Lessons Learned in Model School

I was originally going to write this post about the large amount of uncertainty that has characterized my Peace Corps experience thus far, but I think that doesn’t get at exactly what I am trying to say. What I am trying to get at is more of learning to let go, and learning to deal with weird situations in a not-weird way. There has been a lot of getting over the way I feel about things and just dealing with it. And, you know, it’s okay.

Monday of a week and a half ago, we started doing Model School for 4 hours every morning, 5 days a week. This is where we first get to practice teaching (in French) our respective subjects to real Burkinabe students. I teach math 4 hours a week to 8^th graders, plus last week I taught an hour of English, and next week I’ll teach an hour of Life Skills. (Fun possibilities for that one.) Yesterday we gave our first exam, and we’ll have another one in 2 weeks for the end of Model School. The students are from the local community who wanted to take preparatory summer-school type classes before the real school year starts. My students are all really well-behaved, and they range in ages from around 13 to 20. Here are some broad lessons learned from my end.

First, the aspect of uncertainty. One of the questions that the Peace Corps asked over and over through the application process was something to the effect of "Do you feel comfortable acting in ambiguous or uncertain circumstances?" (It was probably worded better than that, though. I don’t remember.) They weren't joking. Life in Burkina generally involves a lot more sitting around and waiting than most Americans are used to, I think. Especially sitting around and waiting but not being sure what you're waiting for, or whether in fact you’re waiting for anything at all. Just waiting. There are also a lot of times when none of us (the trainees) knows what’s going on or what we’re supposed to be doing, and you would think it would be easy for someone to give us just a little direction, but they don’t. You just have to take a breath and let it go.

The uncertainty has grown to be a part of daily life. With Model School, things have been fairly straightforward for me, but there are also plenty of times when I just have to be ready for anything. I suppose that’s always true of teaching, since the goal is to respond to the needs of your students. But for example, when I went to teach English last week, I had no idea what level of English any of the kids were at, and trying to find any hints in their textbook was rather futile since the textbook was quite useless. (More to come in future posts about education and curricula in the Burkinabe school system. It’s crazy.)

The other aspect has more to do directly with my practice teaching. I have never taught anything before, and although they have given me sufficient training, there are a lot of times when I think to myself that I really have no authority to be bossing a bunch of African kids around. As a student, teachers always seemed like they were a special different kind of being from me. They were supposed to be a lot older, with a lot more education and life experience, and no existence outside of the school grounds. But now I’m teaching, and I’m still just me. If one of them challenged me, could I deal with it? What do I have over them? It would be so easy for me to lose control over the classroom. I’m not even that much older than some of the students. But the realization was that the only sure way to fail would be to let my (maybe-justified) anxiety show. All that I have to do to be a good teacher is to pretend that I’m a good teacher.

I guess the lesson learned from all of these experiences is the importance of stepping back from my emotional state, evaluating objectively whether or not it is productive, and then either going with it or overriding it with something better. I can acknowledge that yes, maybe at any given time I feel angry or confused or terrified, and maybe it’s completely justified, but letting that control me is not going to get me anywhere. I think that that is one of the most useful lessons that I’ve learned thus far here. No choice but to keep pushing forward.