6 November 2014: Micro teaching / school system

In the PC’s effort to turn non-teachers into teachers, yesterday was our first day of micro teaching at the high school a short walk outside of the village. Before this, a few weeks ago, we had done two rounds of peer teaching (teaching small groups of other trainees), but today was our first day with real live students. Today we would be teaching form B.

                [A quick note on the school system here: For the little nuggets, there’s this thing called “reception” like preschool, which is generally pretty cheap, averaging about 20 Rand=$2 per month. Then there are 7 grades or “standards” of primary school, which are compulsory and free. The ministry of education phased out school fees in 2000 as part of the UN Millennium Goals, so many of the herd boys who tended to their family’s animals instead of going to school started to come back to school. So, there can be older teenagers and adults even in primary school. Students will also repeat grades frequently, especially grade 7 where they have to pass the test to move on, so there can be a wide age range in schools. Then you take the Primary School Leaving Exam/PSLE (no fee) after standard 7 to move into secondary school. Apparently, the test is pretty easy. Anyway, then you have form A, B, and C which make up secondary school, then you take the Junior Certificate  (JC) exam (not so easy, costs about 600 Rand =$60) to go to high school, which is forms D and E. After form E, you take another test called the LGCSE (which they are in the middle of revamping to the IGCSE, the L for Lesotho turning into the I for international, costs about 1000 Rand=$100) to graduate, and then you can go on to tertiary education, which can include vocational schools, nurses colleges, teacher’s colleges, or other universities in Lesotho or South Africa.]

                So in other words, we would be teaching the equivalent of 8^th graders. At site, I will be teaching forms A and B if I am placed in a secondary school or A,B, and D if I am placed in a high school. They don’t want us to teach forms C or E because we would essentially need to prepare them for the JC or IGCSE exam, which we really don’t know anything about. Best to leave that to the more experienced Basotho teachers. Martha and I taught one after another in the morning. Martha went first, and I watched and learned from her. 40 minutes later when it was my turn to teach vertical and horizontal line equations, I made sure my voice was loud and clear, and that I was speaking very slowly and confidently. Kids can smell when you are nervous. My strategy for life at this point is to fake it till I make it. It’s working pretty well so far. The lesson went well, but I am aware that these kids’ English level is much better than what we will likely get at site, so I have to constantly remember to repeat everything, speak slowly, and write key concepts on the board.

                That afternoon, a bunch of us decided to walk about an hour to a village called Sefikeng at the base of the mountain Thaba Sefika [A note on Sesotho- when you want to distinguish something as a location, you add –ng to the end of the word. So the village at Thaba Sefika becomes Sefikeng. Also, you don’t really have prepositions like “to” or “at”, but instead just use the –ng ending. If you want to say something like, I am going “to school,” you start with the word sekolo/school and turn it into sekolong/to school]. So we’re at Sefikeng just for kicks to see what it’s like. We walked into their main shop, which was teeny tiny compared to our awesome pink shop in our village. The storekeeper greeted me as “abuti,” [brother], and I said no, I’m “ausi” [sister] and he was like whaaattt. Androgynous problems.

                Then at my house during dinner, my 3 year old ausi was doing part of a traditional dance where you sit on your knees and act like you’re harvesting crops or something- I’m not really sure what it’s supposed to be. Even at just 3 years old, she’s already swaying and popping her head and arms to the rhythm of my ‘me clapping her hands. She also did a little booty pop dance which is also a traditional dance. No wonder everyone is so good at singing (and dancing)- they start perfecting the art so young! It’s such an integral part of their culture, not to mention entertainment in a boring village, that it becomes second nature, even to the tiny ones.