaching and learning is 100%. Every learner can get an A? You said the teaching is 100% but you go to a class and sit and don’t teach. You have to complete them again.

“You have to be careful what you say. Even if you think you’re joking and happy, you don’t know who it will offend who can hear you. Yesterday I was talking to a teacher and he or she said that she could insult anyone of us here. I don’t know, did she mean me too?”

Ms Ndunda spoke up and took responsibility for the comment, “It was me who made that comment. But you can’t say [what what] before I made it.”

“You can’t tell me what I can say and how I can say it. Just cool off.”

Ms Siyanga spoke up in defense of Ms Ndunda.

The principal finally decided that it was time to go to classes even though we’d listened to his nonsense for the last half hour and were already 20 minutes late. Apparently when he’s being ganged up on he uses his authority and sends us out of the office.

Periods 1 and 2 went better than that meeting. But by period 3, in 7B, I was again reminded of things I won’t miss. “What class is this that’s so full?” asked the principal in one of his random going arounds of the school.

“7B, there are 27 learners,” I told him while they all looked on, interrupted in their test. “It’s the three cupboards that take up so much space.”

“Yeah. Mr Thinyemba!” he called outside to get the teacher in charge of stock control to come and look at the clutter. They started talking to each other, asking who the class teacher was. Mr Fugre.

“Can you do this at break? They’re writing a test,” I politely enough asked.

“Oh, no, it’s fine I just called him to look,” the principal told me, surprised that he could possibly be interrupting something more important than his agenda, and they continued to discuss in Thimbukushu.

Break came and went, periods 5 and 6 went off without a managerial hitch, just a lot of confusion in how to figure out volume. I saw the light click in Shitunda’s head at one point, that was exciting. A hands on activity for Friday is in store because they were not quite understanding.

The final two periods of the day, the hottest ones, the ones when we’re exhausted and hungry and tired came around. I was in 6A and they were writing a test. About 20 minutes into it, Mr Muthitu came in. Before he even had a chance to say anything, I told him, “No no no no, they’re writing a test.”

Apparently my say means nothing today because he responded with, “No, it’s ok, I just want to give them an announcement. Study is ON today. Only those who are on the [soccer] team will play in the game, for everyone else, study as usual!”

THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I WAS TRYING TO AVOID, FOOL! Thanks for making all of their trains of thought completely derail in a subject they already struggle in. And at the end of the period the learners told me there was no study, they can’t believe what he says. They have their teachers figured out. There was study, but it was only half an hour.

At the beginning of study, I was waiting in my classroom for my 8 learners who failed yesterday’s test so they could make corrections using their exercise books to earn back half of the marks they’d lost. Dudu (haven’t told him what doo-doo is in America) was leaning back in his chair enjoying some orange thing in his mouth.

“Dudu, what are you eating?”

“[insert funny Thimbukushu word].”

“I don’t know that one.”

“We don’t know the English word.”

”Where did you get it?”

“At the river.”

He told me the name again. Then further explained what it was by telling me, “It’s black people food.”

“Heh! Don’t call it that! I know how to cook dimbombo. I know how to pound mahangu. And you would call those ‘black people foods.’ My mom asked me the other day, ‘What do you want to eat when you come home?’ I told her I didn’t know. She asked, ‘What foods do you miss that you haven’t eaten in two years because they’re not in Namibia?’ I still didn’t know, I forget what foods are only in America! I told her, ‘I’m going to bring porridge and everyone can try that!”

“OK, it’s black and white people food,” he corrected himself. Better.

I turned to the whole class and told them, “When I’m in front of a class, so all my learners are black and I’m teaching them, I forget I’m white and you’re black, I forget we look different.” I went on to ask them, “When I’m teaching you, do you see a white person or just a person?”

“Just a person.”

“When I came two years ago and stood in front of you at assembly for the first time, then maybe you thought to yourself, ‘Who is this white person?’” They laughed and nodded their understanding and agreement. “But now, when I stand at assembly, you just see another person.”

“Ghii,” they agreed with big smiles on their faces.

My job here is done.

“But Madam, how did you know this?”
Thursday, 28 October, 2010

“Good morning 6A.”

“Hamoroke nawo,” they greeted back in Thimbukushu, not even one of the 25 learners in 6A replied in English.

“How are you?” I continued in English, holding back my laughter.

“Thiwana. Awome?” They all had big smiles on their faces and I was now not holding back anyway, we were all laughing, sharing in a joke that an outsider wouldn’t know was a joke.

“Did you plan this? Did you all talk to each other to decide to greet me in Thimbukushu today?”

“Ghii.” Yes. I don’t know who was the ring leader, but it started an 80 minute class after break with the right attitude.

Yesterday they wrote a test, so today was the start of a new topic – volume. “Does anyone know what is volume?”

“Madam, like sound,” Disho Mbambo replied, making a hand motion to turn up the volume on the radio. I hadn’t even considered this response when making the lesson plan or asking the question. I was just hoping they’d learned about it in grade 5.

I’d learned quickly in 6B yesterday when we started volume that kids were going to struggle. The words aren’t quite there in their English vocabulary for me to talk about space inside a box. It’s too conceptual. So I changed my strategy for introducing it to 6A. I brought in 25 small pieces of cardboard, 25 rulers and 25 pencils. The plan was the draw a pattern for a 2cm x 2cm x 2cm cube. Fine, I made a sketch on the board, thinking they’d want to tackle it on their own.

Hell no.

We had to make a cross that was 8cm tall and 6cm on the cross piece. We hit some obstacles at the beginning, but after getting the first of the 8cm and 6cm lines drawn, it was smooth sailing. Kids are generally pretty good at sharing since resources are limited, so when I presented only 6 pairs of scissors, there was no surprise or fighting over them after I had handed them out. Everyone waited patiently for their chance to cut out this cross, that they still didn’t know would make a cube even though I’d told them.

Kapinga Thifafure was the first to finish cutting out his cross, so I showed him to fold his cardboard on all of the lines he’d drawn and in the end he had a cube. I taped it up and he became a second teacher. He had to help me go around to those who had cut out their cross and show them where to fold. As others finished and I gave them tape to hold it together, they all began helping eachother.

I got to Dihako Engelbertha to give her some tape. She looked at me in awe and asked, “But Madam, how did you know this?”

I didn’t have a good answer, so I told her what any teacher would have said in that situation, “I’m a teacher, I know everything,” and we shared another laugh. She accepted it easily, taped her cube together and told me she would make a bigger one in study.

When most kids were finished, Joao collected all 25 cubes, placing them nicely in a box, measuring volume without even knowing it and without having enough time for us to get to that part of the lesson. Dihako collected all 25 rulers, with the help of Mukoya who told her, “Na kutongwera,” I told you, when she only had 24 and I saw the missing one on the table for Joao Everyone fought over helping to collect the pencils.

We had about 10 minutes left and it was getting to be too hot for anyone to think. Dikuwa requested that we sing, it’s been a while and everyone knows how much I love it. I was once, indirectly but I know it was directed at me, told in a staff briefing that teachers are letting their learners sing too loud and it’s disruptive. So we tried something new and made rain. We stood in a circle and I taught them the hand motions to make it sound like it’s raining. We started by rubbing our hands together. Next we snapped, then clapped our hands on our thighs and finally stomped on the floor. I turned around slowly in the circle, pointing at each learner in turn and they would change from one motion to the next as I got to them. After stomping, we went backwards through to motions and sounds, making it sound like a quick rain shower – a version of a rain dance I suppose.

Now just waiting for the real rain storms.